In a shocking Sunday news story, Hawaii newspapers reported that the state Commission for Water Resource Management staff report recommends that waters long diverted for Central Maui sugar production only be restored to one of 19 East Maui streams. A petition by East Maui taro growers has been pending over the past eight years while the CWRM studied the issue. Speaking to the CWRM in an overflowing meeting at Paia Community Center in October, Governor Lingle warned commissioners that their decision, would “have consequences far beyond the streams” that they …

Currently in Kula, a program known as the Upcountry Sustainability project is holding meetings the first, third, and fifth Monday of every month to help people of the Maui community to educate themselves on the ability to live in a sustainable fashion off local sources. The vision they have of our community in the future would be one which can support itself while supporting each other.
“Our multi-cultural community is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. We work together in the spirit of aloha to serve as a model of a self-reliant, thriving community. …

In the coming weeks some of the most tremendous decisions in modern history will be made. The Copenhagen Climate Summit is invariably the pinnacle of the struggle for global recognition of climate change. Since our conception, everyone had contributed to the growing threat of rising greenhouse gases. Their effect, along with a microcosm of alterations that we have imprinted on the environment since the Industrial Revolution, have continuously degraded the condition of our world.

This past Sunday (12/06/09) afternoon, rescuers from the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary freed a juvenile Humpack.   The entangled young whale was first spotted by a whale-watching cruise on Dec 1st.  Apparently hundreds of feet of polypropylene rope was entangled through the animals mouth, around its head and behind its blowhole.
Members from NOA’s Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA’s Pacific Islands Regional Office and Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) were allowed close enough to cut the lines using specialized equipment after a …

Irony of the tragic kind struck last week, when the state Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) damaged a section of reef at Keawakapu in South Maui. The irony part comes in because DLNR did the damage while sinking large, “Z”-shaped hunks of concrete meant to serve as artificial reef habitat.
In a December 3 release, the department says it has “suspended deployment of artificial reef forms while it investigates the extent of the inadvertent damage that may have been caused to live coral…”

This video shows numerous concrete chunks scattered across …

Over the last three years the county has be in & out of trouble with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health (DOH).
The alleged incidents involve the Central Maui Landfill failing to install a federally mandated gas control system to collect emissions, and the country allowing polluted storm water to run off the Molokai & Lanai dumps.  Allegations also pointed to an incidents at the Hana landfill which saw the dump mishandling auto waste.  The March 2007 DOH Press release stated:

DOH has cited the County for the failure …