Puna residents
By Rod Thompson
fear losing clean
drinking water
Star-BulletinHILO -- People in the Big Island's Puna District are getting nervous about their drinking water, now that Hawaii County Civil Defense has announced it has to cut back on roadside water supplies.
Civil Defense Director Harry Kim has announced that two Puna water sites will be closed Jan. 15. Five others will remain in Puna and seven other sites will continue in other parts of the island, he said.
In the last 30 years, cheap land attracted more than 20,000 people to waterless subdivisions in Puna. Most depend on home tanks to catch rain water, which can become contaminated or may run out during droughts.
"The talk all over Puna is that we must keep the (county) spigots open," said Rene Siracusa of the Puna Outdoor Circle. "The general feeling is, we have to find a way to keep clean water coming to the community."
Kim's problem is money. The water isn't free.
In the 1997-98 fiscal year, Civil Defense budgeted $6,000 to be paid to the County Department of Water Supply, Kim said. He actually paid $32,000, with emergency funds from the mayor making up the difference.
Halfway through this fiscal year, Kim has again run out of money for water.
The program of roadside spigots was never meant to be permanent. It began in 1988 as a way of providing clean drinking water when state health officials realized poisonous lead might be leaching from rooftops into home water systems.
It continued through a series of droughts.
Besides costs, the program has suffered abuses.
Against the rules, some people with large portable tanks fill up with several hundred gallons at a time, wash cars and boats at spigot sites, and even take baths there, Kim said.
And some people leave so much trash at the sites that they become health hazards.
"You should see the filth at some of these isolated spigots," Kim said.
In a letter to county Planning Director Virginia Goldstein, Puna Community Council president Jon Olson proposed spending $100,000 on expanding the spigot system.
The money would come from funds paid by Puna Geothermal Venture to offset impacts of geothermal development on the community.
That brought criticism from Siracusa, a member of the Puna Community Council, who said geothermal money isn't supposed to be spent that way, and Olson was never authorized by the group to make the proposal.
County Council Chairman Jimmy Arakaki proposes another solution: Have community groups "sponsor" spigot sites to keep them clean and orderly. In turn, Arakaki would search for county or private funding.
