COM 0493.121 2000-2002 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Any General Plan for any governmental area is created to set locations for future roads, hospitals, parks, open space, water development and all other public uses. Puna, the size of Oahu, needs to know those locations now. Our growth needs these milestones of development in place for the private sector to do its part, to plan around known county goals. Merely rezoning orchards to rural in the huge substandard areas is an insult to our future. To allocate one area of Hawaiian Paradise Park as "industrial" provides no clue to how it might be used without accompanying specific data and plan requirements in sections on water, utilities, transportation and other vital industrial concerns. Water development may be the most ignored planning element in the Revision document. There are recommendations but most of the pages are merely repetition of work from a decade ago. We learn that water consumption for the county water system jumped in the last ten years from 16.3 to 22.35 million gallons per day, a 26 percent jump during a time of 23 percent rise in population. There is no material in the General Plan laying out the necessary directions for additional water system capacity - where, when and how. The General Plan -for Puna -where most homes depend on catchment water -finds little to foster continued growth. Surveys show water development is a high citizen priority throughout the Puna district and, I surmise, other areas without clean water service. The planning document needs to catch up with that concern. In the introduction to water, policies sound positive but for any actual effect they need restatement in a clearer, more forceful manner: 1. "Develop and adopt a water master plan that will consider water yield, present and future demand, alternative sources of water, guidelines and policies for the issuing of water commitments." This needs to name the agency responsible for the plan and set a firm timetable -one beginning with when we start. 2. "Seek State and Federal funds to assist in financing projects to bring the county into compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act." There should be a recommendation here or elsewhere on use of the presently $41 million water fund languishing in the Department of Water Supply. What is it for? How is it to be used? We have been out of compliance for many years and that must stop. 3. "Expand programs to provide for agricultural irrigation water." Agriculture is the foundation of our best hopes for the future. Language in the Revision questions whether land is becoming too expensive for agriculture but does not map new zoning to prevent loss of productive agriculture land to high-value uses. While true as far as it goes, it is dismaying to read in the introduction on water, "The most common sources of water supply are springs, tunnels, streams and deep wells." The fact on the Big Island is that the most common source is rainfall and it should be cited as such with following determination to store and make use of its value. Agriculture internationally uses natural tanks or ponds where water can be caught and stored economically in agricultural areas for use in dry spells, a necessary plan in porous volcanic soils that can't hold water between rains. Throughout much of Puna relatively small, lined storage ponds would open many hundreds of acres to productive use for valuable crops. Good soil areas need to be mapped. Wherever natural depressions exist there should be consideration of their use as an irrigation source for surrounding farms. 2