Water Usage Up and Reservoirs on Decline in Hawaii

WAILUKU – Periodic but isolated showers on windward and mauka areas of the islands had little effect on the watersheds, Maui County Water Director Jeff Eng reported Friday.

In his weekly water use report, Eng said water use was up by 620,000 gallons a day in the Central Maui and Upcountry systems, while the water sources for the Upcountry system have continued to falter. 

“I would like to remind our customers of our request for Upcountry customers to reduce water usage by 5 percent and our Central customers to reduce water usage by 10 percent,” he said.  “It’s been a dry week and the upcountry reservoirs have been steadily dropping, going from 100.6 million gallons on October 2 to 81.4 million gallons on October 10. That is less than half of the total storage capacity of 180 million gallons.”

The islands as a whole continue to dry out even with occasional trade-wind showers, with the Big Island suffering the worst of the abnormally dry conditions. The U.S. Drought Monitor expanded the area of North Kohala under extreme drought, increasing the area rated extreme drought from 10 percent to 12.3 percent of the islands.

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Source: The Maui News