Shift To Green Energy Future is Renewing Plantation-Era Water Wars on Kauai

A proposed hydro project — the first of its kind in the world — could supply up to a quarter of the island’s power by diverting 4 billion gallons a year from the Waimea River.

Photo: Waimea taro farmers John A’ana, Wesley Yadao and Galen Ka’ōhi are the descendants of families who’ve nurtured the Native Hawaiian staple crop for generations. They worry that a proposed clean energy project would divert water that feeds their taro fields. (Brittany Lyte/Civil Beat/2023)

Wesley Yadao, 71, farms 5 acres of taro in a region of Kauai where generations of families have tended the starchy root vegetable in wet paddies fed by the Waimea River.

His tough-knuckled hands betray the necessity of a strong work ethic, an indelible link to his great-grandparents who planted the first seeds of the family’s taro-farming legacy.

“There’s a lot of memories in this valley,” said Yadao, who produces 900 pounds of taro a week with his wife and occasional help from charter school children.

Demand for the staple crop of the traditional Native Hawaiian diet is growing, farmers say, and about a dozen farms in Waimea struggle to keep up — optimistic circumstances for any food producer.

Yet today’s generation of taro farmers in arid West Kauai worry about the future of a cherished way of life.

A proposed renewable energy project promises to supply up to a quarter of the island’s total power usage by diverting 4 billion gallons of water a year from the Waimea River and its tributaries. Residents who rely on the watershed for fish, to grow much of the food they eat or for commercial crop production fret about the effects of these diversions on the river’s health. 

And while the project envisions promoting agriculture, farmers like Yadao worry that it will be at the expense of traditional practices like his that rely on the natural flow of the river.

Conceived in 2012, the West Kauai Energy Project is an integrated pumped storage hydropower, solar and battery project — the first of its kind in the world. Water diverted from the watershed using plantation-era ditch systems would move between […]

Full article: The Shift To A Green Energy Future Is Renewing Plantation-Era Water Wars On Kauai