The fraudulent actions and ways of the State of Hawai'i and its henchmen continue with the Board of Land and Natural Resources & their moves seeking to make changes to the way in which it gives out licenses to divert water from streams on public lands through legislation—HB1015 and its companion SB1169.
Submit testimony in OPPOSITION to HB1015 by Monday, March 1, 12pm. HB1015 has a hearing in the House Finance Committee on Tuesday, March 2 at 12pm. We anticipate SB1169 to be heard soon.
HB1015/SB1169 changes the Board’s process to allow direct negotiation for water leases. However, as these bills are written right now, they help the wrong people.
For far too long, the Board of Land and Natural Resources has basically handed out access to public water to large corporations for pennies and allowed them to drain many streams dry—to the detriment of the native ecosystem and communities that rely on them. These bills could enable this exploitation further, potentially leading to secret backroom deals for large, wealthy diverters to get away with unjust licenses that lack public transparency and have little protections for the streams they are diverting.
Join us in ensuring that this newly proposed process helps small users but holds large corporate users accountable. Testimony must be submitted through the Capitol website by Monday, March 1, 12pm:
Log in or register here
Click “testimony”
Enter bill number HB1015
Fill out the form - name, your position: oppose, as an individual
Attach your testimony or enter it into the text box
Submit
If you cannot submit testimony, stay apart of the solution to restore our watersheds, taking corporate control away, and putting them back into the hands of our kua'aina stakeholders, and descendants of our Moku.