Waiahole-Waikane

Jacqueline Lasky

Da night was still, da moon was by da mountain. It was like a little cloudy over da moon but it's still there, it's shining brightly. Da night is still. When dat horn wen blow, people wen know already "It's time; they coming in."

—PAT ROYOS

When the people of Waiahole and Waikane heard the warning horn blowing from a treetop on the night of January 4, 1977, they knew that it signaled that the police were coming to enforce their evictions. Hundreds of supporters from all over the Hawaiian Islands were camped out to occupy and defend the valleys. The residents had fought their evictions in the courthouse, at the state capitol, in the media, in front of business and labor offices, at neighborhood and church meetings, and in alliance with other communities facing similar evictions during the turbulent decade. This night was the culmination of three years of struggle to stay in their rural homes and fend off the encroachment of suburban and tourism development.

A vehicular and human barricade was formed across one mile of the two-lane Kamehameha Highway on windward O'ahu. Island-wide supporters converged on the valleys, and traffic was effectively stopped for hours on the only road along the thirty-mile coastline. Only a handful of police officers arrived on the scene, and it was unclear if there was sufficient backup waiting to come in and enforce the eviction decrees. Members of the Waiahole-Waikane Community Association (WWCA) were canvassing the waiting cars, handing out information pamphlets and explaining the reasons for the roadblock with mostly sympathetic drivers and passengers. The police appeared uncertain of how to proceed. An officer threatened to arrest Bobby Fernandez, the president of WWCA, who describes the scene:

Dat's why I'm suppose to tell you, officer, dis is my attorney right here. I'm standing on private property. I didn't park any of dese cars, but, you know, I'm in charge of da people who did.

What you like me do, call da mayor?!

Yeah, dat's exactly what I want you to do!

The mayor of Honolulu was called. The governor of Hawai'i was called. Ultimately, the chief of the Honolulu Police Department gave his personal assurance that there would be no evictions that night and promised to notify WWCA in advance of any future actions. Thus ended the historic roadblock. A few days later the governor announced a deal with the large landowner, McCandless heir Elizabeth Loy Marks, in which the state would purchase six hundred acres of Waiahole Valley and issue long-term leases at fair and reasonable rents to all the valley's tenants. The antieviction struggle was a resounding success.

Nearly two decades later, another historic blockade was staged in Waiahole Valley. In mid-1995, valley residents, farmers, and allies converged on the road leading to the Waiahole Ditch irrigation system at the gate privately owned by Amfac JMB (Waiahole Irrigation Company). For over seven decades, tens of millions of gallons of water each day had been diverted from the lush windward valleys to the dry leeward plains in service of the thirsty sugar plantations. With the closure of the last sugar plantation on O'ahu in the early 1990s, Waiahole taro farmers and allies sought to have the long-diverted waters returned to windward streams. This resulted in the decade-long Waiahole Ditch Combined Contested Case at the State Commission of Water Resource Management, with the Waiahole taro farmers as one of the primary petitioners (see chapter 9, this volume for further discussion of this case). In 1994 it was discovered that Amfac was dumping unused diverted water. A public outcry spurred by the taro farmers and allies forced the temporary return of the dumped water to the windward streams. However, Amfac was dissatisfied and threatened to reclaim the water. In resistance, the Waiahole-Waikane community and allies mobilized and staged the blockade, effectively dissuading Amfac from retaking the stream waters. Rather than a culmination, this was only the beginning of the Waiahole taro farmers' water struggle, which was rooted in the earlier antieviction struggle.

The farmers and activists themselves best describe this dynamic:

Like the original struggle against evictions, [the water struggle] was supported by a broad group of people all around the island and the islands in general. And one of the things that came out of the fight over water ... was an attempt to help people get back to growing taro. In general, there was a revived interest in growing taro.—Liko Hoe

Our first thought was we need more water for our taro. But as we got more into the issue, we began to realize that the issue was bigger than just water for our taro. The issue was if you want to revive taro planting, you need lots of water in the streams, and then stream life itself needs water to support stream life, particularly things like endemic [species].......