A Maui County Council committee voted 7-0 on Bill 97 (2026), advancing an agreement that would let the state's Department of Hawaiian Home Lands drill three new groundwater wells in Waiʻōhuli and send their entire output to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries stuck for years on a backlog of homestead lots with no water hookup. The measure now moves to the full Maui County Council for a first reading.
The plan, first reported by Maui Now, would authorize the county's Department of Water Supply to enter into an intergovernmental agreement with DHHL over the wells, which have an estimated combined operating capacity of 1,728,000 gallons per day. DHHL would engage Austin, Tsutsumi and Associates Inc. as project engineer to plan the well systems, transmission lines and a water storage tank, while Tom Nance Water Resource Engineering and Intera Inc. would serve as well consultants. A nearby U.S. Geological Survey test well suggests high-quality water is likely at the site.
A Backlog Measured in Lives, Not Just Years
DHHL project manager Elijah Davidson, who is himself a beneficiary on the department's waitlist, linked the urgency of the project to the long history of Kalima v. State of Hawaiʻi, the 1999 class-action lawsuit in which roughly 1,000 plaintiffs died awaiting homestead leases before a $328 million settlement was approved in 2022, according to Hawaiʻi Public Radio. Davidson also said the DHHL waitlist has an average age over 60. The backlog tied to this project affects more than 1,000 homestead lots that have been awarded on paper but remain unbuildable without water infrastructure.
The scale of the need extends well beyond Waiʻōhuli. DHHL's statewide waiting list surpassed 29,000 applicants as of state records reported in November 2024, largely because vast portions of the trust's 200,000 acres still lack basic roads, water or power, per Honolulu Civil Beat. On Maui alone, the DHHL waitlist tied to the island includes 9,380 people. Under the federal Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920, qualified Native Hawaiians with at least 50% Hawaiian blood quantum can apply for 99-year leases at $1 a year, a right that has often meant little without infrastructure to back it up.
Who Gets the Water, and Why
Once complete, the system could serve an estimated 2,880 residential units. DHHL and Maui County water director James “Kimo” Landgraf said dedicating the wells' full output directly to DHHL avoids straining the county's existing Upcountry system, which already relies on three surface treatment plants — Kamole Weir, Piiholo and Olinda — whose yields swing with seasonal rainfall, the Maui County Board of Water Supply has noted. Council Member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez voiced support for directing 100% of well output to DHHL.
Not every committee member was immediately on board with that framing. Council Member Alice Lee asked why all well capacity would be allocated to DHHL rather than shared with the county's broader Upcountry meter waitlist, while Council Member Kauanoe Batangan pressed on whether Maui County could end up shouldering costs not covered by DHHL, and what happens if actual well yield falls short of the 1,728,000-gallon-per-day estimate. Landgraf responded that the department expects to absorb operating costs through water customer revenue, and that DHHL relies on its hydrologist's estimated yield in planning the project.
Amendment Strips a Specific Number, Keeps the Estimate
The committee approved an amendment removing the specific 1,728,000-gallon-per-day figure from Exhibit A's source-credit language, even as the amended bill retains that same figure as an estimate elsewhere in the agreement. Under the amended source-credit language, DHHL would be credited with the wells' full operating capacity regardless of actual yield, and the wells would generate advance water credits letting DHHL move forward on developments before additional water capacity materializes. Both Maui County water officials and DHHL representatives said they were comfortable with the amendment, and the underlying bill was adopted as amended, 7-0.
Council Member Tamara Paltin asked about the agreement's six-year construction timeline and force-majeure provisions; DHHL and Landgraf attributed that six-year window to the environmental reviews, clearances and permitting the project must clear. Under the deal, DHHL would be responsible for project permits, funding and permit approvals, while the Maui County Department of Water Supply would review and approve project plans, inspect the work, and assist DHHL in securing permits and funding if available. Once built, DHHL homesteaders would become Maui County water customers, and the county water department would take on the wells' operating costs — expecting to recoup them through customer water-use billing. Council members Yuki Lei Sugimura and Nohelani Uʻu-Hodgins were absent and excused from the vote.
Building Toward a Bigger Pipeline of Homes
DHHL organized a Waiʻōhuli Water Working Group of beneficiary representatives, which included Commissioner Archie Kalepa, to help shape the project. Project plans call for connecting the new waterlines to Maui County's Central Maui system, and DHHL materials indicate the Waiʻōhuli wells would provide about 39.5% of the department's overall water need. Officials say expanded water infrastructure would also make Maui County's overall water system more resilient.
The wells are part of a broader wave of DHHL activity on Maui backed by Act 279, the $600 million infrastructure appropriation Governor David Ige signed into law in July 2022 following a record state budget surplus, according to the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. That funding already supported the September 2025 award of 105 agricultural project leases across Waiehu Mauka and Honokōwai, Hoodline previously reported. DHHL is also planning 950 residential lots across Waiehu Mauka, Wailuku and Kamalani, 55 agricultural lots to support ʻohana farming and self-sufficiency, future lots in Pūlehunui, and the Waiʻōhuli Economic Development Opportunity Area, alongside the $95 million Puʻuhona Homestead in Wailuku, a 47-acre project designed to deliver 161 turnkey residential lots for Native Hawaiian families by 2026, according to DHHL.
DHHL and Austin, Tsutsumi & Associates would turn to reverse osmosis treatment if chloride levels in the new wells require it, a contingency that underscores how uncertain groundwater quality remains until drilling is complete. Underlying all of it is what officials describe as DHHL's constitutional and organic-act obligation to house Native Hawaiian beneficiaries — an obligation the department has struggled for decades to fulfill without the basic utilities that make paper leases into real homes.
