KRCA Annual Homeowners Meeting
Date & Time: October 21 at 9 am
Place: Kilauea Ag Park

KRCA has contracted with Hawaiiana Management Company who has a Kalihiwai Ridge website access code of:
hmcmgt.com/39484

Agendas and meeting minutes will be posted on this new site along with all our documents that can now be reviewed by the public.




My Impressions

It has been 15 months since I summarized a possible new vision for restoring the KR vs removing the dam.  Since that time another tragedy has struck the Hawaiian Islands in Maui with the Lahaina fires on August 8, 2023 causing a loss of 99 lives and mass destruction of this historic town.  

Governor Josh Green and our Mayor Derek Kawakami do agree on one major point that the trend to remove dams in the state needs to be seriously reviewed as water storage is a critical issue now to offer fire suppression to save communities from destruction in the future planning and help supply much needed ag water for our islands' food sustainability.

Public and private partnerships are now being seriously looked at with the intent of restoring the infrastructure of our aged reservoirs and rethinking the water systems island wide.  Using drinking water to grow food and put out fires when ag water is available is finally becoming a critical and ethical issue to be challenged with new possibilities.  

Our dependence on rain cannot be a sustained water management practice with climate change having its unpredictable and even tragic impacts everywhere in the world, as in the draught conditions on Maui causing excess high winds to burn overgrown fuel all while fire roars down the mountainsides burning everything in its path.

Here on the North shore of Kauai we still have an opportunity to invest in the future.  If we have a new vision to use the KR as it was always intended, to now supply ag water to the 75 acre Kilauea Ag Park and fire suppression to the Kilauea plateau's planned 50 acres of affordable housing via the Department of Ag taking over ownership and management of the KR, our much needed water storage could still be achieved.  

Infrastructure funds and what has been saved to remove the KR could be combined to complete the est $10M remediation of the KR, but a change in course would be required of the KRCA membership and water use easement holders Common Ground and Wai Koa Plantation.  Turning over ownership of Lake Lot 3 to the Department of Ag so the KRCA and EHs no longer had liability or expense of owning or managing a reservoir just makes more sense.  

The KRCA has had a major turnover of ownership during these last 17 years of dispute and division regarding the KR and use of our common area, Lake Lot 3.  Most new residents have no idea of this history and see more benefit in dissolving the HOA than continuing with the Settlement Agreement of 2012 signed after Bill and Joan Porter bought the Wai Koa Plantation in 2006.  

I for one would like to invest in the future and keep the conversations open and continue to build new partnerships that could last for generations.  That can only happen if there is long term ownership of the KR transferred to an entity that is not going anywhere, has a vested interest in increasing water storage on the North shore of Kauai, and that seems to me to be the Department of Ag.  

Until We Meet Again.

Aloha,
Maggie Lea