By CHRIS HAMILTON, Staff Writer, The Maui News
24 May 2008
HUELO — East Maui taro farmers plan to be out along the Hana Highway this morning to protest what they call Alexander & Baldwin Co.’s unfair 130-year-old practice of diverting water from streams in order to sate its sugar cane fields.The protest, which organizers Troy McConnell and Lynn Scott promised will be peaceful, is their second in a month. It will begin at 9 a.m. at Twin Falls.
“Downstream residents and taro farmers who have practiced taro farming for generation after generation for hundreds, if not thousands of years, have been robbed and denied the lawfully deeded water, which allows their taro to grow,” according to the Honopou Stream Association.
The association is one of several grass-roots groups that have banded together for protests to coincide with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp.’s petition before the state Commission on Water Resource Management calling on the commission to restore streamflows to 27 East Maui streams.
The farmers say that Alexander & Baldwin’s farming divisions — East Maui Irrigation Co. and Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Co. — are diverting too much water and failing to provide adequate flows for stream life and for downstream farmers. An A&B spokeswoman contacted by The Maui News on Friday did not respond...
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