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Hawaii's water resources, long taken for granted by residents, are more limited than commonly assumed, and the state faces binding choices about who receives priority when demand exceeds supply. Dick Cox, an engineering consultant and former member of the State Commission on Water Resource Management, described how the 1987 water code created the commission and assigned it authority to issue use permits in designated management areas, adjudicating among competing claims from urban development, agriculture, and holders of native Hawaiian water rights — including appurtenant rights tied to taro cultivation practices that predate the 1848 Great Mahele. Michael Chun, president of Kamehameha Schools and also a former commission member, stressed that public understanding of conservation remained inadequate and that generational effort in education would be necessary. Both guests discussed golf courses as a contested case, with both prepared to treat them as a form of agricultural water use provided management practices limited runoff into groundwater. The standing question is how the Water Commission should rank competing claims — from native Hawaiian rights, agricultural users, and urban development — when the available resource cannot satisfy all of them, and whether current public education efforts are sufficient to encourage meaningful conservation.
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