Popular among visitors to Hawaii, the hotels and resorts lining the South Maui beaches in Kihei and Wailea are lush and green, with many pools, water slides and fountains. But this is all a facade.
The coastline is actually dry, receiving less than 10 inches of water per year. It gets the majority of its water from Central Maui — the area of Kahului and around Wailuku — where residents are sometimes urged to conserve.
“The fact is that the people where the water originates are hurting for water,” Lucienne de Naie, chairperson for Sierra Club Maui Group, told SFGATE. “There are definitely shortages of water from overtourism, and those shortages of water are impacting an area we call Na Wai Eha.”
In English, Na Wai Eha means “the Four Waters.” It refers to the four streams and rivers that flow out of the West Maui Mountains to Central Maui. Hawaiians used the abundant resource to cultivate taro farms and farm fishponds for subsistence living, but that changed following colonization and the sugar plantation industry. Today, much of the water is diverted, and Central Maui residents continue to dispute its allocations.