CBS News
Hawaii is “on the verge of catastrophe,” locals say, as water crisis continues
In Hawaii, one of the most important sayings is ola i ka wai, “water is life” — a phrase that not only sums up what it means to exist on an island, but what it means to live, period. But now, one of the largest of the island chain’s land masses is facing a triple threat to its sole freshwater source, and if it isn’t addressed soon, one community member says, “we’re in deep trouble.”
Despite being surrounded by seemingly endless ocean, freshwater on O’ahu, the third-largest of Hawaii’s six major islands, is not easily accessible. The island relies on an underground aquifer for its water supply. Replenishing that aquifer is a decades-long natural process, as it takes a single drop of water roughly 25 years to make it there from the sky.
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And recent years have seen compounding problems: less rain, leading to significant droughts, and repeated jet fuel leaks and PFAS chemical spills contaminating water systems. All of this significantly limits available water use for locals, many of whom say tourism is only worsening the situation. Just months ago, the world’s largest surfing wave pool opened up on the island — filled with freshwater.
“They’re not using it to drink or to support life, they’re using it to make money. They’re commodifying it,” said Healani Sonoda-Pale, who is Native Hawaiian and a member of advocacy group O’ahu Water Protectors. “… We are on the verge of a greater catastrophe.”
“We are in a water crisis, that has to be made very clear,” Wayne Tanaka, director of Sierra Club of Hawai’i, told CBS News, saying that if the reasons for this crisis aren’t soon addressed, “We may come to a point where we have to decide … who gets water and who doesn’t.”
Surrounded by water, Oahu runs dry
On an island, rain is essential.
Statewide, rainfall averages range widely, from just 8 inches to around 400 inches a year, Thomas Giambelluca, director of the University of Hawaii at Mānoa Water Resources Research Center, told CBS News. There is a massive difference just minutes apart. Some areas are extremely dry, while others have the wettest climate in the U.S.
At the university campus where CBS News spoke with Giambelluca, the average yearly rainfall is about 60 inches a year, while nearby Waikiki, two miles away, gets 20 inches.
Water supplies depend on that rainfall, with drier areas having a smaller supply. But those drier areas also face higher demand, as they are where tourists flock and many locals reside. And because the drinking water supply is almost entirely from groundwater, shifting weather patterns can pose a major problem.
“We have the problem of getting water to where it’s needed from where it can be found,” Giambelluca said. “…When the rain doesn’t come, we don’t have any second chance, we don’t have any other way to get our water supply. We can’t pipe it from a nearby state.”
Li Cohen/CBS News
Currently, the entire island of O’ahu is considered “abnormally dry,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. “Severe and persistent droughts,” prompting water conservation measures, are not uncommon, Giambelluca said. While officials could work to desalinate ocean water, “that’s not the preferred way to get drinking water,” he added.
“It’s very energy-intensive, and so that would be in opposition to our goals of reducing our dependency on fossil fuels in Hawaii, reducing our emissions,” he said.
And as global temperatures continue to rise, that will only get worse — not just on Oahu, but across Hawaii.
“Hawaii is getting drier and drier, particularly since the 1980s,” state climatologist Pao-Shin Chu said. “…The consecutive dry days become longer and longer. That’s very clear.”
But drought isn’t the only issue. Warmer global temperatures also fuel more extreme precipitation, bringing more rain in a shorter duration. According to Giambelluca, that won’t necessarily help maintain the water supply, as steep watersheds will channel that water into flooding, and rising sea levels will prevent rainwater from having a place to go — not even into the aquifer. Rising seas are already causing significant erosion on coastlines.
Giambelluca explained that as sea levels rise, the ocean will infiltrate the underground freshwater system, physically pushing that resource out while also infiltrating wells and other components of the water supply system that will need to be adjusted.
“It’s already affecting those water systems,” Giambelluca said. “…There’s no question that climate change is going to make problems caused by other factors worse.”
In fact, some evidence suggests that after 2030, there will be less groundwater to extract from, Chu said, adding, “that’s going to be a problem.”
Li Cohen/CBS News
“Without water, there is no life”
For Anthony Deluze, it already is a problem. He manages farmland on O’ahu, nestled in between Pearl Harbor, a highway and a shopping center. His land is spring-fed, which he uses to primarily grow taro, a root vegetable considered a sacred staple in Native Hawaiian food and culture. But climate change has made growing taro for his family and community much more difficult.
“The biggest challenge is water,” he said. “…Without water, there is no life.”
Deluze has managed the land he is on for more than a decade, but within the past five years, he said, the water table has significantly dropped, reducing the available freshwater while more seawater seeps in. Between that and the ongoing drought issues, he didn’t have even half the amount of water needed to properly maintain his crops.
“A healthy lo’i [water taro] system needs about 250,000 gallons per day per acre for it to be healthy,” he said. “… We were probably getting, in the summertime, about 35,000 per day. And if we’re lucky, maybe about 40- to 45,000 in the wintertime, per day. And this is three acres, so we’re not even hitting a fraction of what we need.”
But it’s not just a lack of water, it’s a lack of clean water.
“Water quality and water quantity are tied together,” Giambelluca said. “…Water contamination is always going to impact water quantity, water availability.”
Li Cohen/CBS News
Across the highway from Deluze’s farm lies Pearl Harbor and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, where in November 2021, there was a jet fuel leak in the Navy’s World War II-era underground storage tanks. Nearly 20,000 gallons of jet fuel leaked out of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, contaminating the base’s water system and sickening thousands of military families and locals, many of whom say they are still reeling from the health impacts.
The Board of Water Supply instantly had to shut down three wells that supply water to the island, as the aquifer sits just below Red Hill. A year later, that same facility saw a major leak of 1,300 gallons of AFFF, a fire suppressant that contains PFAS, otherwise known as “forever chemicals.”
“We can’t farm with fuel; we can’t live, period,” Deluze said.
The military has since cleaned up the bulk of the lost fuel and chemicals, but many officials believe some of both could have ended up in the environment regardless.
“Red Hill…did spark off this crisis,” Sierra Club’s Wayne Tanaka told CBS News.
“If we lose our water, every aspect of life will be impacted and upended. Not just for the next few years, but for the next few generations.”
The carnage left by Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean this week is a stark reminder of the destruction such storms can wreak on entire communities. And with meteorologists expecting an above normal Atlantic hurricane season this year, nearly 33 million homes from Texas to Maine could face danger from the savage winds, storm surges and heavy rainfall such tempests can produce, real estate data provider CoreLogic estimates.
Read on to learn what experts say homeowners can do to harden their properties against hurricanes.
Lucanus Ollivierre / AP
Cover the windows
When time is of the essence, the quickest and cheapest way to protect your home from a hurricane is nailing plywood across all the windows. Owners who have more time to prepare can protect windows by installing so-called roll shutters, which a little like a garage door and which run between $300 and $400.
“That’s going to protect you from the debris flying into your window,” said Michael Gridley, a residential construction professor at SUNY Morrisville in upstate New York, noting that many homeowners can mount plywood or install roll shutters themselves.
But such fixes are temporary and likely won’t keep glass from shattering and falling into your home, Joshua Parrish, a general contractor in Georgia, told CBS MoneyWatch.
Getty Images/KangeStudio
For stronger, long-term protection, a professional can install hurricane windows, which typically have a steel or aluminum frame and reinforced glass.
“The glass actually has two layers of heat-treated glass, and there’s plastic in between them. It will actually protect you,” Gridley said.
Not surprisingly, hurricane windows are costly. At $125 to $150 per square feet, installing them could easily cost a homeowner between $10,000 and $30,000, he noted.
Barricade your doors
As with the measures for safeguarding windows, homeowners have three basic options: putting up plywood, adding a larger roll shutter or having a hurricane door installed.
Parrish said mounting plywood on sliding glass or patio doors should provide sufficient protection from Category 2 (wind speeds of 96–110 mph) or Category 3 (wind speeds 111-129 mph) hurricanes. For more powerful storms, he recommends a hurricane door. That starts with deciding whether to get a steel, aluminum or fiberglass door.
“I would lean toward getting something like fiberglass just because, in case of a dent, something in that family of metal would be more difficult to fix and you’d have to end up replacing it,” Parrish said.
Hurricane doors typically cost between $2,400 and $4,000 depending on the structure and size, Gridley said.
Reinforce your roof
Before making any changes to your roof, it’s important to first check for soft spots in your roof deck, nail down any loose shingles and clear the gutters so water flows quickly away from your home, experts said.
After the roof checkup is done, homeowners can generally go one of two routes. For those who don’t have the time or money to replace the roof, Gridley said they should consider cementing the existing shingles together. Shingles are already nailed down and stuck together with asphalt, but over time the asphalt cracks and fades — adding cement reinforces them.
Another, pricier option — but one that offers better protection, including from an insurance perspective — is to install a metal roof.
“It fastens down, it has less room for [wind] pickup — it’s going to be the best option,” Gridley said.
Dan Reynolds Photography/Getty Images
Metal roofs are installed so there are no “seams where wind can get underneath and start lifting that off the building,” Parrish said, adding, “It’s probably going to be double the cost of a typical shingle roof. But it’s going to last you almost forever — 40, 50, 60 years.”
A 2,000 square-foot metal roof costs an average of roughly $27,000, according to Architectural Digest.
Seal the foundation
Examine the foundation of your home and the walls of your basement or crawl space for cracks, the experts said. If you notice deep, long cracks, consider hiring a waterproofing company to seal them.
It’s vital to get cracks fixed because there could be water pressing against a foundation wall — structural risk that could lead to flooding during a hurricane, Parrish said.
“That’s additional water pressure beating against your home and, if it’s severe enough, it could cause other issues, and now you have a bigger problem on your hands,” Parrish said.
CBS News
Planned Parenthood to blitz GOP seats, but will abortion sway California’s conservative voters?
Planned Parenthood is preparing a seven-figure campaign blitz to oust GOP incumbents from California congressional seats, part of a larger national effort by the reproductive rights group to prevent a Republican majority from passing abortion restrictions, including a national ban.
Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California is targeting eight districts where voters largely backed Republicans in 2022 even as they endorsed a constitutional amendment enshrining access to abortion and contraceptives. The advertising plan goes negative by focusing on each incumbent’s record of voting against access to abortion and contraceptives. In the past, the group riffed on the “Burn Book” from the 2004 comedy “Mean Girls.”
GOP party officials said they were confident voters in those districts would look at the bigger picture and return Republicans to office. And one incumbent dismissed the notion that there’s a threat to reproductive care in the Golden State.
“Access to abortion and other reproductive care aren’t going anywhere in California,” said Calvin Moore, a spokesperson for Rep. Ken Calvert of Riverside County. “Congressman Calvert believes this is a deeply personal issue that should be left up to the states and opposes a national abortion ban.”
With 52 seats, liberal California could tip the scales for control of the U.S. House this fall. But Planned Parenthood has its work cut out for it since seven of the seats it is targeting are currently held by Republicans and only one — to be vacated by Democrat Katie Porter after an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate — is open.
According to The Cook Political Report, four are toss-up races; Rep. Michelle Steel’s district, mostly in Orange County, leans Republican; and Reps. Kevin Kiley, who represents a district along California’s eastern border, and Young Kim, who represents a district east of Anaheim, are likely to win.
Abortion has proved to be a bigger issue for many voters than political analysts may have anticipated. “In many of these seats, I think voters care about their reproductive freedoms and they resonate with our message, so we think we’re going to win,” said Jodi Hicks, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.
While Planned Parenthood is focused on House races, Hicks said it is also monitoring neighboring states. One California branch, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, stretches into Reno, Nevada, and its advocacy arm has been supporting a Nevada ballot initiative that would constitutionally protect Nevadans’ right to abortion.
Nationally, the group plans to spend $40 million in at least eight states: Arizona, Georgia, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In California, Planned Parenthood aims to highlight the record of members of Congress like Kiley, who voted to potentially impose prison sentences on doctors who provide abortions. Calvert, Kim, Steel and Reps. Mike Garcia, of northern Los Angeles County, and David Valadao, of the Central Valley, voted against access to birth control. And Garcia, Valadao and Steel co-sponsored a bill to effectively ban abortions nationwide.
Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher, who is on the California Republican Party board, said many Californians don’t trust Democrats to protect their health care rights even if political leaders support abortion being legal, pointing out that under Democrats maternity wards have closed and hospitals have filed for bankruptcy.
“Democrats don’t really have a great record in California right now on women’s health care issues,” Gallagher said. “So I think it just rings a little bit hollow.”
According to a February KFF poll on abortion as a 2024 election issue, about half of Republican voters who support it being legal trust their own party more on the issue, while 8% trust the Democratic Party more. One in three said they don’t trust either political party on the issue.
Ivy Cargile, an associate professor of political science at California State University, Bakersfield, said it may be tricky to galvanize voters on the issue since many Californians are confident their reproductive rights are protected in the deep-blue state. “Voters might be thinking that California is so progressive, so reproductive rights are safe,” Cargile said. “But federal law does trump state law.”
Planned Parenthood will impress upon Central Valley and Southern California voters that remaining loyal to Republicans risks a national abortion ban. A large part of its advertising campaign will focus on connecting the dots for voters, arguing support for reproductive rights requires voting for Democratic candidates.
“California is so pivotal to ensure that we’re winning at the national level,” Hicks said.
Gallagher said the GOP’s focus on inflation and public safety will resonate with voters in California’s more conservative districts. He and Calvert predict the races will mirror what happened in 2022: Though voters backed the constitutional amendment for reproductive rights, they supported incumbent Republicans, even those who were anti-abortion.
KFF Health News spoke to six voters in Garcia’s district who say they support access to abortion but typically vote for Republican candidates. All six planned to vote for Garcia’s reelection.
Rose Large of Santa Clarita said that while she supports abortion rights, she has deeper concerns with Democratic Party leadership on issues such as the economy and border control. Others mentioned fears of rising crime and wanting to protect Second Amendment rights.
Asked if she believed Planned Parenthood’s campaign would sway her or voters in her neighborhood, Large replied, “Personally, I don’t. No.”
This article was produced by KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. KFF Health News is the publisher of California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
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