Something good happened. Victory: Citizen groups vindicated in lawsuit to halt illegal pollution of

https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2019/federal-judge-finds-hawai-i-agribusiness-development-corporation-is-unlawfully-contaminating-kaua-i-s-shores

2019
Honolulu, HI — Hawai‘i’s Agribusiness Development Corporation (ADC) has violated the federal Clean Water Act by polluting ocean waters along Kauaʻi’s West Side without a permit, a federal court ruled yesterday. Community groups Na Kia‘i Kai, Surfrider Foundation, and Pesticide Action Network — represented by Earthjustice — sued the state agency for each day discharging millions of gallons of waters contaminated with pesticides, sediment, and heavy metals from the drainage ditch system it operates on the Mānā Plain.
Map of Kauai island.
The 40-mile drainage ditch system funnels millions of gallons of polluted drainage waters each day, from the Mānā Plain into the ocean near Kekaha and Waimea on the island of Kauaʻi.
The roughly 40 miles of drainage ditches collect polluted runoff and groundwater from thousands of acres of former sugar plantation lands that the Agribusiness Development Corporation now licenses to large-scale agribusinesses and various industrial operations. The ditches are unlined and eroding and discharge pesticide pollution and murky brown waters along Barking Sands and MacArthur beaches.

These are popular beaches where people fish to feed their families, gather limu [seaweed] for subsistence and ceremonial purposes, surf, and swim. Children regularly play in and around the drainage ditch outfalls. Surfers have noted a distinctive chemical smell near the drainage ditches over the years.

“The ditch system is, for all intents and purposes, an open sewer that dumps untreated waters into the ocean on a daily basis,” said Earthjustice attorney Kylie Wager Cruz. “This is a blatant violation of the Clean Water Act and can’t be squared with the law’s purpose to clean up the nation’s waters. We are thrilled that the Court applied the letter and spirit of the law in ordering the agency to obtain a permit that will include critical safeguards to make these waters in West Kauaʻi safer for people.”