U.S. Water News Online
HONOLULU -- Hawaii families would pay about $6.25 more a year to protect forested watersheds that replenish the state's vital water supplies, under a bill moving in the state Senate.
The watershed protection bill would impose a 5-cent tax on each 1,000 gallons of water used for domestic purposes. It was approved by the Senate Committee on Water, Land and Hawaiian Affairs and now goes to the Ways and Means Committee.
It would set up a nine-member board under the existing Commission on Water Resource Management to identify watershed areas that need protection and to recommend projects to provide that protection.
Two of the members must have degrees in hydrology or geology and two others must have degrees in biology or ecology, under the bill. Each county water commission would have a member on the board.
Rex Johnson, executive director of The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii, supported the measure because he said it would pay for personnel needed to handle erosion prevention, reforestation, alien species control and eradication, fencing, and control of feral animals.
Calling it a tax, however, could invite unwanted opposition, he said.
``Anytime you call something a tax, it causes problems. Creating taxes are not popular issues,'' Johnson said.
A century ago, community leaders recognized that extensive cattle grazing and other land uses were degrading the upland forests and threatening their ability to recharge Hawaii's underground aquifers and streams, the bill said.
That prompted the establishment of forest reserves and massive reforestation projects.
Since then, however, public and private investment in watershed protection and management has diminished and the forested watersheds are steadily degrading, the bill says.
Over the last 100 years, Hawaii has lost half of its native forests.
The water tax would generate about $2.5 million a year to protect the watersheds, Johnson said.
``We need a dedicated source of funding,'' he said.
Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, D-Nanakuli-Waianae-Makaha, chairman of the water committee, said, ``We can talk about it, we can form wonderful commissions, but unless there are funds behind the commission to actually start to do whatever these experts feel are necessary to preserve that really great resource of ours, nothing will be done.''
Honolulu Board of Water Supply spokeswoman Denise DeCosta said the board supports the concept of preserving watersheds, but objects to making the county water agencies collect the tax.
``We have a hard enough time getting people to pay their water bills without adding a tax on top of it,'' she said.
``It's not that we don't support efforts to protect our watersheds,'' DeCosta said. ``It's just this is not the way to do it.''
Proposed water taxes in various forms seem to surface each year at the Legislature and are opposed by the county water agencies, she said.
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