MOLOKAI >> The pair of Kona-low storms that hit the Hawaiian Islands in March showed no forgiveness when it descended upon Molokai.
Flying to the island from Oahu on Tuesday — two weeks after the second storm — brown water full of sediment and storm runoff remained clearly visible surrounding most of Molokai.
But in Ka‘amola, the name of the ahupua‘a that houses Keawanui Fishpond at its base, the water was clear. An ahupua‘a is a traditional Hawaiian Land division system that stretches from mauka to makai and includes all the resources needed for subsistence, typically tailored to watersheds.
‘Aina Momona, the Native Hawaiian nonprofit that manages the 63 acres in the ahupua‘a, said the Kona lows were the first true tests of its mauka restoration project.
The results were promising — sediment from the mountains was nearly completely prevented after the first storm, and with no time to dispose of the accumulated dirt, the second storm overfilled three out of eight of the large bioswale basins.
Walter Ritte, an ‘Aina Momona executive director and Native Hawaiian activist, said the restoration project halted around 70% of what used to come pouring down the mountain during heavy storms during the second Kona low. Not quite a success, he said, but definitely an improvement.
“There’s a lot to learn, but all of this would have been on the road,” Ritte said, gesturing to one of the bioswales that was filled with mud about 6 feet deep across the length and width of a football field. All eight swales — some of them larger than a football field ranging between 4 and 10 feet deep — were full with mud that would have otherwise flooded the road and fishpond below.
‘Aina Momona began restoring land mauka of the fishpond in 2023, but its story began far earlier in the 1990s, when Ritte first tackled the process of restoring the Keawanui Fishpond. Former Gov. John D. Waihee III established the Molokai Fishpond Restoration Task Force in 1991 “to reverse the losses of these important cultural and archaeological resources and the impact of this loss on the traditions of the Hawaiian community,” a 1995 DLNR environmental assessment said. Ritte found that several environmental regulations meant to prevent developers from extracting and destroying the aina was also preventing him from restoring it.
The fishpond restoration project became known as Project Loko I‘a, with Keawanui Fishpond being restored on 55 acres of land for the first time by January 2001. The following month, Ritte and other leaders on the project hosted a workshop with government regulators to teach them about fishponds and the significance to Native Hawaiian culture. By 2002, records show, DLNR granted authorization for the fishpond to be used for the first time in more than 100 years and 55 acres were leased to Project Loko I‘a. The project won awards from the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The first major setback in the fishpond’s restoration was on March 11, 2011, Ritte said. A 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Tohuku, Japan, and sent a 3-foot tidal wave directly to the fishpond.
“It just took the whole wall down,” Ritte said. “We came the day after and we looked at the pond and everyone was just dropping tears.”
It took another year to rebuild the fishpond, Ritte said.
As the years went on, rain ushering sediment down mauka from the ranchlands above became the new norm. Ritte said he and his crew knew they’d have to get out the shovels to clear the property each time it rained, but there wasn’t a grave problem until November 2022 when a heavy storm hit.
“The storm comes and all the mud comes down and it kills our nursery, all of the baby fish,” Ritte recalled. “We had thousands of baby fish and the mud went right into the pond. When we came the next day, all were belly up.”
Ritte said the storm broadened ‘Aina Momona’s perspective on what land restoration should look life.
“The more we talked about it with our elders, the more we began to realize that the key to the survival on all of these islands in the middle of the Pacific was the units that the Hawaiians had called the ahupua‘a,” Ritte said. “You have to take care of the mountain to the shoreline and out into the reef. That’s how they survived and that’s become our mantra. Now, we’re restoration. We’re not just a fishpond group.”
The land mauka of the fishpond was owned by the same landowner, Kamehameha Schools, but was leased as pasture land through the end of 2022, when ‘Aina Momona took over the management of the additional 8 acres of land.
Initial efforts to restore the land were simple, Ritte said, with him and his colleagues using hands and shovels to dig small catchments and using nearby sticks to build small dams.
“We didn’t know any better,” Ritte recalled with a laugh. “We thought, ‘Hey, we’re gonna conquer this whole mountain! Cut some sticks, tie them all together.’ … It’s funny to see how we started. It was naive.”
Eventually, Ritte connected with ecological designer Daniel Halsey, who specializes in permaculture design. Halsey first came out to the property in 2018 to do a site assessment on the ranch as it was for sale, but he returned in 2023 to help design the restoration and train ‘Aina Momona staffers on what to consider and look for when adding in bioswales and basins as well as techniques to slow down water. Within two weeks, Halsey said, they had four football field-sized swales that were 4 to 6 feet deep.
Halsey told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the overgrazing from the cattle pasture and now wild deer was a major issue, as it is on most of Molokai. ‘Aina Momona fenced off areas to prevent deer from grazing, which has allowed more foliage to grow and be protected, which slows down water and returns it into the water table.
He also said that an issue he’s seen on both Maui and Molokai is that private landowners or lessees will build roads below the mountain grade, which essentially creates a creek bed without erosion control. Roads are supposed to be above grade by 1 to 2 feet with little ditches and catchments strategically placed, he added.
“People just want a flat area to drive a Jeep or a truck, and they just dig in the ground and they flatten it out, and they push things off to the side, and it just turns those into big torrents,” Halsey said. “That’s where a lot of the silt in the mud happens on Molokai during big rains. It’s because of these roads that have been cut into the hillsides with no regard.”
Halsey said the main challenge with restoring more land in this way is getting people to buy in to actually do the work. He said the work is not terribly expensive — especially when compared to flood recovery cleanup — and can be done quickly using simple excavators with a strong design.
“Not to fight with engineers, but their whole goal is to get rid of water,” Halsey said. “Our goal is to slow it down, store it and infiltrate it — not build concrete canals and collection ponds that get rid of it as soon as possible.”
As the land continues to be restored, Halsey said the land — swales included — eventually will fill with plants and trees, and little water or sediment would be expected after rain because the land will be able to absorb it.
While the goal is to eventually restore native plants, Halsey said, any ground cover will help slow down water and infiltrate it into the water table.
“Ground cover is ground cover,” he said. “Let’s get the ground covered, let’s stop the erosion, let’s build the soils. Then we can go back and start working with native plants. I don’t think we can be so picky.”
RNK Contractors co-owner Pomai Sims has worked in excavation and road cleanup in Molokai for years, doing both state and personal jobs. He helped Ritte dig the swales and water catchments along the mauka — Ritte calls Sims “a magician with a machine” — and also has helped residents implement catchments and swales on their own properties.
Sims, who also lives about one mile away from Ka‘amula, said he used to regularly get emergency calls to clean up the road that divides Ka‘amula’s mauka and makai sides after storms, but since implementing the restoration project the area is one of the only areas that didn’t require a call after the Kona lows.
“We’re getting less silt, less calls — well, no calls in that area,” he said, noting the only area in the ahupua‘a that got a call was an undersized state-managed culvet. “Seeing the positives after (the storms) keeps me interested.”
While the anecdotal and visual evidence of the restoration’s success is compelling, University of Hawaii Manoa Ph.D. researcher Sam Kekuewa said he is currently looking to fund independent research to monitor improvements on the reef and coral growth in Ka‘amula.
“Seeing how much soil and seeing how much stuff they have kept on the land is still extremely impressive. It’s just not always gonna be the easiest sell to other groups of folks,” like policymakers, Kekuewa said.
As he flew between Molokai and Maui on March 28, one week after the second Kona low that broke three swales, the comparison between Keawanui Fishpond and a smaller fishpond in the ahupua‘a next door was stark. Kekuewa said there was not only less sediment, but it appeared the well-maintained fishpond wall helped filter the water.
Private landowners are another group that would need to be on board with ahupua‘a restoration projects.
Ritte said ‘Aina Momona was lucky to have the same landowner, Kamehameha Schools, on both the makai and mauka sides of Ka‘amula, but in most areas there are several different landowners going up the mountain.
Halsey said he’s worked on similar restoration projects in Haiti and Senegal, and the biggest problem is that “people uphill had to sacrifice their land in order to protect the people downhill.”
Halsey said uphill neighbors often consider restoring their land a sacrifice while downhill neighbors consider it to be the right thing to do, which “gets to be a fight.” He added that opposing cities see similar issues, with uphill cities and taxpayers usually not wanting to pay for the woes of downhill cities.
Ritte hopes the promising results ‘Aina Momona has seen after the Kona-low storms can inspire similar restoration projects across the state. He added that land restoration will help with climate change mitigation — flooding included — as well as help protect the reefs and protect Native Hawaiian practices. Ideally, he said, an ahupua‘a restoration task force could be created similar to what was established for fishponds in the ’90s.
“The reef is taking a pounding from dirt, taking a pounding from temperature, and reefs all over the world are dying for all kinds of different reasons. They’re very sensitive,” Ritte said. “We feel at least we can do our share to make sure we still have food on the reef.”
