Beyond cow pastures on Oahu’s North Shore, up a road that disappears into the clouds, there’s a mountain plateau that some believe could hold one key to battling future water shortages.
As Hawaii experiences a trend of decreasing rainfall and increasing demand for water from urbanization, Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s administration has proposed doubling protected watershed areas, including the state natural area reserve at Mount Kaala.
"It’s the most cost-effective and efficient way, rather than desalinization,"said Emma Yuen, a coordinator for the state natural area reserves.
Abercrombie hopes to raise at least $11 million annually for expanding protected watershed areas by adding a 10-cent surcharge to consumers on most single-useshopping bags (Senate Bill 2511).
Yuen said the surcharge would discourage consumer use of plastic and paper bags issued by stores and raise revenues to help offset the negative impacts of manufacturing them, including fewer trees and more greenhouse gases.
The bill, in the state House for review after surviving in the Senate, targets bags provided at checkout but exempt some— such as garbage bags or bags to package loose items like vegetables.
"We’rehoping to turn a problem into a solution," Yuen said.
The bill would allot $800,000 of the projected revenues to the Department of Health to run and enforce the program, and $11 million would go to the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
With the surcharge, Abercrombie hopes to hire 150 more workers to maintain and expand the protection of watersheds like the bog at Mount Kaala, where the state offered media tours last week in its push to get the legislation passed.
The bog captures rain, allowing it to drain through the mountain, eventually replenishing underground water used by consumers on Oahu.
At 4,025 feet high, overlooking Waianae and Mokuleia, Mount Kaala is the highest point on Oahu and also serves as a haven for 208 native plants and 11 native animals — scores of them regarded as rare.
On a normal day the clouds provide a light mist of rain through the forest, and a wind-chilltemperature close to 50 degrees keeps away mosquitoes that carry diseases that would kill native birds.
A quarter-mile-long boardwalk across the bog offers a glimpse of Hawaiias it might have looked when the first Polynesians arrived centuries ago.
Spongelike mosses carpet the forest floor and grow like thick, green fur around trees and shrubs, such as the native ohia and ohelo.
Out of the mosses and forest arise a variety of native ferns, maile vines, colorful tree snails, the blue-and-green pinao (dragonfly), the dancing leaves of the lapalapa tree, the pale green flowers of a native orchid, the happy-face spider and the apapane (red honeycreeper).
Near the boardwalk rises a hulumoa (Hawaiian mistletoe), growing out of a fern-covered ohia.
The plants and animals in the native forest rely upon each other for their existence, including some native birds that act as pollinators for flowering plants.
"It’s complex. It’s not as easy as putting a seed in the ground," said Lara Reynolds, a botanist and an outreach specialist for the Oahu Invasive Species Committee.
The committee, which receives funds from the state and federal governments, is on the front line in the battle against alien pests that threaten watershed areas.
A couple of major opponents are the strawberry guava and Miconia calvescens, a plant that has devastated 70 percent of native forest in Tahiti.
The strawberry guava and miconia choke out native plants and leave the ground bare and susceptible to erosion.
Most of the 1,100 acres of the state natural area reserve at Mount Kaala is made up of rugged terrain, including steep, inaccessible gulches. It ranges from wet forest, at the top, to lowland dry forest.
For a number of species, Mount Kaala is their last stand, and the fences built by state rangers keep out pigs and goats that would destroy their habitat.
The pigs eat the guava and spread the seeds in their dung, and the goats consume virtually all the plants.
"They’ll eat everything and leave barren areas," Yuen said.
