Last Friday, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the first phase of a County Department of Water Supply system in Kaʻū that will connect Pastoral homestead lessees in the Kamāʻoa Homestead to water service.  The project will ultimately connect the newly built DHHL water storage and distribution system to DWS’ No. 108 system in Kaʻū, Hawaiʻi Island.

Phase 1 of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) project, being developed by Isemoto Contracting Company, will include the installation of a new 100,000-gallon water reservoir to serve area Pastoral homestead lots awarded to native Hawaiians in the mid-1980s.

These lessees were awarded to native Hawaiians as raw land following a 1983 report by a Federal and State task force that recommended to the State of Hawaiʻi that DHHL should issue undeveloped raw land to native Hawaiians. The program’s effort was to accelerate the distribution of land to beneficiaries of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. DHHL issued 2,629 leases of mostly raw land between 1984 and 1987 as part of the program.

Since the issuance of lots under the Acceleration Program, the Department has incrementally installed infrastructure as funding became available. DHHL has plans to complete infrastructure improvements for the remaining Acceleration Program lots on Molokaʻi and Hawaiʻi Island over the next three to five years.

The $2.7 million Capital Improvement Project is funded by a Fiscal Year 2020 appropriation from the Hawaiʻi State Legislature. Phases 2 and 3 of the Kaʻū Water System project will include work on pressure regulating valves, new water meters, and improvements to South Point Road for future homesteading opportunities.

In March, DHHL broke ground on 125 Residential lots in the Villages of Laʻi ʻŌpua Village IV Hema Phase 2 subdivision in Kealakehe, and last month began infrastructure construction on 16 Subsistence Agricultural lots in Honomū.