What They Did and How Long They Did It

This is a story about a company that ran a tourist business for twenty years while pumping raw sewage into the ground underneath it. The law said to stop. They did not stop.

• Haili Moe, Inc. is an asset management company incorporated in Hawaii. It owns the property at 4231 Ahukini Rd., Lihue, Hawaii 96766, which operates as Jack Harter Helicopters, a helicopter tour agency on the island of Kauai.
• The property has one cesspool that collects all sanitary wastewater from the restroom facilities. The EPA alleges this cesspool qualifies as a Large Capacity Cesspool (LCC), meaning it serves twenty or more persons per day.
• Federal regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act banned large capacity cesspools nationwide effective April 5, 2005. Any LCC that had not been closed, upgraded, or replaced by that date was in violation of federal law every day it continued operating.
• Haili Moe, Inc. has owned the property since at least June 24, 2005, meaning it took ownership of the property already aware, or obligated to be aware, that the cesspool was illegal under federal law.
• The EPA’s Consent Agreement and Final Order was not filed until April 17, 2025. That represents roughly twenty years of the illegal cesspool continuing to inject human waste directly into the subsurface, where it endangers underground drinking water sources.
• A large capacity cesspool does not treat wastewater. It is simply a pit in the ground. Liquid waste seeps out through the bottom and sides and migrates into the surrounding soil and groundwater. There is no filtration, no treatment, and no containment.

The Non-Financial Ledger

Kauai is not a place people visit for industrial tourism. They go for the water. The ocean. The rivers. The waterfalls. The island sits on top of a porous volcanic geology, which means what goes into the ground moves fast. It does not stay put. It finds its way down, and down means toward the water table, and the water table means drinking water wells, and those wells mean people.

For twenty years, the restroom at Jack Harter Helicopters flushed into a pit in the earth. Every person who used that toilet, every employee on every shift, every tourist who touched down from a scenic flight and used the facility before boarding their helicopter, contributed to a slow-motion contamination event that federal law had declared illegal before Haili Moe, Inc. even took ownership of the property.

Think about what that means on a human scale. The EPA’s own regulatory definition requires twenty or more persons per day for a cesspool to qualify as “large capacity.” Jack Harter Helicopters is a helicopter tour company. On a busy Kauai day, this is not a remote backcountry outhouse serving a handful of hikers. This is a commercial tourism operation with staff, clients, and a steady flow of people rotating through a facility that was quietly injecting their waste into the ground without treatment, without filtration, and without any accountability for two decades.

The people who live near Ahukini Road did not get a vote. The workers employed at the facility did not get a disclosure. The tourists who used the restroom did not know what happened after they flushed. And the communities of Lihue who depend on groundwater for drinking did not receive a notice in the mail explaining that a nearby business had been violating federal safe drinking water law since the Bush administration.

What they got instead was silence. And then, two decades later, a $21,671 fine that amounts to less than the cost of a used car. The law said this company could have been fined up to $27,894 for every single day of violation. The math on how badly they were let off is almost insulting to calculate.

Legal Receipts: What the Documents Actually Say

Every quote below comes directly from Docket No. UIC-09-2024-0073, the Consent Agreement and Final Order entered by EPA Region 9.

Societal Impact Mapping

The harm from this cesspool did not stay on the property. Underground contamination does not respect property lines, and it does not respond to corporate org charts.

Public Health

The Safe Drinking Water Act’s Underground Injection Control program exists for a direct reason: what goes into the ground can reach the drinking water supply. This cesspool injected raw sanitary wastewater, which contains human pathogens, bacteria, nitrates, and pharmaceutical residues, into the subsurface soil of Kauai.

• The EPA’s regulatory definition of “underground injection” covers exactly this scenario: the subsurface emplacement of fluids. When untreated human waste seeps through the bottom and walls of a cesspool, it meets that definition. Kauai’s volcanic basalt geology is highly permeable, meaning contaminants can reach groundwater faster than on the mainland.
• Hawaii relies heavily on groundwater for drinking water. According to the state’s own data, groundwater supplies a significant portion of the island’s potable water. An illegal cesspool operating near a populated commercial area like Lihue poses a direct vector for nitrate contamination and pathogen introduction into wells and aquifers.
• The employees of Jack Harter Helicopters worked at this facility for years, potentially decades, without knowledge that the company’s waste management was in federal violation. Workers have an inherent interest in the environmental safety of their workplace and its surrounding community.
• Tourists who used the restroom facilities at this location had no way to know they were at a commercial site operating an illegal sewage system. Their waste joined the pit. Their contribution to the contamination was involuntary and non-consensual.

Economic Inequality

The $21,671 penalty imposed on Haili Moe, Inc. did not create any deterrent for a company sophisticated enough to structure itself as an asset management corporation and retain legal counsel at a major Honolulu law firm.

• Haili Moe, Inc. is represented by David G. Brittin at Case Lombardi, a Law Corporation, located at Pacific Guardian Center in Honolulu. Retaining counsel at a firm of that caliber costs significantly more per hour than the total penalty the company paid for twenty years of federal environmental violations.
• The communities most exposed to groundwater contamination from cesspools in Hawaii are historically lower-income and Native Hawaiian communities, who are less likely to have private wells with filtration systems, more likely to depend on municipal groundwater, and least likely to have the resources to relocate or buy bottled water if contamination occurs.
• Large capacity cesspools were banned in 2005 precisely because wealthier property owners and developers had already transitioned to septic systems and sewage treatment. The continued operation of illegal cesspools beyond 2005 represents a failure concentrated in commercial properties where owners calculated that the risk of enforcement was low enough to justify non-compliance.
• The penalty assessed here, $21,671 over twenty years, amounts to approximately $2.97 per day of illegal operation. That figure is so low that for any reasonably profitable commercial operation, it functions not as a deterrent but as a retroactive licensing fee for the privilege of dumping sewage into the ground without consequences.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now?

This case is closed. That does not mean you have to move on from it. The people responsible are named and identifiable, the regulatory bodies that govern this space are reachable, and the communities affected have every right to demand more than a $21,671 resolution for twenty years of environmental violation.

The Executives of Record

• Donald G. Horner, President and CEO, Haili Moe, Inc. — served via dhorner@grovefarm.com, listed at 3-1850 Kaumualii Hwy., Lihue, HI 96766.
• David Hinazumi, Senior Vice-President, Haili Moe, Inc. — served via dhinazumi@grovefarm.com, same Lihue address.
• Both executives’ email addresses have Grove Farm domain addresses, indicating a connection to Grove Farm, a major Kauai landowner and agricultural company. This connection is documented in the legal filing but not explained further in the source material.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies That Govern This Space

• U.S. EPA Region 9: The federal body that brought this case. File complaints or request enforcement updates at epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-region-9-pacific-southwest.
• Hawaii Department of Health (DOH): The state-level agency responsible for environmental health and wastewater management in Hawaii. Parallel state enforcement can accompany or exceed federal action.
• Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management: Regulates groundwater use and protection in Hawaii. Contamination of aquifers falls within their scope.
• U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Environment and Natural Resources Division: For cases where federal civil penalties are insufficient and criminal referral is warranted.
• Office of Inspector General, U.S. EPA: Accepts complaints about inadequate enforcement and below-authorization penalty settlements.

Mutual Aid, Local Organizing, and Grassroots Resistance

• Connect with Kauai water justice organizations. Community groups in Hawaii have long organized around water rights and contamination. Search for organizations under the umbrella of the Hui O Wai Ola coalition and similar Hawaii water advocacy networks.
• Request groundwater testing data for your area. If you live near Lihue or Ahukini Road, contact the Hawaii Department of Health Safe Drinking Water Branch to request monitoring records for your local aquifer zone.
• Submit public comments during EPA penalty review periods. The consent agreement was subject to a 40-day public notice and comment period. For future cases, filing substantive public comments demanding maximum authorized penalties is one of the most direct interventions available to non-lawyers.
• Demand cesspool replacement accountability. Hawaii passed Act 125 in 2017, setting deadlines for all cesspool closures statewide. Follow progress on that legislation and hold state officials accountable for enforcement, especially for commercial properties.
• Share this case. The docket number is UIC-09-2024-0073. Public documents are available through EPA Region 9. Publicizing the gap between authorized maximum penalties and actual settlements creates political pressure for tougher enforcement.