What a Cesspool Means for the People Who Drink the Water

Hawaii’s groundwater is not some abstract resource. For most of the islands, it is the drinking water. Rain falls, soaks through volcanic rock, collects in underground aquifers, and comes out of the tap. That’s the system. It is elegant, ancient, and it has no backup. When something goes into the ground on a Hawaiian island, it goes into the same water cycle that people drink from.

A large capacity cesspool is a hole in the ground. That is what it is. Human waste goes in. There is no treatment. No filtration. No chemistry. Just a pit, and below the pit, the earth. The waste seeps down. It carries bacteria. It carries viruses. It carries nitrates and pathogens that have no business being anywhere near a drinking water source. That is why the federal government banned these things. Not in some future policy proposal. Not as a long-term goal. They banned new ones in the year 2000 and gave every existing large capacity cesspool five more years — until April 5, 2005 — to close down permanently.

Hawaii Gas missed that deadline. Then they missed it again the next day. And the next. For twenty years, by EPA’s account, the cesspool at their Lihue commercial property continued operating, continued receiving waste, and continued injecting that waste into the ground beneath Kauai.

The people of Lihue did not get a notice about this. There was no press release from Hawaii Gas. There was no warning on the water bill. The families, workers, and residents near 3990C Rice Street had no way of knowing that a corporate-owned property was running an illegal sewage injection operation into the same groundwater that serves their community. That invisibility is part of what makes this kind of violation so corrosive. The harm compounds in silence. The contamination builds over years, invisible and untested. By the time a legal document surfaces with the word “violation” on it, the damage is already historical.

There is also something worth sitting with in the geography of this. Hawaii is not a place with infinite land and infinite water. The Hawaiian Islands are small. The nearshore coastal waters are where people swim, fish, and gather food. The aquifers are shallow and interconnected. The relationship between what goes into the ground and what ends up in the ocean, in the tap, and on the reef is not theoretical. It is the physical reality of island hydrology. A corporation pumping raw sewage into that system for two decades was not a regulatory technicality. It was a choice — repeated every single day — to let the public bear the risk so the company could avoid the cost of compliance.

“For twenty years, by EPA’s account, the cesspool at their Lihue commercial property continued receiving waste and injecting it into the ground beneath Kauai. The families nearby had no way of knowing.”

The settlement paperwork is careful and precise. It talks about “alleged violations” and “Class V injection wells” and “underground sources of drinking water.” That language serves a legal purpose. But underneath it is something simpler: a gas company owned a sewage pit on a Hawaiian island, was told two decades ago to close it, and didn’t. The aquifer didn’t care about the legal nuance. Neither should you.

What the Documents Actually Say

These are direct quotes from the EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Docket No. SDWA-09-2025-0101, filed August 29, 2025. Nothing below is paraphrased.

“The SEP and the violations relate to the same contaminants (untreated sanitary waste), the same media (groundwater), the same potential human health exposure pathways (ingestion of impacted groundwater or contact with surface or coastal waters impacted via groundwater).”
— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, SDWA-09-2025-0101

The Real-World Damage: Public Health and Economic Inequality

Public Health

The human health risks from an uncontrolled large capacity cesspool are documented by EPA itself. The agency’s own enforcement documents spell out the exposure pathway with clinical precision.

• Untreated human waste injected into groundwater carries pathogens including bacteria (such as E. coli), viruses, and parasites. Ingesting even small amounts through a contaminated water supply can cause gastrointestinal illness, hepatitis A, norovirus, and in vulnerable populations, more severe outcomes.
• The cesspool at the Lihue property was operating in a commercial building used daily by employees and customers. The EPA document confirms the property “is leased by Respondent’s lessee and used as a combined commercial showroom/sales area and business office, and gas products storage warehouse.” Workers and visitors were present at the site throughout the violation period.
• Hawaii’s aquifer systems are the primary source of drinking water for many island communities. Contamination from a single uncontrolled injection source does not stay local. Groundwater flows and can carry contaminants across significant distances before surfacing in wells or at the coastline.
• The EPA explicitly names ingestion of impacted groundwater and contact with coastal waters as the human exposure pathways in this case. This means swimming at a Kauai beach near a groundwater discharge point was a potential route of exposure — a risk the public had no knowledge of.
• The Supplemental Environmental Project covers two additional residential properties with the same type of cesspool infrastructure. Two families were living above a sewage contamination source. Their cesspools were not part of the original enforcement action; Hawaii Gas agreed to close them as part of the settlement terms.

“The same potential human health exposure pathways: ingestion of impacted groundwater or contact with surface or coastal waters impacted via groundwater.” The public was never warned.

Economic Inequality

The burden of contaminated water infrastructure in Hawaii falls hardest on communities without the resources to filter, test, or otherwise protect themselves from what comes out of their taps.

• The cesspool ban was a federal protection designed specifically to stop the pollution of underground drinking water sources. Hawaii’s low-income and working-class communities are most dependent on affordable municipal water drawn from aquifers. Corporations and wealthy households have the option to purchase filtered water or access alternative sources; most residents do not.
• Hawaii Gas is a utility-scale corporate entity incorporated in the State of Hawaii, operating commercial gas distribution across the islands. The cost of a single properly functioning sewage system — an Individual Wastewater System — is built into the normal cost of doing business. The company’s choice not to invest in closure represents a direct cost transfer: the company saved money on infrastructure while the community bore the environmental and health risk.
• The economic benefit of non-compliance is explicitly factored into EPA penalty calculations under the SDWA. That benefit — the money Hawaii Gas avoided spending by not closing the cesspool — was a real financial gain for the company for two decades. The $45,840 penalty does not recover the full economic benefit of 20 years of avoided infrastructure costs.
• The Lihue neighborhood where this property sits is a working community, not a resort area. The people most likely to be drawing on the area’s groundwater are workers, families, and residents with limited ability to absorb the health costs of contaminated water or to advocate effectively against a corporate landlord in an enforcement proceeding that lasted years.
• Hawaii’s cesspool problem is not isolated to Hawaii Gas. The state has one of the highest concentrations of cesspools in the United States, and the burden of upgrading them falls primarily on low-income homeowners who cannot afford to do so without assistance. The EPA’s SEP in this case — closing two additional residential cesspools — acknowledges this reality. But those two homes represent a fraction of the broader systemic failure.

Run the Math: What 20 Years of Non-Compliance Actually Cost Hawaii Gas

The federal maximum daily penalty for a Safe Drinking Water Act UIC violation is $27,894 per day. EPA confirmed the cesspool operated in violation from at least April 5, 2005. The settlement was filed August 29, 2025. That is approximately 7,450 days.

Who to Hold Accountable and What to Do About It

The consent order is signed, the penalty is set, and the clock is running on the closure deadline. Here is who is responsible, who is watching, and what you can actually do.

Named Corporate Leadership (Per Source Document)

• Nathan C. Nelson — Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary and Administration, The Gas Company LLC dba Hawaii Gas. Signed the Consent Agreement on July 2, 2025. He is the named signatory for the company’s acceptance of all terms.
• The Gas Company, LLC dba Hawaii Gas — The corporate respondent. A synthetic natural gas and propane gas provider incorporated in the State of Hawaii. This is the entity that owned and failed to close the cesspool.

Regulatory Watchlist

• U.S. EPA Region 9 — The federal agency that brought and settled this case. Enforcement contact: Jelani Shareem, ECAD-3-3, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105 (shareem.jelani@epa.gov). EPA retains the right to pursue additional action if Hawaii Gas fails to comply with the closure order by December 31, 2024 (deadline set in the CA/FO). If Hawaii Gas misses that deadline, the penalty is $300 per day.
• Hawaii Department of Health (HDOH) — All cesspool closures must be approved by HDOH. HDOH is the state-level agency with oversight over cesspool and Individual Wastewater System compliance in Hawaii. If Hawaii Gas does not submit proper closure documentation to HDOH, that is a trackable public record.
• EPA’s Underground Injection Control Program — The UIC program regulates all Class V injection wells, including cesspools. Complaints about suspected cesspool violations can be filed with EPA Region 9 directly. Hawaii is one of the few states where EPA, rather than the state, administers the UIC program directly.
• DOJ (Department of Justice) — If Hawaii Gas fails to pay the civil penalty or comply with the order, EPA is authorized to refer collection to the DOJ under SDWA Section 1423(c)(7). That referral becomes a public court action.

What You Can Do

• Demand closure verification. The Final Closure Report must be submitted to EPA within 30 days of Hawaii Gas closing the cesspool. Under the Freedom of Information Act, you have the right to request that report once submitted. File a FOIA request with EPA Region 9 referencing Docket No. SDWA-09-2025-0101.
• Contact your county council. Kauai County has jurisdiction over sewer connection requirements referenced in this case. Your county council member can be asked whether Hawaii Gas has completed its connection or replacement and whether county approvals have been issued.
• Support cesspool replacement assistance programs. Hawaii has a cesspool conversion program, but funding is limited and demand from low-income homeowners far exceeds available assistance. Organizations including the Hawaii Community Lending fund cesspool upgrades for qualifying residents. Mutual aid networks in Lihue and across Kauai working on water quality and housing can use both financial support and volunteer capacity.
• Track the SEP. The two residential cesspools included in the Supplemental Environmental Project must be closed within 180 days of HDOH approval. Monitor the SEP Completion Report, which must include photographic evidence and contractor identification. If the report is late, EPA’s stipulated penalty clock starts automatically.
• Organize around water quality disclosure. There is currently no requirement for Hawaii Gas to notify the community that this violation occurred or that the groundwater near the Lihue property may have been affected. Grassroots pressure on HDOH and county government for public notification requirements after cesspool enforcement actions is a concrete, achievable goal for local organizing.