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Coffee in Hawaii has been hard hit in recent years. Farms are seeing more plant-destroying pests and diseases, and federal funding cuts have hampered attempts to fight back. At the same time, ICE has been detaining coffee workers.
Now, an earthquake has destroyed already-fragile water systems in Kona.
On May 23, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck the Big Island, destroying many catchment tanks. Rural Hawaiians, especially those living in mountainous coffee-growing regions, often aren’t connected to municipal water services, so they must use tanks to collect and store rainwater. “That shaking was too much for it, and it literally just burst like a balloon”, coffee farmer Mark Takizawa told Hawaii Public Radio of his farm’s tank.
Around 60,000 people across Hawaii use rainwater catchment systems to collect water, according to the University of Hawaii. Many are coffee farmers who collect rainwater for their homes and to irrigate crops.
The exact extent of the damage is still unclear, but the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency said it received more than 400 damage reports. “I don’t think—at the state level or at the county level—we have captured the full extent of what that damage looked like”, Rep. Jeanné Kapela told Honolulu Civil Beat.
In March, fierce back-to-back storms flooded farms across the state. Farmers are still recovering from the floodwaters that inundated their fields and homes, and many are unsure if state or federal relief for this new disaster is coming. “We were just finding all the resources to help everybody, and there really isn’t anything for water tanks,” coffee farmer Melanie Bondera told Civil Beat.
Read more on the earthquake-induced damage from Sprudge here.
Photo by Micah Alameda on Unsplash
