Steve Brewer Has Electricity but No Water
Steve Brewer is 75, a disabled Navy veteran who gets around with a walker, and he rents a studio on Hawaiʻi's Big Island. After Hurricane Lala his electricity came back on. His water and his toilet did not. Five separate institutions control pieces of the system that ends at his faucet, and every one of them can tell you, truthfully, that the broken part isn't theirs. Somebody is paying for the portable toilets outside his building. The public record doesn't say who, or for how long.
Steve Brewer Has Electricity but No Water
Steve Brewer is 75, a disabled Navy veteran who gets around with a walker, and he rents a studio on Hawaiʻi's Big Island. After Hurricane Lala his electricity came back on. His water and his toilet did not. Five separate institutions control pieces of the system that ends at his faucet, and every one of them can tell you, truthfully, that the broken part isn't theirs. Somebody is paying for the portable toilets outside his building. The public record doesn't say who, or for how long.
Authority Without Capacity
In May 2025, a month before Hurricane Lala hit the Big Island, state consumer advocate Mike Angelo told Hawaiʻi's Public Utilities Commission to appoint a receiver for Punaluʻu Water and Sanitation, a private company serving 76 condominiums that had just reported it was broke. Hawaiʻi law gives the PUC that authority. Since 2009, the commission can step in when a regulated water or sewer utility fails or is about to fail, installing a temporary manager to keep things running.
The statute says a receiver can spend "existing utility company revenues" and charge costs back to ratepayers. Punaluʻu had no revenues before the hurricane. After the storm destroyed the physical system, there was no service to bill for and reconstruction costs running into the millions. Angelo had urged the PUC months earlier to start planning, warning the process "could take months." The hurricane arrived before the commission acted. The law is on the books. The money is not.
Sudden and Slow
The Neighbors Bought the Pump
Jerry Swick turned on his faucet one Tuesday morning and nothing came out. His water came from a single privately owned well serving about fifty households outside Valley Mills, Texas, and the company that ran it couldn't say when service would return. Six days later the customers bought a new pump and paid to have it installed. The state's emergency order had arrived on day three.
Three Years on a Boil-Water Order
Renee Reynolds didn't lose her water all at once. It turned brown. The pressure dropped. Her kids got skin breakouts after showering. Then came the boil-water order, then PFAS at fourteen times Maine's limit. The private system serving her mobile home park was controlled by the same company that controlled her lease, and it had been failing longer than anyone was officially counting. Reynolds saved for years and left. The families who stayed are still boiling.
Small Systems, Big Gaps
