Maggie T. Sutrov showered, drank treated tap water and watered her garden before she learned that she shouldn’t be using the water in her home on Maui after wildfires devastated the island. Concerned about others making the same mistake, she quickly created a flier on water contamination from guidance she’d found on the county’s website and worked with a pop-up community center to get the word out.
“Every day, people were showing up there going ‘What, I can’t drink the water? I didn’t know that,’” Sutrov said. Three weeks after the fire, Sutrov and others are anxious to know when the island’s water will be safe.
“When is this over?” Sutrov wondered.
So far, tests have found no concerning levels of contaminants in the drinking water. But extensive testing is still needed, with access to most of Lahaina slowed by hazardous conditions and the search for human remains.
Some areas under the unsafe water advisory could be cleared to use their tap water in a couple of weeks, said John Stufflebean, director of the Maui County Department of Water Supply.
But experts and history suggest it could take months or years before the worst of the damaged areas have safe water fully restored.
“We have a way to go before we can say that it’s safe,” Stufflebean said.
The county first told people in Upper Kula and Lahaina not to use their water on Aug. 11 shortly after fire damaged water pipes as it sped across the land. So far, one water quality test on the northwest edge of Lahaina showed low levels of benzene, a chemical known to cause cancer, but it was within federal safety limits.
That’s likely a clue to what more testing will find, said Andrew Whelton, a Purdue University professor who studied drinking water contamination following California’s 2018 Camp Fire and Colorado’s 2021 Marshall Fire.
“As you move closer to the middle of the water system where structures were destroyed, you’ll likely see higher levels of contamination,” he said.
Where homes and other structures burned, so did their interior pipes, along with shallow-buried exterior ones that connected them to the public water line, and the water meters, Stufflebean said. The utility’s networks of reservoirs, pumps, wells and treatment plants on Maui weren’t affected, and it’s unlikely that main lines — thick pipes buried more deeply — burned, he said.