It Will Be Years Before Clean Water Is Restored In Lahaina
11/7/23
As Maui grapples with the trauma of the August fires and tries to envision the future of Lahaina, the mission to rebuild is complicated by a major obstacle: the contamination of the drinking water system.
When fires tore through the town on Aug. 8, the heat melted pipes, polluting the water inside with toxic chemicals. Officials are now testing for contamination property by property. Early testing has already exposed the presence of the carcinogen benzene and other chemicals but officials are only starting to understand the scope of the problem. They haven’t widely sampled the core of the burn zone.
