Drought, groundwater management and land use planning: the case of central Oahu, Hawaii

A recent decision to allow higher levels of urban development in central Oahu, Hawaii, has heightened the concern about possible loss of agricultural land and further drops in aquifer levels. This paper examines such potential impacts and offers a procedure for incorporating them into land use planning. First, a water-balance simulation model computes the change in groundwater recharge under changes in land use and irrigation technology. The resulting changes, together with estimated water demands for the agricultural, commercial and residential sectors, are then included in a multiobjective programming model that identifies optimal patterns of land use conversion under different objective trade-offs. Objectives treated are the minimization of agricultural land loss and of water demand, and the maximumization of recharge over withdrawal. The second objective pertains to water management during drought, while the third refers to sustainable groundwater management. Results show that, depending on the relative importance given each of these two objectives, land moving out of sugar cane will differ significantly in amount and by type of irrigation presently used. The relative importance of these objectives thus needs to be determined if water is to play a coherent and guiding role in land use planning.