Cesspools Are Killing Hawai‘i’s Coral – But It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way

An expert explains how to reverse the damage from the state’s 83,000 cesspools, including using treated wastewater for irrigation and landscaping.

Here are a few facts you won’t find in any travel guide about Hawai‘i: There are 83,000 cesspools across the state, and these substandard systems discharge an average of 52 million gallons of untreated sewage per day into the ground and groundwater. That’s like a massive sewage spill every day.

In fact, Hawai‘i has more cesspools per capita than any other state and it was the last state to ban them, by more than three decades.