Hawaiian Water Bureaucrat Chose Water Over Life

Environmentalists frequently assert water is life! Obviously that statement doesn’t apply when humans need fresh water to survive, especially when it comes to fighting wildfires.  

Department of Land and Natural Resource’s (DLNR) deputy director for water resource management M. Kaleo Manuel is in hot water (pun intended). It was recently reported that he delayed releasing water Maui property owners needed to combat blazes in their area. According to Honolulu Civil Beat:

Specifically, according to accounts of four people with knowledge of the situation, M. Kaleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management, initially balked at West Maui Land Co.’s requests for additional water to help prevent the fire from spreading to properties managed by the company.

Honolulu Civil Beat also says Manuel didn’t release the water until it was too late when the fire began to spread. Hawaii’s governor says water use has always been a contentious issue in Maui and that includes people who do not want to use water to fight fires. A video of a Zoom call Manuel was on earlier this year was released where he disclosed his extremist views about water that combine critical race theory and environmentalism.

Meet M. Kaleo Manuel, the official who refused to release water in Maui, contributing to up to 106 deaths.

A Hawaiian Studies major, Kaleo prefers a traditional, holistic "One Water" approach where water is revered, not used.

Water requires "true conversations about equity" pic.twitter.com/4AzVZNwkHk

— Jeremy Kauffman 🦔 (@jeremykauffman) August 16, 2023

As it turns out, SportsKeeda reveals Manuel is also a 2019 Obama Foundation Asia Pacific Leader and environmentalist who believes water should be holy to be used primarily for traditional practices. An effort was made in the Aloha State’s legislature last year to enact a law requiring the DLNR to allow fresh water to be used to fight fires but, unfortunately, was unsuccessful and Manuel has been reassigned in the agency pending an investigation.

Obviously, according to M.Kaleo Manuel’s logic, using fresh water to put out fires that threaten people’s lives and property is not a traditional practice (whatever that means). The Maui conflagration wasn’t just due to government malfeasance, but proof now exist showing it was also the result of intentional recklessness. In this case, a single Hawaii state bureaucrat had the power of life and death, and he chose death.