Sugar Water: Hawaii's Plantation Ditches

Hawaii's sugar industry enjoyed great success for most of the twentieth century, and its influence was felt across a broad spectrum: economics, politics, the environment, and society. This success was made possible, in part, through the liberal use of Hawaii's natural resources. Chief among these was water, which was needed in enormous quantities to grow and process sugarcane. Between 1856 and 1920, sugar planters built miles of ditches, diverting water from almost every watershed in Hawaii. "Ditch" is a humble term for these great waterways. By 1920, ditches, tunnels, and flumes were diverting over 800 million gallons a day from streams and mountains to the cane-fields and their mills. Sugar Water chronicles the building of Hawaii's ditches, the men who conceived, engineered, and constructed them, and the sugar plantations and water companies that ran them. It explains how traditional Hawaiian water rights and practices were affected by Western ways. It shows how sugar economics, riding a river of water, transformed Hawaii from an insular, agrarian, and debt-ridden society into one of the most cosmopolitan and prosperous in the Pacific. It chronicles decades of rapid change, including corporate squabbles on the Hamakua coast, working conditions on the Kohala Ditch, raging waters in the Waiahole Tunnel, labor raiding on West Kauai, and the logistics of tunnel building in Lahaina.