Written by: Stuart Coleman

From Hawai‘i Business Magazine:

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.

The toxic stew of poo, pee, pharmaceuticals and other contaminants sent into the ground, seeps into the groundwater and often ends up in the ocean, where it harms nearshore coral and can sicken swimmers.

In recent years, a coalition of scientists, citizens and environmental groups set out to change sanitation policies and create public awareness. The state Legislature passed several laws to reduce sewage pollution: Act 120 banned the construction of new cesspools (2016); Act 125 mandated the conversion of all cesspools to approved sanitation systems by 2050 (2017); and Act 132 created the Cesspool Conversion Working Group (2018).

Continue reading at HawaiiBusiness.com.