In re Water Use Permit Applications
Supreme Court of Hawaii
9 P.3d 409 (2000)
A 1916 Oahu Sugar Company irrigation ditch diverting freshwater from the Ko'olau mountains had damaged the Kane'ohe Bay ecosystem; in 1992 the state Commission on Water Resource Management began requiring permits to use the ditch's water. When the sugar company announced it would cease operations in 1993, multiple entities competed for rights to the freed-up water and petitioned to amend the water-flow standards. The Commission concluded that the groundwater, streams, and bay itself were part of the public trust, and treated resource protection as a categorical, threshold precondition overriding all other considerations.
Whether the public trust doctrine allows the state to assign higher priority to water conservation over private commercial uses.