Kona's Coveted Coffee Crop Is in Trouble

Water is suddenly the scarcest thing on Hawaii's lush Kona coffee belt. A 6.0-magnitude earthquake that struck the Big Island 10 days ago shattered rainwater catchment tanks that hundreds of Kona farmers depend on for drinking, bathing, and irrigating some of the world's priciest coffee, reports the New York Times. In a region where county water lines haven't reached many small, family-run orchards, those plastic and metal tanks were the key to harvest. Now, two local catchment companies report roughly 200 calls each for help, and one says it's flying in extra workers from Oahu to cope. "Most people's tanks blew out catastrophically," Corey Yeaton, owner of Pacific Blue Catchment, tells the Honolulu Civil Beat.

Farmers like KayLynne and Michael Santana are hauling five-gallon jugs from a public spigot and rigging pipes from roof awnings into improvised containers. Nearby, Colehour and Melanie Bondera watched 10,000 gallons drain from their ruptured tank, then scrambled over a holiday weekend to find the last correctly sized liner in stock. Many growers were already reeling from spring floods and rising insurance costs after the Maui fires. Officials haven't tallied how many systems failed, but have sent a 2,000-gallon tanker to one subdivision and are planning another fill station, as farmers try to keep both their crops and livelihoods intact.