If it's raining, it's Vetiver weather!

It doesn't take much to return Vetiver's true mission to front and center. Well, I suppose it depends on whether you consider 14 inches of rain in 12 hours to be "much."

Heavy rains on Oahu swamped local homes and farmlands on its North Shore, central island, and leeward coast, hitting hard the communities of Laie, Hauula, Haleiwa and Wailua, Waipahu and Waianae, among others. Raw sewage overflowed from Ewa Beach cesspools, and that problem resurfaced (!) in North Shore communities which historically suffer when their septic systems cannot handle heavy rain. Wahiawa and Sand Island wastewaster treatment plants overflowed, too. Honolulu Harbor and the beleagered Lake Wilson were the depositories. Military waste treatment facilities were equally unprepared. My Marines at MCB Kaneohe Bay lost thousands of gallons of untreated sewage into Kaneohe Bay and the Mokapu Central Drainage Channel. The army at Schofield Barracks deposited nearly a million gallons of effluent into Kaukonahua Stream and into its storm drains. Coastal waters turned brown from runoff, and motorists were greeted with the first mudslides of the season.

A levee in Waianae Valley constructed by the city to prevent water from flowing into residents' backyards along Puuhulu Road burst, forming a brown stream that destroyed the very yards it was intended to protect. Homeowner Virgil Haynes lost her beehives.

AND...a very simple technology could have anticipated the annual devastation and mitigated the results: the VETIVER SOLUTION.