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A new dispute tied to FEMA flood maps is now complicating Hawaiian Electric’s plan to upgrade its Waiau power plant on Oʻahu, with the issue raised late in the state regulatory process and potentially affecting building permits and federal financing. The matter surfaced after a public comment filed recently by an entity identified as Concerned Ratepayers of Oʻahu said the Waiau site has been placed in a newly designated 100-year flood zone. Hawaiian Electric, through a senior vice president, said the utility’s facilities have operated on a slope above Pearl Harbor since 1938 without flooding, and that the flood maps show the footprint of potential flooding rather than what the company said is expected flood depth.
Federal flood-map updates are at the center of the timing. When Hawaiian Electric announced its Pearl City-area plans in December 2023, the project site was not shown in a flood zone, according to the report. But in July 2024, FEMA announced new preliminary maps placing the Waiau site in a 100-year flood zone, and the updated zones are scheduled to take effect in June.
The Concerned Ratepayers of Oʻahu submission includes a memorandum to federal officials considering a loan that Hawaiian Electric needs to finance the Waiau project. The memorandum asks the U.S. Department of Energy whether Hawaiian Electric disclosed the pending flood-zone designation in its loan application and whether the department has begun a review process required by law for projects located in flood zones. The comment also frames the issue as potentially significant for permits and federal funding, raising concerns that costs could be passed on to ratepayers.
Hawaiian Electric challenged the flood-zone concern and also questioned who filed it. Jim Kelly, Hawaiian Electric’s vice president of government and community relations and corporate communications, said the plant has operated on a slope above Pearl Harbor since 1938 without flooding. He also said the new flood maps reflect where flooding could reach, not how deep it would be. Kelly further questioned the motives of the comment’s essentially anonymous author, saying that anonymizing concerns after a project’s approval by the Hawaiʻi Public Utilities Commission raises questions about whether the signers are truly “concerned ratepayers.”
The report said it is unclear why the flood-zone issue did not surface earlier in the multi-year approval process, including in the work of a third-party consulting firm that reviewed the project. Kelly said Hawaiian Electric knew about the designation after FEMA released preliminary maps but did not view it as affecting planning because the upgrades would be installed on existing infrastructure several stories above the ground. Kelly also said the utility did not alert the commission to the preliminary designation when it filed an updated application in October 2025 because the FEMA decision at that point was only preliminary; the maps were later finalized two months afterward, in December, before taking effect in June.
Even without the full history of the filings being questioned, city officials said the flood-map shift could matter for construction standards. In a written statement, Scott Humber, communications director for Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, confirmed that sections of the Waiau project would transition to a newly designated, 100-year “flood zone A,” defined as having a 1% chance of annual flooding. Humber wrote that the change could require meeting stricter federal and city flood-resilience standards, depending on the scope of upgrades. The Waiau project includes six new generators to replace aging equipment, some dating to the 1940s.
The state commission’s approval already set limits on what Hawaiian Electric could collect from customers, and the flood-zone question is likely to be folded into further scrutiny. The Hawaiʻi Public Utilities Commission approved the project but limited ratepayer recovery to $847 million, plus inflation adjustments—far less than the $1.15 billion Hawaiian Electric sought. The commission’s order puts the utility on the hook for just over $300 million, and Hawaiian Electric asked the commission to reconsider and allow it to charge ratepayers the full requested amount. Henry Curtis of Life of the Land, a nonprofit that advocates for sustainable agriculture and renewable energy, said the commission would likely need to open new questions about the flood-zone issue as it weighs the cost request.
Curtis said the public comment was highly unusual and difficult to verify through available records. He said there is no entity named Concerned Ratepayers of Oʻahu registered with Hawaiʻi’s Department of Consumer Affairs, and that a national search in OpenCorporates did not find the group. According to the report, Curtis also said that searches using Google and Gemini Pro did not turn up references to the organization in public internet or records. Still, he said the substance of the filing—described as a 71-page business or legal memo—could make it hard for the commission to dismiss. The report also said Curtis pointed to Hawaiian Electric’s own guidelines for new power projects, which he said say such projects could not be located in “A” flood zones.
Federal loan financing remains a key pathway for the project to move forward. The report said Hawaiian Electric parent company Hawaiian Electric Industries has to pay Maui wildfire victims $1.99 billion over four years as part of legal settlements tied to fires it was found to have started in 2023, and that the company told federal securities regulators in February it believes it can raise the settlement money while also saying there is no assurance future financing will be available. The Waiau project would require additional financing, and if federal support does not come through, the higher financing costs could be passed to customers.
The federal backdrop is Executive Order 11988, signed by former President Jimmy Carter in 1977, which orders the federal government to avoid direct or indirect support for floodplain development where there is a practicable alternative. The report said regulations implementing the order require an eight-step process, including identifying alternatives, notifying the public and allowing comment. Hawaiian Electric is seeking a loan from the U.S. Office of Energy Dominance Financing, which provides loans for power projects intended to strengthen electrical grids. While the report said the order and regulations do not strictly ban the financing office from issuing loans to flood-zone projects, it said the designation would likely subject Hawaiian Electric’s application to additional scrutiny under federal law.
Kelly said the company’s understanding is that the executive order and regulations do not prohibit construction in a flood zone for federal funding, but require mitigation. The Office of Energy Dominance Financing confirmed that Hawaiian Electric applied for a loan but declined to comment further on the flood-zone issue, according to the report. Theresa Garner, a spokeswoman for the office, did not respond to a request for comment about how the flood-zone change might affect the application review. In addition, the commission said generally it considers filings by parties in proceedings as formal evidence, though substantive public comment could still prompt information requests to Hawaiian Electric and those responses would become formal evidence.