One of the most coveted coffees in the world comes from Kona, a region of small farms scattered across the misty volcanic slopes of Hawaii’s Big Island, where the coffee crops thrive on afternoon rains. So do the farmers, who rely on rainwater to fill the tanks that supply their homes and orchards. Parts of the area have no county water infrastructure.
But the stored water supplies of hundreds of farmers are now gone, dumped into the ground 10 days ago when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit the island. The quake destroyed or damaged catchment tanks around the Kona district and left many people without ready access to water.
“Things just started falling off shelves and crumbling,” said KayLynne Santana, 71, who farms coffee and macadamia nuts in the area, describing the earthquake as she pointed out the damage around her farm. “My husband got the flashlight and looked at our water tank. The whole thing was down.” So were the rock walls she and her husband built years ago around their farm.
Living without county water for decades, the Santanas have learned to conserve what they have and make do with what they can.
After the quake, they started filling five-gallon jugs at a public spigot at the Honaunau Rodeo Grounds. Then their nephew and some friends helped them install a makeshift pipe system to collect rainwater from the awnings on their house. By Saturday, they had acquired two small tanks they could fill up at the spigot.
Up to 60,000 people across the Hawaiian islands use rainfall catchment systems for water, according to a 2017 report from the University of Hawaii. Those people include residents who are connected to water infrastructure but use catchment to offset costs. The majority of them live on the island of Hawaii, also known as the Big Island. And many of those live in Kona, a patchwork of hundreds of small, family-owned orchards.
Just how many people sustained water supply damage in the earthquake is unclear. Officials have not released a complete count.
The two local companies that sell rainwater catchment systems have each received about 200 calls for help, said Corey Yeaton, the owner of one of the companies, Pacific Blue Catchment. With his small crew overwhelmed by requests, Mr. Yeaton said he was flying workers in from the Hawaiian island of Oahu to help.
Hawaii is the only U.S. state with significant commercial coffee production. Coffee cultivation started on the Big Island in the 1820s, but government water infrastructure never reached the farms, which continue to use catchment systems for irrigation, drinking, cooking and bathing.
The area was already hit earlier this spring by powerful storms, known as Kona lows, that caused evacuations, emergency rescues and extensive damage. Farmers in Kona are still cleaning up from the floods that raced through their properties, taking out some buildings.
At Kanalani Ohana Farms, about half a mile from the Santanas’ farm, Colehour and Melanie Bondera have raised coffee, fruit and vegetables for more than two decades. Melanie Bondera, 58, said she was hoping that state or federal emergency funding would arrive to help farmers in her area, who now have to contend with destroyed water tanks on top of storm damage and insurance premiums that had gone up since the Maui fires of 2023.
Some families in the area receive food stamps, she said, making them hard-pressed to cover additional damages. Despite the high price that Kona coffee commands, the cost of farming meant that “no one is making bank off Kona coffee,” she said.
The Bonderas realized their water tank was damaged late on the night of the earthquake, when Colehour Bondera started hearing running water, even though there had been no rain. Following the sound, he discovered a rivulet streaming down his driveway, which turned out to be coming from his water tank. Its liner punctured and its roof in shambles, the tank had burst, leaking 10,000 gallons of water.
He could not find a replacement liner for his tank in the right size until Tuesday, after the long Memorial Day weekend, but got the last one the store had in stock.
They have spent the days since the disaster cleaning up broken glass and other debris inside their house and figuring out how to get water. The public spigot “isn’t really accessible or realistic for most people,” said Mr. Bondera, 59.
He does not have a truck that can carry a water tank to and from the spigot, he said, and many of his neighbors were elderly and could not haul the water themselves. Efforts to provide more water appeared to be underway, if slowly: Talmadge Magno, the island’s emergency management coordinator, said the authorities had arranged for a 2,000-gallon tanker to supply water to Kona Paradise, a housing subdivision, and were working on an additional fill station.
By Saturday morning, despite all the repairs that Mr. Bondera needed to do at home, he had set up his usual stand at the local farmer’s market around 7:30 a.m. They needed the income, he said, and the sense of normalcy, too.
Vivian Yee is a Times reporter who writes about women in America, focusing on cultural and political shifts during the Trump years.
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