‘Ākulikuli: An Experiment in Phytoremediation of Waterways on Kaua'i

We are a small community of individuals that are passionate and dedicated to caring for the natural world, protecting our local watershed and restoring native habitat. We decided to form a church rooted in our belief that Water is a sacred and natural healing force for all. We want to learn from Water’s natural intelligence and consider ourselves eternal students of the living mysteries of Water.

We feel blessed to have become stewards of a beautiful 28 acre parcel on Kaua’i. We were drawn to work with this land because of its uniquely diverse hydrologic systems and features. There are aquifer-fed springs, ponds, and streams, all of which are in the Makaleha watershed. Though beautiful, this land has been mismanaged for years, resulting in contaminated waters and overgrowth of invasive plant species. The main issue we are facing is toxic runoff leeching into the waterways from previous poorly implemented sewage systems and an abandoned burned down house. Since we have become stewards of this land, we have cleared the burned house site and installed proper septic systems to avoid any further possibility of toxic contamination.

This issue has given us a clear mission and responsibility to do everything we can to heal and preserve the health of this ecosystem, enabling the waterways, native plants, and wildlife to thrive for generations to come. Mālama ʻāina means "to care for the land" in Hawaiian. It reflects a deep respect and stewardship for the environment, emphasizing the connection between people and the land. This principle guides our work.

Our goal for this project is to focus on restoring the health of the bodies of water here as the key element to a thriving native habitat, knowing that everything trickles downstream. Through this project, we will apply phytoremediation practices, with the help of the endemic ‘Ākulikuli plant (Sesuvium portulacastrum). The land will serve as a living laboratory for this project, using different bodies of contaminated water to test the effectiveness of ‘Ākulikuli.

After we discovered the spring was named ‘Ākulikuli Spring, it led us to researching more about this plant. We were excited to learn about its myriad properties for cleansing bodies of water and soil. It was amazing to learn that there are studies from different parts of the world that showed the efficacy of ‘Ākulikuli in extracting toxic elements, from heavy metals to Cesium. This discovery inspired this project.

Funds for this project will go to develop construction of floating ‘Ākulikuli mats, tools and supplies needed, water testing, soil testing and documentation of the effectiveness of these measures over time. Please refer to the design image, created in collaboration with ChatGPT, detailing the ‘Ākulikuli floating mat construction. We were pleased with how AI was able to help illustrate our concept so elegantly. We will be sourcing as much of the materials as possible directly from the land, including creation of biochar.

The majority of time and energy invested in the project so far has been focused on research of ‘Ākulikuli and its historical and cultural uses, experimenting with various propagation techniques and application possibilities. The next phase of research will include determining cost of materials, floating mat prototype development and testing procedures in order to have measurable success. Testing of the water and soil will be scheduled 4 times per year in a variety of different scales and in various locations on the property. The evaluation of the results from these tests will be conducted over the course of one year to determine the efficacy of this experiment.

If this project proves to be successful, our goal is to expand the scale and reach of this method to inspire others around the world in implementing phytoremediation of their local water systems with ‘Ākulikuli.