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The National Park Service’s efforts to protect the groundwater supply in North Kona, where thousands of homes are slated for development, could effectively be sidelined for the foreseeable future because the federal government shutdown is preventing employees from addressing the issue.

Park service officials have warned for years that increased development along the western slopes of the Big Island could divert too much fresh water from ancient Hawaiian fishponds, tide pools and coastal areas where native species are dependent on the flow of groundwater.

Those concerns led federal officials to submit a petition to the state water commission last month asking it to designate the Keahuou aquifer system as a groundwater management area. The designation would afford enhanced protection to Native Hawaiian and environmental water uses, and it could slow the pace of development in North Kona, where two dozen residential and commercial development projects are planned.

But state officials have countered the National Park Service’s petition with a motion to delay action on it for at least a year while ongoing studies of the water supply are completed and various state and county agencies are given additional time to weigh in. A vote on the deferral could come as early as October 16 at the water commission’s monthly meeting. The problem is that federal officials are unlikely to be able to respond to the state’s motion because they have been furloughed because of the shutdown.

If the National Park Service’s petition is effectively crippled by the absence of federal to support it, the shutdown could prove to be a boon to developers who oppose the designation.

Peter Young is a consultant for Kaloko Makai, a proposed master-planned community of 5,000 homes and 660,000 square feet of commercial space. He says that the designation is unnecessary and that studies show there is plenty of water to handle the planned development. “First of all, water management areas are big deals,” he said. “And they are normally established in areas where there is a risk” of water usage reaching or surpassing the sustainable amount of water there.

In North Kona, he insists, this is not the case.

But the sustainable yield of the aquifer, which hosts 105 wells, is a matter of dispute. One county assessment found that if all development projects that have received some level of approval move forward, demand will exceed the aquifer’s sustainable yield by 400 percent, according to data in the National Park Service’s .

In addition to Kaloko Makai, there are 12 other residential developments planned for North Kohala, totaling more than 7,000 homes and 10 commercial developments covering 1.8 million square feet of land, according to state records.

In its petition, the park service warned that the groundwater supply is already under threat from decreased rainfall and rising sea levels.

If the National Park Service is successful in designating the area as a groundwater management area, the state instead of the county will oversee water usage. Existing users, as well as future developers, will have to obtain a permit and show that their water use is “reasonable, beneficial and consistent with the public interest,” according to the National Park Service petition.

Even if the National Park Service’s petition isn’t delayed by a year, it could be a battle to get it approved due to deficiencies in Hawaii’s water laws.

The state water code usually only kicks in “when the area is in a pretty sickly state,” said Williamson Chang, a law professor at the University of Hawaii and an expert in water rights.

He said that Hawaii’s water laws tend to be reactive, rather than proactive.

“That’s one of the major problems of the water code,” he said, before suggesting that the entire state should already be under permit regulations. As it is now, he noted, “You have to be sick or on the way to the hospital to get the water code to apply.”