A fight over who controls West Maui's water has landed in federal court, and the bill is falling hardest on the golf courses and farmers who buy it.

• Lawyers for the Kapalua golf courses say Maui Land & Pineapple deliberately reclassified water system work as "maintenance" so the courses would have to pay for it instead of the landowner.
• The claim rests on tracked edits inside internal documents handed over in discovery, which the courses say show the switch was intentional.
• The courses' water bill has jumped from a few hundred thousand dollars a few years ago to roughly $1.7 million this year.
• Farmers in the area have seen water rates climb sharply too, and the county's own rate has risen several times over.
• Maui County struck a deal in May to buy MLP's West Maui water infrastructure, which would hand it control of nearly all the area's water, though the price and timing have not been made public.

Outlook: MLP is framing the suit as a foreign billionaire's grab for control of the water serving his luxury resort property, so expect a drawn-out court fight while the county's purchase of the system moves ahead separately.