The gears of government grind slowly. When it comes to the gears that grind out amendments to the lease of state lands held by F. Newell Bohnett, movement appears to have ceased altogether.
In October 1984, the Board of Land and Natural Resources approved the withdrawal from Bohnett’s lease of about 80,000 acres. The specific area was to be worked out in further discussions with Bohnett. Following that, surveys would have to be made and an document drawn up by the attorney general’s office amending the lease to reflect the new boundaries.
The rent Bohnett pays has been adjusted to reflect the smaller area since February 1985. Since February of 1988, the Division of Land Management has had maps of the reconfigured lease area (drawn by the surveyors of the Department of Accounting and General Services). But the lease itself remains unamended, for reasons known only to the people at the Division of Land Management.
Having It Both Ways
The failure to amend Bohnett’s lease is of more than academic interest. Consider, for example, the effect that this had on plans by the County of Hawai`i to develop a landfill in West Hawai`i.
The site proposed for the landfill was on state-owned land between Queen Ka`ahumanu Highway and the Belt Road (Mamalahoa Highway), a couple of miles below ranch headquarters, which Bohnett owns in fee. The site was within the boundaries of the original lease, but was well outside any boundaries of the reconfigured lease. The state, cooperating with the county, had given the county its approval to use the site for a landfill.
But when the county Planning Commission was hearing the county Department of Public Works’ application for a special permit for the landfill last September, Bohnett filed for a contested case. His ground for claiming standing was the unamended lease, which indicated he still was lessee of record for the area of the landfill. (He did not mention that he had not been paying rent on the greater lease since February 1985.)
The commission granted Bohnett a contested case. Rather than face the prospect of lengthy delays that the contested case would entail, and in deference to other concerns raised by the Division of Forestry and Wildlife, the county Department of Public Works proposed an alternate site. (According to a map provided by county Chief Engineer Bruce McClure, the alternate site lies just a few hundred yards makai of the first site — well within the area of the original lease. There is no reason to believe that Bohnett will not challenge that site, too, unless by the time the new proposal makes it to the Planning Commission hearing stage, the lease has been amended to reflect the new boundaries.)
Elastic Boundaries
Boundary ambiguities may also have hindered investigation of possible violations of Conservation District rules as well.
In 1985, Bohnett was to cease use of the Kiholo well, which lay in the area to be withdrawn from the lease. Twelve years earlier, Bohnett had installed a pump on the state-drilled well and had made other improvements, including the grading and lining of a large reservoir nearby.
In August 1985, Bohnett wrote BLNR Chairman Susumo Ono, offering to sell the equipment to the state for a depreciated cost of $92,152. A follow-up letter was sent by Bohnett’s attorney, Philip Leas, to the Division of Water and Land Development on September 10, requesting a response by September 30. The state continued to refuse the bait.
On November 8, 1985, Peter L’Orange, president of the Hawaii Leeward Planning Conference, delivered to Ono a letter stating that his organization had approved a motion recommending that the DLNR purchase the pump and water-storage equipment. “The reasons for this action are much too detailed and complex to cover in a letter,” L’Orange wrote somewhat cryptically, “so I have been directed to hand-carry this recommendation.” (The letter was not delivered until December 19.)
Despite the pressure, Bohnett got no response from the DLNR. There is no further communication from him with respect to the equipment at the Kiholo well site.
On April 24, 1987, Ronald Bachman, a biologist in DOFAW’s Hilo office, wrote Ronald Walker, the state’s chief biologist: “On April 9th, while doing wildlife assessments at Pu`uwa`awa`a, I noticed that the makai reservoir fed by the Kiholo well is gone. From the air (helicopter) the entire area of approximately three acres seems to have been bulldozed over and covered with a`a lava. This is the same facility you observed when we toured the Pu`uwa`awa`a withdrawn lands on September 18, 1985.
“My specific concerns are as follows:
“1. Since the Board withdrew the land … on October 12, 1984, the destruction of the reservoir presumably occurred after the previous tenant surrendered rights as lessee. Was not the reservoir state property and its destruction in violation of the lease?
“2. The reservoir was still there in September 1986 during the Pu`u Anahulu fire and was destroyed sometime after that.
“The activity of covering the reservoir occurred in a Conservation District. If any CDUA had been circulated, we were certainly not given the opportunity to respond, as I surely would have.
“For the years that this large reservoir … was in existence, it provided a desirable habitat modification for wildlife. Populations of birds became dependent upon it and were abruptly deprived.”
Bachman attached to his memo Paragraph 34 from the lease, which stipulates “[t]hat the lessee shall and will, upon the expiration or sooner termination of this lease, peaceably and quietly leave and surrender and yield up the demised premises, together with all improvements of whatever kind … and also together with the title thereto, to the Lessor.”
(Environment Hawai`i was told that reservoir was bulldozed over by Frank Hulce, president of Big Isle Construction who has frequently worked for Pu`uwa`awa`a Ranch. Bohnett is treasurer of that corporation.)
Records checked both in Hilo and Honolulu show that no action was taken to follow up on Bachman’s report. DOWALD’s files do not indicate whether the Kiholo well has in fact been capped or whether it is still in use. (The pipeline from that well connects — or at least was at one time connected to — the two deep wells that provide the water for Bohnett’s private water works. Bohnett stated this in a proposal he wrote in 1983 for a “Kiholo Park Village” to be developed mauka of Queen Ka`ahumanu Highway in the area of Kiholo Bay.)
Volume 1, Number 9 March 1991
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