Water Commissioner Holds Lease Of 'Ewa Land from Campbell Estate

Big Island rancher and Water Commissioner Herbert “Monty” Richards has not yet responded to the request for a statement of no financial conflict made by the attorneys for the windward parties in the contested case over Waiahole water. Nor had Richards filed, by mid-November, any financial disclosure statement with the state Ethics Commission.

Environment Hawai`i has learned, however, that a company owned in part by Richards and of which he is president has a lease with Campbell Estate — a party in the Waiahole contested case — for some 38 acres of land along Fort Weaver Road in the `Ewa Beach area of O`ahu. The lease extends for a 20-year period starting October 1, 1985. The conveyance tax paid on the lease indicates that the company, Kahua Meat Company, Ltd., paid $27,520 for the lease, although documents at the Bureau of Conveyances do not disclose the annual lease rent.

Eight years later, Kahua Meat Company subleased part of its leased land for nearly double what it paid — $52,500 (according to the conveyance tax record). Buying the sublease was a group called the Farmers Livestock Cooperative. The sublease was used, in turn, as security for $528,000 in loans, at 5 percent per year, extended to the coop by the state of Hawai`i’s Department of Agriculture — another party in the contested case.

All in the Family

Occupying part of the land leased from Campbell Estate is Kahua Nurseries, Inc., owned in part by Monty Richards. According to records at the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, another owner and director of Kahua Nurseries is A. James Wriston, III, who, as late as a year ago, was a field engineer for Waiahole Irrigation Company, owner of the Waiahole Ditch. Since O`ahu Sugar Company (parent of WIC) went out of business last year, Wriston has been employed by Amfac (owner of both OSCo and WIC) in Lihue, Kaua`i.

Wriston’s father, by the way, is James Wriston, of the Ashford & Wriston law firm. That firm is representing the interests of the Campbell Estate in the contested case hearing. Clinton Ashford — the other named partner in the firm — is a director of Kahua Ranch, Limited, whose president and chairman is Richards.

Tying all these parties even more closely together is the fact that Michael Gibson, the Ashford and Wriston attorney who is managing Campbell Estate’s involvement in the Waiahole contested case, has also represented Kahua Meat Company in the past.

State law requires appointed members of boards and commissions to file with the Ethics Commission a financial disclosure statement within 30 days of the letter notifying them of their appointments. In Richards’ case, the appointment letter was dated September 14, 1995. By late November, the Ethics Commission had still received no disclosure form from Richards.

Richards’ Kahua Ranch has entered into an agreement with The Gentry Companies, one of the biggest housing developers in the state, that further clouds the picture. That agreement, signed in 1990, provides for the sale of property on the Big Island to Gentry, up to the end of the decade (December 31, 1999).

Gentry has a stake in the outcome of the Waiahole contested case. It has an agreement with Bishop Estate to purchase some 1,500 acres of land owned by the estate at Waiawa, on which it is intending to build between 12,500 and 15,000 housing units and other amenities. According to testimony provided by Guy Gilliland, manager of urban O`ahu land for Bishop Estate, the estate’s agreement with Gentry obligates the estate “to provide Gentry with Waiahole Ditch water for nonpotable uses, including the irrigation of golf courses, a botanical garden, and all other nonresidential and noncommercial/industrial uses.”

Kahua Ranch, it turns out, has gone on record in favor of continuing the diversion of windward O`ahu water to the leeward side. Testimony on Kahua Ranch letterhead was delivered at a Water Commission public hearing on July 26, 1994, by Alan Gottlieb, vice president of the company. “We operate a cattle ranch on the Big Island of Hawai`i,” said Gottlieb. “We would like to testify in support of Amfac’s Water Use Application for the Waiahole Irrigation System.”

Gottlieb’s testimony cites past investment of the sugar plantations as a rationale for continued diversion. “Plantation agriculture had many dollars invested in infrastructure, such as water systems, which will go to ruination if not quickly utilized and maintained by other agricultural uses.”

Lofty Argument

Gottlieb also manages to raise what may well be the most novel argument yet raised by anyone involved in the entire dispute: “Waiahole ditch water, applied to agricultural crops daily, recharges this [Pearl Harbor] aquifer and additionally through transpiration, recharges our clouds.” Of course, if one takes this argument seriously, cloud recharge would better serve the islands if it were to occur on the windward coasts. That way, the clouds would presumably dump their wet loads in Hawai`i rather than on the open ocean.

Na Maka o ka `Aina, a production company based on the Big Island, has recently released “Kalo Pa`a o Waiahole” (The Hard Taro of Waiahole). The hour-long video contains several lengthy interviews with taro farmers and other users of stream resources along the coast of Kane`ohe Bay. It also features much of the testimony presented during the public hearings on Waiahole Ditch in the summer of 1994.
The video was written, produced, and directed by Na Maka o ka `Aina (Joan Lander and Puhipau), in association with the Native Hawaiian Advisory Council. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs underwrote part of the production costs.

Copies are available from Na Maka o ka `Aina, P.O. Box 29, Na`alehu, HI 96772-0029 (telephone 808 929-9659 voice; 808 929-9679 fax; e-mail: [email]namaka@interpac.net[/email]).

— Patricia Tummons

Volume 6, Number 6 December 1995