USDA Prepares a Stealth EIS For Restoration of Hamakua Ditch

posted in: June 1995 | 0

In April and May of 1992, and several times since, Environment Hawai`i has reported on the demise of the Hamakua Sugar Company. Most of the assets of the company have been sold in foreclosure auctions. Ownership of one of the company’s chief assets, the Lower Hamakua Ditch, remains unsettled, however. Despite this, Environment Hawai`i has learned of elaborate state plans to restore the ditch.

Our July issue will deal more fully with water issues affecting Waipi`o Valley and the Hamakua Coast.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing an environmental impact statement for what it calls the Lower Hamakua Watershed Project. News of the EIS was announced at a meeting held May 16, 1995, in Honoka`a.

People attending the meeting were told by planners from the USDA office in Portland, Oregon, that the meeting was part of the scoping process for the EIS. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the scoping process is required as a means of identifying those concerns that the EIS should address. Public notice of scoping meetings has to be provided under standards set forth in federal regulations, but those regulations do not appear to have been followed in the case of the Honoka`a meeting. Instead, the only notice appears to have been a short news article in the Hawai`i Tribune-Herald of Hilo the Sunday preceding the meeting date. There was no published legal notice of the meeting.

According to the USDA planners, the federal government has allocated $1.5 million to be used for restoring the ditch. The USDA’s timetable calls for completing the public input to the scoping process by May 30, publishing a draft EIS by mid-July, and having the entire EIS process, including a record of decision, completed by September 30.

A news release issued by the state Department of Agriculture was the source of the report in the Tribune-Herald. That release says nothing about an EIS or the scoping process under the National Environmental Policy Act. Instead, it states that “communities of the West [sic] Hawai`i Region have the opportunity to voice their concerns during a public meeting” with a team from the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service (formerly the U.S. Soil Conservation Service). “The public’s input is welcomed,” the press release states, “for any support would strengthen the state’s efforts in securing federal funds for major ditch improvements.”

DOA Exemptions

Meanwhile, the state Department of Agriculture is proposing to the Environmental Council a list of agency activities that it desires to be exempt from review under Chapter 343 of Hawai`i Revised Statutes. The proposed exemption list, which was published in the Office of Environmental Quality Control Bulletin of April 23 and May 8, would include the repair, operation, and maintenance of “existing pumps and controls, pipes and channels in the same location in order to maintain service in existing water systems” and the “reconstruction of existing diversions and intake structures, including valves, gates, and intake boxes in order to collect or improve the collection at the location of the existing water source diversion works.” These exemptions are in addition to a proposed exemption covering maintenance of the DOA’s irrigation systems at Waimanalo, Waimea, and Moloka`i.

The public comment period on the proposed exemption list expired May 22.

— Patricia Tummons

Volume 5, Number 12 June 1995

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