On February 25, 1994, the Board of Land and Natural Resources approved a request by the DLNR’s Division of Water and Land Development, (the state equivalent of the Corps of Engineers) to drill a well near Waikoloa, on the western side of the island of Hawai’i. In his submittal to the Land Board, the agency’s director, Manabu Tagomori, stated that bids had been opened January 27 on the project, which entailed drilling and testing “a 12-inch pilot hole approximately 1,635 feet deep.” The low bid of $410,315 was submitted by Water Resources International, Inc.
Board member Christopher Yuen asked Tagomori what purpose the project would serve, inasmuch as there were no public developments planned for the area as far as Yuen was aware. Tagomori replied that “DOWALD was just drilling for knowledge.”
Quite a different picture emerges from the project description published in the April 23 and May 8 editions of the OEQC Bulletin. According to the published summary of the environmental assessment, the project involves drilling, casing, and testing a well eighteen inches in diameter. Far from the purpose being “just for knowledge,” the summary states: “Should this well prove successful, it will be developed into a production well.” In addition to the well drilling, the project entails building a road 3,000 feet long and 20 feet wide to the well site.
And in the two months since the board approved award of the contract to WRI, the project cost has trebled. According to the OEQC summary, “the estimated cost of the project is $1,200,000.00.”
Legislature Establishes Fishery Task Force
In March, Environment Hawai`i reported on the state’s poor management of bottomfish stocks. The 1994 Legislature considered several measures to address fishery management problems, but ultimately passed just one resolution.
Representative Ken Hiraki introduced the resolution, which establishes a task force “to develop effective management measures to restore and protect Hawai’i’s bottomfish resources.” The task force will include representation from the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The resolution made it out of the Committee on Ocean Recreation and Marine Resources, chaired by Hiraki, with a favorable report. It all but died, however, when the House Finance Committee, to which it had been referred, allowed the deadline for a hearing to pass without action. Referral to the Finance Committee was itself unusual, inasmuch as the resolution required no expenditure of funds. At the last minute, the resolution was resurrected.
Not so fortunate was a bill that would have established a saltwater fishing license. Apart from bringing in revenues to defray the costs of fishery management, a licensing program would also allow the DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources to collect far more accurate data on fish catches. (The quality of data collected now, based on commercial fish catch reports, is notoriously unreliable.)
Testifying against that bill was Henry Sakuda, director of the Division of Aquatic Resources. As reported by Jim Rizzuto in West Hawai’i Today “Sakuda said the DAR would have to charge $16 per license just to break even on administering the printing, issuing, and recording of licenses alone.” Rizzuto went on to say that Sakuda testified that adding another two dollars per license “for an estimated 200,000 recreational license holders would generate a revenue of only $400,000 to be used to support recreational fishing projects.” In some years, Sakuda was reported to have said, “the DAR already returns that much money to the federal government unused.” The money comes from the federal Wallop-Breaux fund for the support of recreational fishing, financed by a tax on sales of fishing gear.
In his column of April 18, 1994, Rizzuto acknowledged that among recreational fishermen, there probably is “overwhelming opposition” to a license. But, he added, “some form of marine recreational fishing license is inevitable… The federal government is already at work developing one.”
On May 2, Rizzuto published excerpts from a letter he had received following his column on April 18. The author, requesting anonymity, argued that fishermen opposed to a license were short-sighted: “Are fishermen trying to save fishing for their children and grandchildren or are they only interested in catching fish now?… Why aren’t they demanding that fishing … be protected and managed?”
Rizzuto received another letter, commenting this time on Sakuda’s statement about license fees. “If the Division of Aquatic Resources says it needs to collect $16 per license just to administer the licensing program and it now charges only $3.75 a person for a freshwater fishing license, does that mean the state is losing $12.25 on each freshwater license it sells?”
About the only fish conservation measure to make it through the Legislature was House Bill 2177, which Governor Waihe’e signed in May. This increases the mesh size of monofilament gill nets to two and three quarter inches from the present minimum size of two inches. The effect should be to reduce the catch of immature fish although “noncommercial” fishermen can still use hand nets with smaller mesh size.
The law took effect May 6, 1994, although it is difficult to understand what, if any, impact it will have in the near term. In a generous bow to commercial fishermen, the law gives them up to January 1, 1997, to replace their present two-inch mesh nets.
New Kamuela Site Is Found for NEXRAD
The Federal Aviation Administration has selected an area near Pu’u Mala, a cinder cone in the Big Island district of South Kohala, as the site for its Next Generation Radar installation for North Hawai’i. As Environment Hawai’i, reported in the [url=/members_archives/archives_more.php?id=1236_0_31_0_C]December 1993 Island Watch Column[/url], Pu’u Lapalapa, the site first selected, was rejected after it was found to have great cultural significance. Pu’u Mala is roughly half a mile southeast of Pu’u Lapalapa.
The draft Environmental Assessment for the Pu’u Mala site was released in April. The period for public comment on the proposal will close June 15, 1994. (Comments may be addressed to Patricia L. Burns, SRI International Project Leader, NEXRAD Program, SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, California 94025.)
Pu’u Mala is owned by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which leases it to Kahua Ranch, Ltd. The site selected for the NEXRAD facility is bounded directly on its northeastern side by the Pu’u O Umi Natural Area Reserve.
The NEXRAD installation will consist of a concrete pad, 33.5 feet square, in the center of which will be built the 142-foot-high antenna. The first 100 or 50 feet will consist of a scaffold-like base, topped by a spherical radar dome, about 35 feet in diameter, from which will rise a 9-foot-high lightning rod.
A few hundred feet to the south and west, the FAA is considering installing an Air Traffic Control Beacon Interrogator. That facility consists of a 100-foot-high lattice-type tower supporting a 20-foot high antenna section. While the ATCBI is mentioned in the NEXRAD environmental assessment, it is not further discussed.
A one-lane, unpaved road is proposed to serve both facilities. The road would follow a jeep road that now exists up to the base of Pu’u Mala. A series of switchbacks would be carved up the slopes of the cinder cone to reach the selected construction sites for both the NEXRAD and ATCBI facilities.
The access road is proposed to be gated and locked at all times, to “prevent unauthorized traffic through the area and an increase in the number of people who may wish to hike around and up Pu’u Lapalapa.” This, the EA states, will reduce the likelihood of accidental desecration of the significant cultural site found in the area. But elsewhere, the EA states that “overall, construction of the proposed access road will provide easier access to hunting grounds by hunters and would result in a positive impact through control of feral pigs.” If the access road is to be kept closed, it is not clear how hunters will be able to use it. In addition, the matter of controlling the pig population in Pu’u O Umi Natural Area Reserve through increased access to hunters has been the subject of acrimonious debate.
(For a more complete discussion of NEXRAD, scroll down to the [url=/members_archives/archives1993.php]October 1993 edition[/url] of Environment Hawai’i)
Senate Approves Landgraf Nomination
In the closing hours of the 1994 Legislature, the state Senate approved, on a floor vote of 18-7, the nomination Libert Laridgraf to the Board of Land and Natural Resources.
Landgraf’s nomination had been opposed by many people in the environmental community, although some – notably the Nature Conservancy of Hawai’i – testified in strong support of him.
The Senate Committee on Executive Appointments, whose chairman is Ann Kobayashi, had posed 17 written questions to Landgraf. According to Kobayashi’s committee report, Landgraf did not respond to more than half of them.
Ordinarily, the Senate is content to accept the recommendation of the committee, and in Landgraf’s case, Kobayashi recommended against confirmation. But to bail out Landgraf’s troubled nomination, the Senate devised a new rule entitling all nominees to a full floor vote. According to Sierra Club lobbyist David Frankel, writing in The Honolulu Weekly, “More than one legislator claimed, in private, that they had been warned of political opposition if they did not accept the governor’s recommendation.”
Landgraf has been working in the Office of State Planning, as a special assistant to the director, Harold Masumoto. Although Landgraf has implied to many (including the Senate Executive Appointments Committee) that he is working under contract to the state, in fact, he is on the state payroll, in a job that was to have terminated May 31. Among the duties included in his job description, a copy of which was obtained by Environment Hawai’i, Landgraf, among other things, “represents the Office of State Planning in meetings with officials and representatives from other public and private organizations, including meetings to negotiate courses of actions pursued by the state” and assists in coordinating and directing the legislative activities of the Office of State Planning.
Hilton Hawaiian Village Lagoon Project
Thirty-nine years ago, the government of the Territory of Hawai’i and Kaiser Community Homes entered into an agreement: the government turned over to Kaiser the use of land fronting what is now the Hilton Hawaiian Village, in return for Kaiser agreeing to build and maintain a lagoon and “to keep the same clean and sanitary at all times.”
If maintaining the lagoon “proves to be physically impracticable by reason of excessive costs or inability to maintain proper sanitary conditions,” the lagoon was to be filled and the filled area then would become part of a “No Buildings” beach area.
Well, today the Hilton lagoon is one of the dirtiest, foulest bodies of water in the state. But Hilton Hawaiian Joint Venture, the successor in interest to Kaiser Community Homes, far from filling the lagoon, is now proposing to build on it a “totally new kind of aquatic recreation facility,” according to a draft environmental assessment covering the project.
“Envisioned is a network of winding shallow channels among tropical islands and reefs, complete with lush plantings,” the environmental assessment states. Tourists will be pulled through the rebuilt lagoon on a half-hour tour, breathing through a “hookah” device and listening, by means of special earphones, to a tour guide’s narration.
The draft EA lists no fewer than 13 “project approvals and permits” needed before the work can begin. Among them are a Conservation District Use Permit, a shoreline setback variance, a Special Management Area permit, and a Corps of Engineers permit. The “attraction” will entail construction of a building to house the orientation center and changing rooms, something that would appear to be prohibited by the 1955 agreement. On this point, the EA is all but silent, saying only that “Modifications to existing covenants and necessary lease documents will be negotiated with appropriate state agencies.”
Whale Sanctuary Is Back on Track
The off-again, on-again Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary is on again. In March, public scoping hearings were held statewide. A draft Environmental Impact Statement is being prepared. Most recently, a “Site Characterization Study” for the sanctuary was released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The headway is most likely attributable to an agreement that NOAA and the state seem to have reached on the scope of the sanctuary. A sanctuary for the protection of multiple species of sea life no longer is being discussed. In addition, the geographic sweep of the sanctuary is restricted to the areas designated by Congress – that is, the waters around Maui, Moloka’i, and Lana’i, as well as around Kaua’i’s Kilauea Point.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 4, Number 12 June 1994
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