Editorial: Restoration, Not Condemnation: Hawai'i Has No Land to Spare

posted in: August 1992, Editorial | 0

The Kamaka family land in the back of Waikane Valley is not the first military site left littered with unexploded ordnance. Nor, surely, will it be the last. For almost a century and especially in the last fifty years – various services of the United States armed forces have occupied public and private lands and have used them for purposes sometimes much broader than those announced to the landowners. And, for the most part, the landowners have quietly accepted return of the land after the military has vacated it.

What sets Waikane Valley apart is the Kamaka family’s determination to hold the United States to the terms of its agreement, requiring, among other things, that the land be restored to the condition it was in before military occupation and that the United States forever accept liability for damages resulting from government use.

The United States appears to be wanting to teach the Kamakas a lesson. The family’s adamancy in holding the government to the terms of its promise has provoked the military into playing its trump card of condemnation.

More is at stake than the Kamakas’ 187 acres. If the government is allowed to deal with the ordnance problems in Waikane simply by declaring the area forever to be off-limits, the people of Hawai’i have every reason to fear that this will be the solution of choice for thousands more acres that are still under lease to and being used by the military. Those lands include parcels owned by the state as well as ones owned by some of the largest private landholders (Bishop Estate and Campbell Estate among them).

Lease With Option

In fact, the state leases to the military already contain provisions that allow the government to condemn the land if the cost of clean-up is greater than the land’s fair-market value at the expiration of the lease. Those leases were drawn up at a time (1964) when the state was given the choice of either leasing land to the military at terms it dictated or having that land taken outright by executive order. Rather than challenging the federal government’s claims to certain lands under provisions in the Admission Act, the state opted to accept the military’s wording of the leases and, theoretically at least, retain some say in the property’s use. As the Kamaka case so vividly illustrates, however, the military might well and probably will opt for condemnation.

The matter of the military’s use and abuse of state land is a subject for another day. For now, it is sufficient to raise this point: If the military opts for condemnation instead of clean-up, the state stands to lose the use of tens of thousands of acres. The potential loss is even greater. Ceded land occupied by the military under executive order reverts automatically to the state when military use ends. If the military does not want to clean up ceded land, it may simply choose to hold on to the land forever.

In other words, so long as it remains cheaper for the military to pollute and condemn than it is for it to restore, the military will pollute and condemn and Hawai’i be damned.

Estimates of the amount of land occupied (owned, leased, or otherwise controlled) by the military in Hawai’i range from 250,000 acres to twice that. Whatever figure one uses, the lands occupied by the military represent a substantial portion of the state’s total real estate of just over 4 million acres (including nearly a quarter of the land of O’ahu). If the Kamaka condemnation proceedings go through, it is not far-fetched to think that the military will in the future simply opt to buy its way out of leased land and hold on to what ceded land it occupies rather than clean it up as a condition to release back to the state.

The Kaho’olawe Clean-up

The problem of unexploded ordnance has been discussed most frequently in relation to Kaho’olawe. For years, the people of Hawai’i were told that the island was vital as a military bombing range that nothing less than national security required its use. Few people claim that today. Indeed, the political winds have shifted to the point where the views of the Protect Kaho’olawe Ohana, once regarded as beyond the pale, have been integrated into the very warp and woof of prevailing attitudes on the subject of the island’s use. PKO’s insistence that the island be restored to the point that human activities can be carried out in relative safety have been endorsed by the Kaho’olawe Conveyance Commission and enshrined in the Kaho’olawe Community Plan of Maui County.

In a report to the Conveyance Commission on ordnance clearance requirements, private consultants set forth a plan for removal of ordnance that would allow a range of contemplated uses. The cost would be between $60 million and $75 million, and the ordnance removal would require about five years to complete. While some may regard the costs as high, it is worth noting that the Navy’s own estimate of clearance costs was twice the consultants’ estimate.

Publicity over Kaho’olawe has helped hold the government, at long last, to the level of responsibility the public has every right to expect. But as difficult and slow as the Kaho’olawe clean-up will be (assuming, of course, that no further obstacles are erected), restoring all other contaminated military sites is a far more formidable task. And, with most other sites not sharing the spotlight with Kaho’olawe, the fact is they will probably not receive the attention that is their due.

In 1991, the Pentagon reported to Congress that 235 sites at active installations in Hawai’i (counting Johnston Island) posed an environmental problem of one or another kind. More can be expected. Over and above this is the roster of formerly used defense sites, which will probably include hundreds more sites where future human use, if it is allowed at all, will be possible only after extensive and expensive clean-up.

Getting the funds for the clean-up will not be easy all the more reason, then, for the public to be kept fully informed by the military about the degree of contamination existing at both formerly used defense sites and currently used installations. Gone are the days when the military could hide its dirty work behind a cover of national security. Now, if full disclosure does not occur, it more likely results from fear of embarrassment than from legitimate concerns of disclosing state secrets.

While the public has a right to know, the state has a fiduciary duty to pursue inquiries about military use of state land. Many of the acres occupied by the military are ceded lands. Already, concerns exist that the state has broken faith with the beneficiaries of ceded lands by leasing state lands at token, $1-per-term fees. If those lands are additionally rendered forever useless by the military lessees, that fiduciary responsibility has been broken irreparably.

In his book The Threat at Home, Seth Shulman describes an approach taken by the federal agencies to sites where clean-up is deemed too costly or difficult. “Sacrifice zones” they are called, a term that captures the approach of the military to too many of its lands.

The notion that any piece of this Earth can be sacrificed rather than undertaking the effort to make it whole is repugnant. In Hawai’i, it is more: it is impossible. No land is so remote or so isolated as to be erased from the map, as it were, without consequence. Yet this is exactly what the government would do with the Kamaka land and who knows how many other parcels yet to come. It must be stopped.

Mahalo

Research for this issue was financed in part by a grant from The People’s Fund and The Pohaku Fund. A special thanks to Tim Officer of For Color Publishing, Inc., for the painstaking effort required to produce the map of World War II training sites.

Volume 3, Number 2 August 1992