Group News: Hawaiʻi Island, Maui, Oʻahu
Hawaiʻi Island Group
Reapportionment Lawsuit
By Shannon Matson | Reading time: 1.5 minutes
A group of 11 concerned citizens from Hawaiʻi Island, Oʻahu, and Maui are filing a lawsuit against the Hawaiʻi Reapportionment Commission to challenge the maps that were put forth for redistricting. Without this legal challenge the current maps will divide our districts for the next 10 years in direct violation of the Hawaiʻi State Constitutional Criteria; specifically stating that House districts should be contained within Senate district lines whenever practicable.
Additionally, the Commission failed to give due consideration to alternative plans which were submitted to the Commission by citizens, failed to give due consideration to the fact that some of the alternative plans also fixed the problems of not using Makapuʻu Point as a natural boundary between East Honolulu and Windward Oʻahu and diluting Hawaiian representation (Oʻahu Senate) and not using compact districts of similar socio-economic neighborhoods (Hawaiʻi Island House), and displayed a persistent pattern of abuse of discretion and disregard for public input.
Following the Constitutional criteria has a real bearing on the quality and effectiveness of our representation! If every House District is fully contained within one Senate District, then all elected officials would have a better shared understanding of the community's needs for schools, roads, and other infrastructure, enabling them to be more effective at representing their district.
As Bill Hicks, one of the petitioners, recently stated in an interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, "Commissioners need to understand that this process is supposed to be for the people who elect their representatives, and not an enabler for representatives to select their constituents. There must be more transparency."
Here is the Reapportionment Justice Coalition's final list of petitioners:
Oahu: 4: Bill Hicks, Kimeona Kane, Roberta Mayor, and Larry Veray
Hawaiʻi Island: 6: Phil Barnes, Ralph Boyea, Michaela Ikeuchi, Maki Morinoue, Jennifer Tsuji, and Deborah Ward
Maui: 1: Madge Schaefer
If people are willing to support this lawsuit for Reapportionment Justice they can donate in the following two ways:
They can send checks to:
Reapportionment Justice Coalition
c/o Kathleen Huckabay
68-1872 Pu’u Nui St
Waikoloa, HI 96738Or they can use Go-Fund-Me:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/reapportionment-justice-coalition
Maui Group
Wailea 670: Still Standing for the Land
By Lucienne de Naie | Reading time: 4 minutes
Wailea 670/Honua’ula is the largest proposed development project (1,150 housing units and several commercial areas on 670 acres) currently proposed for south Maui. Two hundred acres of rugged lava flow terrain at the south end of the project is also home to one of Maui’s few remaining lowland native dryland forests with 25 known species of native plants and a number of rare and endangered plants and animals. The entire expanse of land has hundreds of traditional Hawaiian archaeological sites, including rare ahupua’a boundary markers.
The Sierra Club and many other community groups testified for years that a large preserve should be part of the proposed development. The Maui County Council provided a Condition of Zoning calling for a 130-acre preserve, but the project owners, Honua’ula Partners, LLC (“HP”) reinterpreted this requirement to be a 40-acre preserve. This design would have destroyed 75% of the rare dryland native species and hundreds of Hawaiian cultural sites—replacing them with luxury housing and a private golf course.
The Sierra Club and allies, Maui Unite, representing many community voices, challenged the project’s Final EIS in 2012. Community volunteers worked for three years to craft a 2016 settlement agreement with the project owners, to protect 160-acres of native forest and a complex cultural landscape of archaeological sites at the southern end of the land.
Wailea 670‘s archaeologically significant area, spanning three ahupua’a, had been extensively studied by the late Kumu Michael Kumukauoha Lee, who created an archaeo-astronomy map of the land. The map gives rich meaning to the hundreds of Hawaiian features on the land—by viewing them as part of an intricate pattern of traditional Hawaiian use. Unfortunately, the gift of this traditional knowledge offered by Kumu Lee was ignored in the archaeological studies, and many important archaeological features were lumped together in the generic category “agricultural feature” and cleared for destruction, even when cultural users suggested other interpretations.
It’s all About the Preserve Boundaries: What’s In, What’s Out?
While the protected areas in Wailea 670 have been created in principle, the actual location of their boundaries, which needs to be based upon the verified location of the archaeological sites to be preserved, has still not been resolved. HP, the Delaware based investment consortium that controls the land, recently informed the Sierra Club and Maui Unite that the detailed preserve boundary review provided for in the 2016 Settlement was “completed” three years ago, in 2019.
The community groups were shocked to hear this, since the proposed preserve boundary markers were barely visible in the undergrowth during their preliminary 2019 inspection tour. The idea that this was the one opportunity provided to ground truth the all important boundary location, seemed preposterous. The groups submitted comments to HP in June of 2019 requesting many boundary adjustments and emphasizing that the actual proposed boundary alignment be cleared, so the groups could determine if the historic sites the settlement agreed to protect were actually inside the preserves. This clearing never happened.
The groups’ 2019 comments to HP only covered about one third of the jigsaw puzzle-like Wailea 670 preserve boundary alignment. The groups had no clue what other adjustments were proposed for the remaining two-thirds of the boundary route, since no interim map was provided for that section that reflected changes requested during the preliminary walk. No further reply about the boundary adjustments came from HP until the unilateral 2021 announcement that the boundary review inspections provided in the settlement were “complete,” and all “disputes were resolved.”
But the community groups’s “disputes” about the boundary location were not “resolved.”
“What HP is saying just doesn’t make any sense,” said Sierra Club volunteer Jeanne Schaaf who attended the Wailea 670 preliminary boundary inspection walks in 2019.
“Three years ago we push our way through tangled brush trying to see boundary markers. We can’t always see if the sites we want to protect are located in or out of the boundaries. We ask for clearing to be done, and are told that we will come back to resolve the many areas where have questions. Then we never find out what happens to most of the boundary. We hear nothing more since 2019, and now we’re told that the process is “done”.“
The groups have been asking for years for historic site areas in the HP project to be fully mapped, mistaken site locations to be corrected, and “missing” sites be included in the project’s preservation plans—these basic requests have been ignored.
Instead, HP submitted its final permit applications to the Maui Planning Commission on February 22, this year, ignoring the 2016 settlement that required boundary issues to be resolved before the project sought final approvals. The Sierra Club and Maui Unite continue to stand for the natural and cultural resources of this land, and filed with the Maui Circuit Court for breach of the 2016 settlement agreement in mid-February. Your support of this legal effort is appreciated. Please donate at mauisierraclub.org.
Oʻahu Group
2022 Sierra Club Oʻahu Group Executive Committee
Reading time: 4 minutes
We have an ambitious agenda to improve the sustainability of our island home and focus on a wide spectrum of issues like mitigating the effects of climate change, transitioning to renewable energy sources, concentrating smart growth and development within the urban core, and advocating for local food production, water security, and waste reduction. The Oʻahu Group Executive Committee is made up of hard-working individuals, elected by our membership, to ensure that we are effective in achieving our goals.
We are excited to announce our 2022 Oʻahu Group leaders!
Dana R. Lyons - Chair
Dana has been a member of the Sierra Club’s Oʻahu Group Executive Committee for the past three years and is past chair of the Chapter Litigation Committee. Dana practices real property, commercial, and environmental law, advocating for and advising clients on sustainable and resilient business strategies. He enjoys playing basketball, swimming, gardening, practicing aloha ʻāina, and taking his two keiki and dog on hikes and to the beach.
Adele Balderston - Vice Chair
Adele is a Geographer and Urban Planner from Windward Oʻahu. She studied New Media Communication at NYU, earned a Masters in Geography and GIS from CUNY Hunter College, and has held positions with the New York City Department of City Planning, UH Economic Research Organization (UHERO), the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation. She is also the founder of 88 Block Walks—a venture at the intersection of geography, art, and activism whose mission is to raise awareness of socio-spatial inequality and advocate for community agency. Adele also serves on Honolulu Neighborhood Board #14 (Liliha/Puʻunui/Alewa).
Marti Townsend - Secretary
Director for the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi from 2015-2021. Prior to joining the Sierra Club, she served as Executive Director of The Outdoor Circle, and KAHEA: The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance. She now works at Earthjustice. Marti’s goal is to stamp out environmental racism. Her work helped to protect streams (and the taro farmers that use them) from profit-driven diversions, establish Hawaiʻi’s Environmental Court, defend Mauna Kea’s conservation district from overdevelopment, establish the Papahānaumokuakea Marine National Monument (and Northwestern Hawaiian Islands State Refuge), and challenge the U.S. military’s abuse of the Hawaiian Islands. She is a graduate of University of Hawaiʻi’s William S. Richardson School of Law, Boston University, and Moanalua High School.
Reese Liggett - Treasurer
William Reese Liggett practiced brokerage of commercial real estate in Honolulu after a career in the Air Force. A life member, he has served as an Outings Leader and was chair of the Oʻahu Group Outings Committee for three years. As an activist, he helped establish fair public access for the Wiliwilinui Trail in the ‘90s and recently encouraged action by City Parks to protect the natural features at Wāwāmalu Beach in East Honolulu with a boulder barrier.
Angela Huntemer - O’ahu Group Representative
Serving on Sea Shepherd ships around the world, as well as hiking and freediving in Hawaiʻi for the past thirty years galvanized Angela’s commitment to biodiversity. Degrees in psychology and education and twenty years of teaching (currently at Kaʻaʻawa Elementary) have provided her with tools and connections to effect change. Through place-based education and as an environmental activist, Angela has worked proactively with communities from school kids to NGOs, corporations, and government to protect habitat at Turtle Bay, Waialeʻe, Pupukea-Waimea MLCD, and other areas on the Koʻolauloa-North Shore.
Steven Lee Montgomery - Member
Dr. Montgomery completed his MS and PhD entomology degrees from the College of Tropical Agriculture, University of Hawai'i. He has worked in Hawaiʻi environmental biology, natural history video, bio-politics, and honeybee services. He has volunteered with the Hawaiʻi Natural Area and Land Use Commissions, and Ahahui Malama I Ka Lokahi /Hawaiians for the Conservation of Native Ecosystems. From West Oʻahu, he led Chapter support for Honouliuli National Historic Site as a new unit of the national park system and has numerous publications and received Sierra Club’s National Special Achievement Award for helping bring the IUCN World Conservation Congress to Hawaiʻi.
Randy Gonce - Member
Randy currently serves as the Executive Director of the Hawaiʻi Cannabis Industry Association (HICIA) where he advances sound public policy and regulation of the cannabis industry in Hawaiʻi. He has a Masters Degree from Hawaiʻi Pacific University in Global Leadership In Sustainable Development with a focus on local public policy. Randy’s deeply passionate about environmental issues and their intersectionality with the rest of our lives. His master's thesis dove into environmental justice issues in regard to Hawaii’s cesspool contamination in Kahaluʻu Oʻahu. Randy has experience working in both the Legislative and Executive branches of the Hawaii State Government. For multiple legislative sessions, he served as a committee clerk, researcher, and policy advisor. Additionally, he also served as the Assistant on Homelessness in the Governor’s office in 2019. While well versed in public policy Randy is more attracted to direct action activism. Randy is a water protector who went to the Standing Rock pipeline protests in 2016 and a Kiaʻi who went to protect Mauna Kea in 2019. In his free time, Randy propagates native plants with Ka Ulu Lāʻau and assists in carrying out their mission to educate people on the medicinal, practical, and environmental importance of Hawaiʻi’s plants.
Red Hill Subcommittee
The Sierra Club Oʻahu Group has launched a Red Hill subcommittee and is looking for volunteers to join. With major drinking water wells still shut down, the subcommittee will focus on local actions to help our communities practice water conservation, mandatory or not. Email the subcommittee chair, Marti, to join!