Hawaiʻi Environmental Council's EIS rulemaking

There is no denying that the way Ulupono conducted its environmental review on the Māhāʻulepū Dairy was self-serving and undermined public participation. Ulupono’s practice of batching public comments for response was particularly egregious because it grouped simple, non-controversial comments together with serious, hard-hitting questions on the same topic, and responded to all comments with substance pertaining only to the soft-ball comments. While this practice is bad, it is a common practice, not specifically disallowed by the current 1996 regulations. The Environmental Council is currently considering revisions to the regulations that govern Hawaiʻi’s environmental review process which includes guidance on batching comments. Their goal is to improve notoriously confusing rules, better adhere to state law, and incorporate our many, hard-fought court victories into day-to-day environmental impact statement (EIS) practice. It is true, the current proposal for batching comments does not go far enough to address the legitimate concerns of community leaders about ensuring the public’s questions are answered through the EIS process. With the right emphasis on public process and the right focus on workable solutions, we are confident this part of the proposed revisions can be improved.  The Sierra Club has engaged with the Environmental Council throughout this pre-rulemaking process and found the council to be extremely transparent and open to our suggestions. To date, the council has addressed our concerns, including restoring the trigger for cultural resources when it was proposed to limit the trigger to only existing cultural practices, removing the definition of “independent utility” which would have allowed improper segmentation of projects, and clarifying the exemption process to minimize abuse by agencies.People should certainly engage in the process to improve the regulations that implement Hawaiʻi’s environmental review process. The Environmental Council meeting tomorrow is one of many opportunities to do that. This is a list of the ways to engage in this process, as well as a detailed and regularly updated calendar of what to expect going forward: health.hawaii.gov/oeqc/rules-update/It is important to note that the state statute requiring environmental review of certain projects is not up for debate or challenge in this process. That statute can only be amended by a bill passed through the Legislature. What is happening right now is amendment of the regulations implementing that statute. The Environmental Council should be applauded for making this transparent effort to engage all of us, understand our concerns, and make useful changes prior to initiating the formal rulemaking process. You can read our comments to the Environmental Council regarding v3 of the proposed regulations here.