My dad died in the very spot he was born in at 1845 Maunawili Road. It was his last wish and his children did the best we could to set the dying environment.
The reason he died in the makeshift shack this past summer, because over time the permitting, real estates laws and land taxes from $300 to $6,000 within the past 20 years are political changes which made it impossible to live within reason a quality of life. It was unsafe! But dad died in the same spot he was born in.
When dad was on trips, I would trim trees, put a pole up in his kitchen to hold the leaky-termite-roof up and clean-out his ice box. When he got home, I would catch hell. My dad was a proud pure Hawaiian! Some fix ups went bad such as the plumbing! I did not do a good job of cutting the pipe and putting it back together again with the right glue and sleeve. I won't even go into the electrical problems. Daughter's aren't suppose to...it's a macho thing!
Too much unintelligent political moves towards greed created a governing system of mayhem, I fear that is what we are doing tomorrow should we not be successful in removing the purple spot, or opposing Act 50.
Waianae will have to build 'hoppers' to filter out the pollution from PVT industrial and backyard waste dumps businesses that are popping up everywhere in Waianae for the last ten years. The air quality is devastating!
We have an air monitoring device in Waianae built in 2009, which is a joke. The air condition in my car does a better job of filtering contaminates-- is my point! Only recently, did the Department of Health purchase the correct wafers that filters and give correct readings. One can see this device on the web as well as air quality reading. By the way this device is out of sight and in an area where it doesn't matter. Unlike the one in Pearl City, it's right at the corner of Waimano Home Road and Kamehameha Highway.
Here is more reading from Kahea, take it to action and join us tomorrow at Kapolei Hale.
Hi guys,
As of 9 pm, 322 people submitted testimony against the purple spot. Only about the first 289 made it in before 4:30 pm, so weʻll print the rest and hand deliver them to the hearing. But Woohoo!! If people want updates on the hearing along the way, you can either text me at 808-372-1314 or if you have a smart phone, follow us on www.twitter.com. Our handle is "@kaheaalliance."
Updates:
I had wanted to get the unilateral agreement scanned and emailed to you guys, but I hit some technical snags. I have hard copies though, I will bring them to the hearing. It is only about 15 pages long. The things to look for when you read it: does it say that activities on the land are limited to only a golf course? (I donʻt think it does, but we should be extra sure of that). Given all these last minute details, I may not get the myth vs. fact table completed in time. Iʻm sorry.
I need to correct some of what I thought about the unilateral agreement until just a few hours ago. After talking to lots of people today and tracking down the original document itself, it is clear that the unilateral agreement is a contract imposed by the City at the time the golf course was officially zoned in 1996 (all this time I thought it was an LUC document).
Thoughts on their strategy:
Knowing that the 1996 unilateral agreement is a document created by the city makes me wonder if Tropic Land and David Tanoue will try to introduce the concept of a new unilateral agreement tomorrow as a compromise. They could say something like: "if you are so worried about industrial zoning then why not just impose a restriction on the land use. Grant us the I-1 zoning and then write a seperate document that limits the activities on the property to only those that are ag-related." I could see Berg and others adopting such an offer as a "win-win" for everyone. This makes me suspicious for many reasons.
1) It sounds like exactly what happened in 1996 -- and though that succeed in keeping the land out of golf course, it didnʻt put it back into farming. Tropic Land probably just wants to get their I-1 by any means possible and move on, so they may not be thinking past step two. But we would be losing the fight to save farmland, inch by inch.
2) I also do not trust that the City Councilmembers know enough to really write a meaningful restriction on the fly at the hearing. Worse yet, they might delegate the job to Tanoue or Tropic Land, itself. When it comes to documents like this the devil really is in the details -- this is where lawyers can be particularly powerful and dangerous.
3) It does not address the long-term affect such a land use in this area would have on the future of the valley. An industrial park -- even one that serves farmers -- would be a new isolated urban land use deep inside the ag district; it would encourage future use of the Navy lands to be more urban in nature than actual farming; it would give this less-than-trust-worthy business entity a foothold deep in the community.
4) Who decided an ag-related industrial park was an appropriate use of this land anyway? The EIS was on a true light industrial park, there was never any mention of ag-related businesses. The real answer is: remove the purple spot and go back to the community with the question: where is a good place to put an ag-related industrial park? The community may say not anywhere here because there already is a glut of industrial zoned land of all kinds on Oahu.
5) The real longterm danger is not the industrial park itself, it is that expanded urban growth boundary (euphemistically called the "community growth boundary" in the plan). The trend in planning is to try to connect the common land use areas together. So instead of having spots of urban use doting Farrington Highway for example, planners will just make the whole stretch of the Highway urban. This prevents inconsistent land uses ending up on neighboring properties, minimizes the need for variances where neighboring properties want to do similar things but are in different land use boundaries. My fear is that they would get that spec of urban growth boundary and then in 10 years the next plan will say just connect the dots and make the whole side of the valley urban. That would be classic urban sprawl.
So, this is a long way of saying, my advice is: do not accept anything less than total spot removal. That expanded urban growth boundary is particularly dangerous. And we just donʻt know enough to be sure it is a good deal -- and that means it is a bad deal. (I feel like I am being forced to buy a crappy used car). Do not settle for less -- that is not a win.
I think we stick to our guns and implore the Councilmembers that this is not their decision to make -- the best they can do is send this plan back for further discussion either to committee or to the planning commission.
Taking on Tanoue:
We have gone back and forth on whether to call Tanoue out or not. Some people advise that if we name him, target him as responsible for this whole mess, he could hold it against us. Make things hard for us in the future somehow -- if you have a home improvement permit that needs his approval, he could hang it up forever. That is something real to consider. I think in the end, people just need to go with what they feel is appropriate for them in the moment. I for one will work hard in the future to make sure that an actual planner is the head of the planning department in the very near future.
I just feel like the powerful and the wealthy have been mucking around with this valley against the communityʻs will for too long -- it has got to stop. This plan -- getting it adopted the way the residents of Waianae originally wanted it -- is the first step to ending their bullying tactics in this community. Now is a time of great change all over the place. High mukamukas like Enomoto are not as strong as they used to be. And we have built a dynamic and powerful coalition. We are strong -- we can totally take them!
See you guys tomorrow.
- Marti.
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