It may seem silly now, but Honolulu officials Jack L. Throp and Paul Weissich were serious in 1966 when they proposed introducing exotic mammals from South America, Africa, China, and elsewhere into Kawai Nui marsh as part of an outdoor park.
That year , the City and County of Honolulu invited O`ahu residents to offer suggestions for what to do with the 749 acres of Kawai Nui marsh it had recently purchased to stop former owner Centex-Trousdale Corporation from constructing 4,000 homes on 200 acres there.
From the early 1920s through 1950s, the residential areas at the makai end of the marsh experienced a number of major floods. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had designed a flood-control project and was working with the city to implement it when Centex-Trousdale proposed its development. So in 1964, with federal aid, the city bought Kawai Nui for $1.2 million, and the Corps completed its flood control project in 1966.
According to an October 1966 article by Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Toni Withington, Throp, the city’s then-zoo director, and Weissich, city botanical gardens director, had ideas of their own about what should be done with the city’s new purchase.
They proposed a biological garden or park, with paths, floating walkways, and an educational pavilion. They also proposed filling the marsh with a walrus-like creature called a dugong, manatees, South American porpoises, and perhaps otters, beavers, platypuses, water opposums, South American raccoons, African swamp antelope, and Chinese water deer.
Throp told the Star-Bulletin that the park would be an attempt to make animal displays more natural, a trend at the time among zoos across the country.
“These are not things that will happen but only suggestions for what is possible if the community wants them,” he was quoted as saying.
Like many proposals for the marsh that followed, nothing came of Throp and Weissich’s zoo. The community, it turned out, had wanted a navigable channel and recreational areas around the perimeter of a wildlife sanctuary, which would occupy most of the marsh. Over the years, proposals to build a shopping complex and to develop a recreation-based park came and went.
Driven by groups like the Outdoor Circle, visions for the area eventually turned more to preservation than exploitation. Even so, none of the management plans created by the state and the city in 1983, 1994, and 2001 were implemented to any great extent.
Today, more plans are in the works. There’s a state plan for a 70-acre waterbird habitat restoration project and even more ambitious plans by community groups that include the reclamation of important Hawaiian areas throughout the ahupua`a in which Kawai Nui sits.
A Plea
Dr. Charles Burrows, a retired Kamehameha Schools science teacher and president of `Ahahui Malama I Ka Lokahi, plans to meet with Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann this month to try to coax the city into providing some kind of access to the state to a small portion of the marsh intended for the waterbird habitat project, which he says is in danger of losing its federal support.
About eight years ago, the Corps of Engineers and the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife collaborated on a plan called the Kawai Nui Marsh Environmental Restoration Project. Their intent was to build several shallow ponds over some 80 acres, once used to grow taro, to provide habitat for endangered Hawaiian waterbirds, including the `ae`o (Hawaiian stilt) and `alae ke`oke`o (Hawaiian coot), that require shallow water or mudflats. Over the decades, the sedimentation and eutrophication of the marsh has reduced habitat for these birds, whose populations range between 2,000 and 4,000.
The proposed project area includes both state- and city-owned lands located a short walk from Ulupo Heiau State Monument and behind Castle Medical Center, where the soil has built up, grass has grown in, and cattle currently graze.
Joined by about six or seven other community leaders, Burrows plans to show the mayor computer-generated renderings, created by a University of Hawai`i student and based on a design by local engineering firm Oceanit, of what the ponds could look like. He’ll tell the mayor that if the city and state cannot resolve their differences soon, nearly $4 million in federal matching funds intended for this project may be redirected elsewhere.
For years, the city and state have been deadlocked over which will take responsibility for maintenance of the marsh’s flood-control features.
In the 1960s and again in the 1990s, the Corps of Engineers and the city worked together on flood-control projects, with the city in both cases signing agreements that it would be responsible for maintenance.
While the marsh was purchased, in part, to serve as a flood control basin for Kailua town, the state, recognizing the need to manage the marsh’s economic, ecological, and cultural resources, prepared a Kawai Nui Marsh Resource Management Plan in 1983. To allow the state to implement that plan, the 1990 state Legislature passed Act 314, which required that all rights the city had relating to Kawai Nui Marsh, except for a community park area, be transferred to the state, “provided that the city and county of Honolulu and the United States Army Corps of Engineers shall have first completed all pending flood control projects … to the satisfaction of the [state] department of land and natural resources; provided further that at the time of the transfer … the state shall enter into any required operation or maintenance agreements, or both, with the [Corps].”
Pending the transfer, the act further required the state and city to enter into some kind of agreement to allow the DLNR to manage the marsh’s resources as called for in the 1983 management plan.
The transfer never occurred.
On New Year’s Eve in 1997, torrential rains caused massive flooding throughout Coconut Grove subdivision. The city was sued by residents, and has since then refused to transfer any portion of the marsh to the state without the state also taking over responsibility for flood control, despite Act 314, which was amended by Act 47 in 1998, and despite the fact that it may mean the loss of federal funds.
The state has asked the Corps what its options are, and was told last year that whatever agreements the city and state may make regarding the maintenance of the flood-control system, the overall legal responsibility will remain with the city. The city disagrees.
Last year, state Reps. Pono Chong, Cynthia Thielen, Ezra Kanoho, Marcus Oshiro, and Tommy Waters introduced a bill that would have, again, required the city to transfer ownership of the marsh to the state, but with the city retaining the responsibility for flood control.
The bill was passed by the House, but was defeated in the Senate.
Despite the bill’s failure, the Board of Land and Natural Resources, at its July 14 meeting, authorized the acquisition of 693.155 acres of the marsh, with a covenant stating that the responsibility and liability associated with flood control lies in perpetuity with the city. The decision, a Department of Land and Natural Resources staff report stated, was in accordance with Acts 314 and 47.
`Ahahui members, among many others, view the fight between the state and the city with disdain, since they say taxpayers are paying for everything no matter which agency controls the property. What’s more, `Ahahui has ideas for those ponds and are anxious to get the project underway.
‘Cultural Ownership’
Founded in 1994, `Ahahui is “a nonprofit group of Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians devoted to the preservation of native species and ecosystems, and the importance of their relationship to Hawaiian culture,” its website states.
O`ahu has been urbanized to the point where there are few large, intact areas that are truly “Hawaiian” in the historical and cultural sense, Burrows says. He has a vision to reclaim what he calls “cultural ownership” of parts of Kawai Nui marsh and the ahupua`a it lies in. As a member of the Kailua Hawaiian Civic Club and the Kailua Historical Society, and as head of `Ahahui, Burrows has been at the forefront of efforts to restore and revive the marsh to its former glory as a source of food production, a sacred Hawaiian cultural site, and a thriving wetland and dry forest ecosystem.
Since the mid-1990s, `Ahahui and civic club members, joined by a growing flock of students, residents, and visitors, have been doing just that, one pulled weed, one native planting, one class project, one volunteer Saturday, one chant or prayer at a time.
`Ahahui has a curatorship agreement with the state to care for 12 acres at Na Pohaku o Hauwahine, a peninsula located along Kapa`a Quarry road that juts into the marsh, and for more than 20 acres at Ulupo Heiau State Monument, which is adjacent to the Kaliua YMCA. The Kailua Hawaiian Civic Club is co-curator at Ulupo.
`Ahahui, the civic club, and its supporters have transformed these sites over the past decade. At Ulupo, they’ve cut back the overgrown hau, carefully sifted soil littered with glass and other debris left by long-forgotten farmers who once lived there, and cleared irrigation canals so that the ancient taro patches there can be reopened.
Because Ulupo was originally an agricultural heiau, sited at the confluence of underground springs, Burrows envisions taro returning to the immediate area down to the marsh beyond Ulupo. A few small patches near the heiau are already growing taro, and more are being opened. With the cooperation of taro and banana farmer Mark Stride, who tends farms in Maunawili and Luluku, Burrows says he hopes to one day see Ulupo and Stride’s farms used as a taro huli bank containing all of the 80 or so remaining Hawaiian taro varieties.
Last month, Burrows presented a proposal to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ Native Hawaiian Historical and Cultural Preservation Council to have OHA purchase five acres fronting the heiau owned by the YMCA. The organization had been contemplating an expansion of its facility, which would eat up the small area volunteers and visitors use to access the heiau.
It’s a project that would take years to complete, Burrows says. But if it goes through, he hopes to use the site as a management office and education center for the marsh and other Hawaiian cultural sites in the ahupua`a. (In addition to managing areas, `Ahahui also conducts educational tours of the archaeology, history, geology, water birds, and aquatic animals and insects of the marsh and surrounding areas.)
At Na Pohaku o Hauwahine, `Ahahui is also restoring a small portion of the marsh, but has focused mainly on turning the hillside back into a native dry forest using plants from Hui Ku Maoli Ola, a nursery that specializes in native species. `Ahahui began working there on its own in 1997. A few years ago, with a grant from Ducks Unlimited, `Ahahui helicoptered in water tanks and installed a water catchment system to assist restoration efforts. Today, visitors can stand in the shade of native and Polynesian-introduced trees like koa and milo, and see pili grass and pa`uohi`iaka covering the ground. In the surrounding area, vegetation consists mostly of alien species like java plum, haole koa, and California grass.
Although the group’s work has been lauded in news articles, supported with grants, and praised by conservation and Hawaiian groups and the city and state agencies, the state’s Land Division had once proposed fining the group for conducting work on state land without proper permits or access, Burrows says, adding that the division also threatened to fence the area and charge `Ahahui lease rent of $2,000 a month. `Ahahui member Susan Miller investigated the land’s history and found that the site was supposed to have been transferred to the State Parks division, but never was. `Ahahui then initiated the transfer, which allows for a curator agreement with the state. That was approved by the Land Board in August 2005.
For Birds and Taro
While `Ahahui members have forged ahead using volunteer and student labor, workers from the nearby Women’s Correctional Center, and other groups, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on plans for Kawai Nui over the last two decades. For various reasons, very little of what the plans call for has been implemented. On paper, however, the ponds have gotten smaller and smaller with each new plan by the state. What began in the 1980s as a proposal to have 80 acres of ponds was reduced to 24 in 2006. (Although the entire waterbird project area will cover 70 acres, only 24 of those will be ponds, Burrows says.)
The most recent design was created for DOFAW by Oceanit, which submitted a draft plan to the Army Corps last month for review. To avoid disturbing any archaeological sites or features that may be buried beneath the soil, the ponds will be only 18 inches deep. Oceanit revised the previous design, made in 2000, to have the ponds follow the natural contours of the land, says Travis Hilton, an Oceanit engineer who showed renderings of the proposed ponds at a recent bird tour of the marsh. In previous plans, the ponds were to be laid out in straight lines.
Because the ponds will be shallow, Burrows says they could support taro as well. And because of this, he has been pushing to get the project off the ground before the opportunity to get federal money for it disappears. Whether DOFAW will incorporate taro into its management scheme (should it ever gain legal access to the area) remains to be seen. In any case, Burrows notes that Oceanit has told him the ponds were purposely designed to grow taro.
Peter Young, director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, says the impasse between the city and the state hasn’t changed much since the Land Board’s decision in July.
“There has been some discussion [with the city]. Mostly it’s still at the polarized level. There are community groups wanting to help broker stuff. [Burrows] is planning a meeting with the mayor. He’s going to be pushing to at least give some access. The minimum we would need is a license. An easement would be cleaner. We don’t have to have title to get entry, but we need more than a right-of-way. We’re not opposed to taking title. We think the city should honor its commitment to the Army Corps.”
Laverne Higa, director of the city’s Department of Facilities Maintenance, which is responsible for flood control throughout the county, also says that nothing has changed since July. While she had heard of a proposal to transfer the small portion of city land intended for ponds earlier last year, Higa says that proposal has not advanced either.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 17, Number 7 January 2007
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