Former ʻEwa Feedlot Update Falls Short As Board’s Questions Go Unanswered
Hawaiʻi Land & Livestock’s plans for a 110-acre lot adjacent to the state’s largest slaughterhouse keep evolving. And with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources looking to exercise its right to lease that same land for a renewable energy project — so long as it doesn’t unreasonably interfere with agricultural uses there — the Board of Land and Natural Resources wants a good explanation for why it should not seek to reclaim management authority.
So far, it has not gotten one.
In 2019, via an executive order from then-Governor David Ige, the land, a former feedlot, was transferred from the DLNR to the Department of Agriculture, which subsequently granted HLL a 35-year lease. The company had said it needed the land to provide water to the slaughterhouse and as a holding area for cattle awaiting processing.
But three years into its lease, HLL is still preparing the land to receive cattle, aided by a trucking company (alternately referred to as either All American Trucking or American Hauling) that has set up its baseyard there.
Prompted by concerns raised by the DLNR, the DOA recently decided that the trucking company needs to go, since a baseyard is not an authorized use of the property.
On February 10, the DOA and HLL manager Bobby Farias were expected to provide the Land Board with a schedule for the baseyard’s removal, as well as an update on plans for the larger property.
All the Land Board got was a February 6 letter that Farias and Aaron Eddington of Hawaiʻi Meats sent to Board of Agriculture chair Sharon Hurd, informing her that HLL, Hawaiʻi Meats, and American Hauling, Inc., would enter into an agreement that the trucking company would remove by April 1 all equipment and materials not needed for slaughterhouse operations or for clearing the lot.
“Without restating the entire history of the feedlot, two key facts are important as background: First, when Hawaiʻi Land & Livestock entered into the lease, the property was not in a condition to be used for any purpose. Substantial effort has been made to clear and prepare the property for ongoing agricultural usage. Put simply, the property is in a better condition than we found it. Second, at the time the lease was entered into, American Hauling was already occupying a portion of the property,” the letter states.
If American Hauling fails to make satisfactory progress or vacate, Farias and Eddington stated that they will seek eviction.
It’s unclear when American Hauling/All American Trucking started occupying the property. The DLNR did not respond by press time to questions about whether the baseyard was there before or after the land was transferred to the DOA.
At a previous Land Board meeting, Farias said that cattle pens of various sizes would span the entire leased area. At another, he said that some of it would be used to grow forage, and a small section could become a hog processing facility.
In the February letter to the DOA, Farias and Eddington reported that they were working to “find partnerships and solutions to compliment ranching and agriculture needs.” That included a potential partnership with SUMA Farms LLC, a company established in 2016 to develop “a network of Bana grass suppliers for cattle feed and feed stock for renewable energy,” the letter stated.
Farias and Eddington stated that they are considering producing natural gas on 40 acres of the property by processing Bana grass and the slaughterhouse’s waste.
“This partnership would allow Hawaiʻi Meats to better realize the full capacity of the facility through long-term waste management. In addition, SUMA Farms is confident that it can produce cattle feed for local ranchers,” they wrote.
“Of primary importance to Hawaiʻi Meats are the water usage rights associated with the leased property which are currently shared for use by Hawaiʻi Meats,” they wrote, noting that the DOA had committed in lease documents to providing the slaughterhouse with an additional 20,000 gallons of water a day.
“In addition to the need for water, Hawaiʻi Meats requires a portion of the [former feedlot] property for cattle holding pens, on-site support parking and storage for cattle trailers, cattle feed and other facility equipment,” they added.
No timelines were attached to when the property would be put to the uses intended when the governor ordered the transfer of the land from the DLNR to the DOA.
At the Land Board’s February 10 meeting, DLNR Land Division director Russell Tsuji pointed out that HLL has fallen behind on meeting deadlines in its lease that required the company to generate at least 50 percent of its income from agricultural uses on the property by December of last year.
Neither Farias nor Eddington attended the meeting, and DOA deputy director Morris Atta said he could not provide the Land Board with any greater detail on HLL’s plans for the property.
“The issues of the lease compliance, reservation of water rights, are … somewhat novel to me at this point. It was never raised before. I would need to go back and actually talk to our staff and our lessee,” Atta said.
Board member Riley Smith questioned whether the DOA had the ability to manage HLL. Last year, the board approved a right-of-entry to allow developers of a proposed solar-to-hydrogen energy project to conduct due diligence studies on HLL’s lease area. Farias had been adamant that such a project would be incompatible with his planned uses.
At the February board meeting, Smith told Atta that HLL’s lease clearly allows for an energy project to be developed on the property by a DLNR lessee. Smith also questioned whether the water allocated to HLL’s property could be used by the slaughterhouse run by Hawaiʻi Meats on an adjacent property.
“There’s a lease and they need to conform. I think your tenant just needs to be managed,” Smith told Atta.
Board member Kaiwi Yoon added that he hoped American Hauling wasn’t planning to relocate to somewhere else on the property.
“We are pro-ag, also pro-renewable energy. Also pro …
“Compliance,” board member Aimee Barnes interjected.
Yoon agreed and suggested the DOA was placing the Land Board in an untenable position by allowing apparent violations to linger on the property.
The board members agreed that Farias should come to the board at one of its March meetings to answer questions about how the property is going to be used.
“There are many questions probably better responded to by the lessee without putting you in an awkward position,” board member Doreen Canto told Atta.
(For more background: “Slaughterhouse Operator Wins Reprieve From DLNR Effort to Reclaim Feedlot,” January 2023; and “Board Talk: Slaughterhouse Squabble, Eroding Graves, Fireworks Denied,” May 2022. Both are available free on our website, www.environment-hawaii.org.)
Board Grants Permit For Aquarium Fish Dealer
On February 10, the Land Board granted a revocable permit to Hawaiian Sealife, Inc., for warehouse space at the Honolulu airport for its live tropical fish import/export business and wholesale made-in-Hawaiʻi products.
A month earlier, the board deferred voting on the permit after members of the public testified that an audit of the company’s purchases and sales of locally caught aquarium species needed to be done to ensure what’s being reported is accurate. Robert Wintner, owner of Snorkel Bob’s dive shops, suggested that a lot more fish from Hawaiʻi was being sold than what’s been reported.
No one from Hawaiian Sealife had attended the meeting to answer questions about its activities.
Last month, however, Hawaiian Sealife president Richard Xie testified that his company has been inspected by the USDA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serivce, and the state Division of Aquatic Resources.
“We file fish reports. … We have the most transparent business in Hawaiʻi,” Xie said.
DAR’s David Sakoda told the board that the division has reviewed Hawaiian Sealife’s purchases and “didn’t see anything to suggest any thing falsely reported. … Everything was closely aligned.”
(For more background, see, “Efforts to Quash Aquarium Collecting Ramp Up at Land Board, Legislature,” from our February 2023 issue.)
— Teresa Dawson
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