Cornerstone Hawai’i Holdings LLC, Kealia Water Company, Kaua’i Ranch, Moloa’a Bay Ranch, Northshore Nursery, the Kealia Kai development all of these companies trace back in one way or another to McCloskey and Company, whose mission, according to the company’s web site, is “to develop projects and businesses responsibly, steward the land, and leave a positive, lasting legacy.”
The company, based in Aspen, Colorado, is owned by Thomas and Bonnie McCloskey and their family. While they say they want to be good stewards and responsible developers, over the last few years, they’ve run afoul off state land regulations, have been criticized by Kaua’i residents for the way they’ve tried to develop their lands, and have been investigated by the county for grading and grubbing violations.
Moloa’a Bay Ranch and Kaua’i Ranch are the McCloskeys’ “private property home sites,” according to the McCloskey and Company website. With recent efforts by Kaua’i Ranch to make “full use” of its Kealia land, including land currently in the Conservation District, the McCloskeys’ history of activity on other conservation lands they own at Moloa’a is worth reviewing.
In August 1999, the Land Board fined Moloa’a Bay Ranch for cutting approximately 100 trees from the top of the property down to a cliff above the rocky shore. The clear-cut area totaled about one and a half acres in the Conservation District.
In an August 13, 1999 report to the Land Board, Land Division planner Sam Lemmo (now head of the Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands) wrote that the division was concerned about the fact that Moloa’a Bay Ranch representatives had authorized the tree clearing, but kept it secret from Land Division staff during meetings and subsequent correspondence in late April and early May.
During those discussions, “Staff made it clear to the alleged [violator] that tree cutting was not permitted and that it would require a permit from the Department. Staff feels that the alleged [violator] was not forthcoming with this information, which raises the issue of trustworthiness,” Lemmo wrote.
Based on his recommendations, the Land Board fined Moloa’a Bay Ranch $3,000 for the violation.
About a year later, the ranch informed the DLNR that it was planning to do “much needed maintenance activities which will involve the use of a John Deere 3155 4WD tractor pulling a 7-foot, three point hitch Chulte deck mower, a Peterson Pacific HC2410 grinder, and a John Deere Slash Buster,” states a June 13, 2003 Land Division report by planner Matthew Myers. Weedwhackers and chainsaws might also be used, the ranch said.
Following a November 2000 DLNR inspection of the proposed maintenance site with ranch representatives, the department agreed to allow the ranch to conduct “limited clearing and cutting of 6 to 7 dead ironwood trees, 5,500 square feet of dead Christmasberry trees and dead java plum trees in various locations,” Myers wrote.
The ranch did far more than what the DLNR had agreed to allow. In May 2001 the DLNR’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife reported that more than seven ironwood trees had been cut, more than 5,500 square feet of Christmasberry had been cleared, and Java plum removal was ongoing.
Information in a Special Management Area Permit Application for the ranch revealed the extent of the conservation violations. The application stated that 126 ironwood trees, “some of which may have been healthy,” the DLNR says, were removed. Also, Moloa’a Bay Ranch’s contractor Kusao & Kurahashi, Inc., who prepared the SMA application, told the DLNR that about 25 strawberry guava, 45 java plum, 28 Christmas berry, and 58 haole-koa trees were cut, and “many of these may also have been in good conditions,” the DLNR wrote in a January 2003 letter to the ranch.
The ranch answered back with a letter stating that all the trees were either dead or dying, and that no Conservation District Use Permit was required.
Myers wrote in his report that DLNR staff had no way of knowing if trees were in fact dead or dying. In any case, “the landowner should have cleared this matter with the former Planning Branch, since there was an agreement in place to remove only 6 or 7 trees, not 284 trees . The landowner, Moloa’a Bay Ranch, LLC, was informed by the Department on several occasions that they should not engage in any activities that involved potential land uses without necessary permits ”
While Myers recommended a fine only $6,000, the Land Board, because of the apparent flagrancy of the violations, fined Moloa’a Bay Ranch $16,000.
Also in 2003, residents of Moloa’a voiced concern before the Kaua’i County Council and the Land Board that grubbing and grading on McCloskey’s property was being done without permits. In May 2003, the Department of Public Works reported to the council’s Planning Committee that the allegation of illegal grading in Moloa’a had been referred to the county prosecutor.
When asked how the McCloskeys were using their conservation/forest reserve land at Kaua’i Ranch, Jenny Fujita, a representative for the McCloskeys, noted that the land had been leased for pasture for more than 20 years by the previous owner, Amfac, and that “the lease continued for three years after the McCloskeys became the property owners (from approximately 1999-2001).”
Agricultural activities in the conservation district ceased in 2001, she wrote in an email to Environment Hawai’i. She added that the McCloskeys do conduct routine maintenance on reservoirs and auwais in the forest reserve area that provide irrigation water to Kaua’i Ranch, cattle ranchers, and the Kealia Kai housing development.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 15, Number 2 August 2004