Last month, the group Hui Lihikai – Citizens for Protection of the North Kohala Coastline formally asked the Board of Land and Natural Resources to revoke a Conservation District permit for a house on the North Kohala Coast.
The permit for the house has been the subject of two long reports in Environment Hawai’i. (For details, see the [url=/members_archives/archives_more.php?id=1221_0_31_0_C]October[/url] and [url=/members_archives/archives_more.php?id=1228_0_31_0_C]November[/url] 1993 Conservation District columns.) Many of the points raised in these articles are contained also in the petition for declaratory ruling filed with the Land Board by Hui Lihikai.
The petition points out that Condition 4 of the present Conservation District Use Permit for the house, proposed initially by Michael Rearden in 1987, provides that the permit may be modified, suspended or revoked if information supplied by the applicant turns out to be false, incomplete, or inaccurate. Hui Lihikai documents 13 instances where statements made by Rearden in seeking the permit or time extensions are contradicted by evidence obtained from public records or by sworn affidavits. Attached to the petition are 65 exhibits, including copies of court documents, real property conveyances, and business registration records.
In exercising the right to seek a declaratory ruling, Hui Lihikai is using a vehicle that until now had been used almost exclusively by applicants seeking relief from board-imposed conditions. Other environmental groups, frustrated by their inability to get their concerns over apparent Conservation District violations on the Land Board’s agenda, may want to watch closely the reception given Hui Lihikai’s petition.
Andy Anderson Seeks Rezoning in Tantalus
On November 20, 1992, the Board of Land and Natural Resources denied the application of well-known restaurateur and politician Andy Anderson to build a house on Bishop Estate land in the Conservation District on Tantalus, overlooking Honolulu. The front yard of the house and the approach would have been on two other parcels of land, one owned by the state and the other, a road-type parcel, owned by various other private interests. (See the [url=/members_archives/archives_more.php?id=789_0_32_0_C]January 1992 cover article[/url] of Environment Hawai’i for a fuller discussion, and a follow-up note in the [url=/members_archives/archives_more.php?id=1143_0_32_0_C]December 1992 Island Watch column[/url].)
The reason for denial was a finding that the site proposed for the house was in the limited subzone, where new houses are usually not permitted.
Now, Anderson is petitioning (again through his daughter, Randolyn J. Grobe) to have the area where he wanted to build the house placed into the resource subzone, where new houses are generally permitted by the Land Board. The petition argues that the existing boundary line between the resource and limited subzones is arbitrary.
On January 14, 1994, the Land Board was asked to consider the petition. The petition was denied, on the basis that Grobe/Anderson did not have the authority of the owners of the state land or adjoining privately held road lot to apply for the rezoning on their behalf. In the letter notifying Grobe of the board’s decision, Grobe was told to “mend your petition … to reflect only the property owned by Bishop Estate… We are unable to proceed further with the processing of the petition until it has been amended as noted.”
By the end of April, neither Grobe nor Anderson had filed an amended petition.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 4, Number 11 May 1994
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