In 1986, Michael Miller found himself wanting to build on small (1.66 acre) agricultural lot he purchased in the Wai`oli area. As the deed clearly stated, the property was sold with “no access” — in other words, it was landlocked. No legal access existed, although it could be approached by means of an unpaved, unmapped road over state and private lands.
Miller petitioned the state for the right to cross its lands to get to his property. In November 1986, the Land Board approved the request, conditioned, however, upon Miller’s getting similar approvals from the private parties whose land the unpaved road cut across. This Miller has never done.
What Miller has done is build a house. And, to improve his ability to drive to his property, he built bridges and culverts on land owned by his neighbors, especially land owned by the Wai`oli Corporation, and cleared a 40-foot-wide swath of forested state land in the Conservation District.
Miller built his house without benefit of a survey. Overlays of aerial photos with tax maps suggest his house may lie on state land rather than the land he owns.
Miller installed a cesspool without obtaining approval of plans from the state Department of Health. On April 9, 1990, the chief sanitarian of the Kaua`i District Health Office ordered Miller to submit house plans, “with a building permit application,” to submit plans for the individual wastewater system, and to arrange for an on-site inspection by the Department of Health. To date, Miller has not complied with the order. He has been told that he may not occupy his house until he does comply, although with a house as remote as his, there is little way of knowing whether he is respecting this order.
Letters, Litigation
In 1992, Miller sued his neighbors, seeking to force them to allow him access over their land. Miller also wrote U.S. Senators Akaka and Inouye, Governor Waihe`e, and state Representative Peter Apo, reciting the problems he has had in obtaining access to his land.
On July 8, 1992, Warren Price III, at the time the state attorney general, explained the situation as the state saw it to Senator Akaka. “Without regard to the safety or welfare of the surrounding properties,” Price wrote, Miller “has built bridges and dammed up streams on private property to create a vehicular access to his house.” Miller “still has not applied for, nor has he obtained, any of the required permits for his house and wastewater disposal, which is located on land immediately adjacent to active taro patches.”
Miller, Price continued, “bought the property patently without access, and the price he paid surely reflected that problem. Additionally, although Mr. Miller chose to illegally construct his house without first obtaining the necessary permits and resolving the access question, he is now attempting to use the illegally constructed home as the basis to obtain the access he should have acquired a long time ago, before expending money on the property.”
At first, Price said, Miller’s neighbors — mostly old-time taro farmers — tried to help him out “by allowing him use of their taro-patch access road. However, Mr. Miller abused their kindness as well as them personally, by threatening them and their families, widening and extending the road, allowing use of the road by numerous guests who parked in the middle of the road.”
According to Price’s letter, the Land Board was “reviewing Mr. Miller’s illegal destruction of the state forest reserve as well as his illegal trespass and encroachment upon state land to determine what action it will take.”
Aside from Price’s remark, there is no sign of any enforcement activity in relation to Miller’s actions at the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Volume 3, Number 10 April 1993