If Ameron HC&D continues to get its way; by 1995, it will alter the character of the Waialua area of O’ahu for at least the next 20 years, possibly longer. Ameron wants to quarry basaltic rock from 153 acres of land now in cane. In addition, it proposes establishing a concrete batching plant and a hot-mix asphalt plant on the property; which is bounded to the west by Kaokonahua Stream and on the east by Kaokonahua Road. The westernmost edge of the property lies about 3,000 feet west of Thomson Corner junction, where Farrington Highway meets Kaukonahua Road.
Donald Clegg, director of the City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Land Utilization, issued to Arneron last July a conditional use permit (type 1) for the quarry operation. (The land is zoned by the city for agriculture. In this zone, quarry operations – defined by Ameron as “resource extraction” – require a CUP permit from the city.)
The quarry must also receive a state Special Use Permit, a result of the land being in the state Agriculture land use district. The county Planning Commission is the issuing authority. Approvals are forwarded to the state Land Use Commission for confirmation.
With Clegg recommending approval, the Ameron application for a Special Use Permit was considered by the Planning Commission last fall. It is expected to make its decision within the next month.
Community Concerns
It has not been clear sailing for Ameron. The North Shore Neighborhood Board informed Clegg that it was concerned that heavy; slow-moving trucks on the narrow Kaukonahua Road would reduce traveler safety. It was worried that quarry operations would reduce air quality and that blasting might harm nearby improvements. The Neighborhood Board informed Clegg that it had voted to recommend that the project “be disapproved … because of unanswered questions on environmental and traffic issues.” If approval were granted, the board submitted a list of conditions that it asked Clegg to impose upon Ameron.
In Clegg’s report to the Planning Commission, he stated that Ameron “has agreed to meet all but the last three of these conditions.” Those three conditions might well be regarded as the most important of all those recommended by the Neighborhood Board: first, that “Ameron be required to have an independent EIS [environmental impact statement] prepared whether it is legally required or not”; second, that Ameron would “keep all product from this quarry off Kaukonahua Road” during peak commuting times; and third, that Ameron “be required to pay for the cost of constructing a second two lane road parallel to the hilly portion of Kaukonahua Road so that there will be two-lane one-way roads for approximately two miles. The cost of this road has been estimated at approximately $4 million.”
EIS Equivalency
In a letter to Cynthia Thielen, attorney for a property owner who was contesting the CUP permit, Clegg stated that there was no need for an environmental assessment prior to his issuance of the CUP. “Application materials, which are public record, contain the equivalent of an Environmental Assessment,” Clegg wrote. “Beyond having no legal basis, your request for an Environmental Assessment appears to serve no practical purpose.”
As to the recommendation that Ameron not use Kaukonahua Road during peak commuting hours, Clegg’s report stated that Ameron had agreed to “limit the hours of operation for vehicles carrying quarry material to non-peak periods.” The Conditional Use Permit says only that “the applicant has agreed that all aggregate trucks (excluding vehicles transporting ready-mix concrete) will be kept off Kaukonahua Road during peak traffic hours if their movement would seriously impede traffic flow” (emphasis added). In the actual Decision and Order of Clegg, the only requirement placed on Ameron with respect to truck traffic limits is that Ameron prepare a “traffic improvement plan” for review and approval by the Department of Transportation Services.
The Neighborhood Board’s request to have parallel two lane, one-way roads was rejected. Instead, Clegg imposed upon Ameron the condition (recommended by the city’s Department of Transportation Services) that it build “adequate acceleration and deceleration lanes” and “provide a separate 400-foot left turn lane for vehicles entering the site (Waialua bound).” Although the DTS recommended that the road improvements be completed before quarry operations began, Clegg overruled the DTS. “With regard to timing of required road improvements,” Clegg said in his report to the Planning Commission, “the applicant stated that as the construction material would come from the quarry, it would be possible for them to complete road improvements within two years of the opening of the quarry rather than prior to commencement of quarry operations.”
An EIS Trigger?
Clegg issued Ameron the requested Conditional Use Permit, Type I on July 21, 1992. By the end of August, David Taogoshi, owner of a part interest in adjoining land, took Clegg to court. His attorneys, Cynthia Thielen and Laura Thielen, argued that Clegg’s approval of a Conditional Use Permit required compliance with Chapter 343 of Hawai’i Revised Statutes (that is, preparation of an environmental assessment or an environmental impact statement). Two Chapter 343 “triggers” were set off by the Ameron proposal, Cynthia Thielen argued. First, there was the use of state or county land, since Ameron was required to make substantial improvements to Kaokonahua Road. Second, the concrete mixing plant and hot-mix asphalt plant were industrial uses, she argued. Approval of these operations in the Agriculture district amounted to a de facto amendment to the county general plan, which constituted a second trigger of Chapter 343, she claimed.
The city countered both arguments, claiming that the industrial aspects of the quarry operation were legitimate accessory uses. Moreover, Clegg suddenly claimed that there was substantial doubt as to whether Kaokonahua Road was a public highway in the first place. The city’s street directory shows Kaokonahua Road to be privately owned past Thomson Corner. Thielen countered by noting that on the city’s own tax maps, Kaokonahua Road appeared to be in public ownership. Clegg did not say who owned the road or why, if indeed it was privately owned, the city maintained it (as he acknowledged).
In any case, Judge Thomas Kaulukukui Jr. decided that he city was within its rights in refusing to require Ameron to prepare an environmental assessment. Questions about road ownership remain unresolved. If, as Clegg claimed, the road is private, how can the city impose upon Ameron any requirement to improve it without the owner’s concurrence?
Further Hearings
Last fall, the Planning Commission held its hearings into Ameron’s request for a state Special Use Permit. Once more, concerns of the surrounding community and a variety of state and federal agencies were raised, this time in a setting more formal than that provided by Clegg in his consideration of the CUP request.
Interveners in the case brought forward experts who challenged Ameron’s claims relating to the quarry’s anticipated effect on public health and environmental quality.
In the matter of noise, the community’s expert was David Adams, president of the National Council of Acoustical Consultants from 1990 to 1992. He criticized the Ameron noise analysis, stating that it failed to take into account the way in which topographical and meteorological conditions could amplify sound from the quarry and truck traffic. Noise from blasts was acknowledged by Ameron’s expert to be as high as 112 decibels in areas more than a mile distant. But, by averaging this over a year, Amerons expert claimed there would be no significant annoyance to residents.
Ameron claimed further that there would be no unacceptable deterioration of air quality resulting from quarry operations. It based its claim, however, on background air quality data from Waimanalo, at the opposite end of the island. Unlike Waialua, Waimanalo’s air quality does not suffer from the impacts of sugar cane cultivation. Background air quality in Waialua is substantially dustier than it is in Waimanalo. Complaints of respiratory problems are frequent among Waialua residents.
Jim Morrow of the American Lung Association and Thomas Schroeder, professor of meteorology at the University of Hawai’i testified on behalf of the community. They criticized Ameron’s data as well as the calculations based upon the data, which Ameron said substantiated the claim that air quality impacts would be within acceptable levels.
‘Undesirable Location’
Concerns over the quarry’s impact on the quality of ground water as well as surface water have dogged Ameron since the outset. In March of 1992, William Paty, chairman of the state Commission on Water Resource Management, informed Clegg of the commission’s “serious concerns relating to quarrying activities overlying a valuable freshwater aquifer.” Subsoil from the overburden was proposed to he stockpiled on site. Paty noted that the subsoil, called saprolite, “is a known depository for volatile organic pesticides leached from pineapple and sugarcane fields…. If the stockpiled saprolite washes into the area being quarried by heavy rains or is put back directly on top of the unweathered basalt, a pathway becomes available for the direct contamination of the Waialua aquifer.”
Paty recommended “that the quarry not be approved… Other quarries on O’ahu are located in areas that are more geologically and hydrologically suitable for this type of activity.”
The Department of Health raised similar concerns. Water quality standards are exceeded in Kalaka Bay, into which Kaokonahua Stream drains. Erosion associated with quarry operations could be a source of additional non-point source pollution of the bay, Clegg was told by Bruce Anderson, deputy director of the Department of Health. In addition, Ameron would be required to obtain National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits for quarry construction and operation.
Following the Planning Commission hearings, John Lewin, director of health, wrote its chairman, Jackson Nakasone, underscoring once more Health Department concerns. “As we have tried to make clear,” Lewin states in his letter of January 11, 1993, “there are limits on the extent to which the Department of Health can be expected to protect the health and safety of the public by policing this project. We do not have the authority or resources to effectively control potential health and nuisance problems that are likely to be caused by this project. In essence, while we recognize that the developer is considering various mechanisms to attempt to mitigate expected adverse effects of this project, we believe such measures will prove to be potentially ineffective. Consequently, we have concluded that, from the standpoint of the Department of Health, this is an undesirable location for such a project. We would much prefer that Ameron relocate this proposed project to another site that poses less risk to the health of the community and the public in general.”
Restoration?
Although Ameron’s land covers 153 acres, Ameron has stated that at any given time, at least 100 of those acres will be in sugar cane cultivation. Actual quarrying will occur in increments of five acres, with restoration efforts to begin as soon as quarrying ends.
The state Department of Agriculture has doubts over the viability of this proposal. Yukio Kitagawa, chairman of the state Board of Agriculture, wrote Clegg last March, stating: “based on what little information on reclamation is found in the applications, we cannot conclude that the proposed reclamation of the Kaukonahua quarry site will return the site to its original productivity.”
The U.S. Soil Conservation Service echoed Kitagawa’s doubts and was concerned also about soil erosion. “The applications do not mention if additional material will be used in the reclamation process to meet the profile [of the land] as projected,” state conservationist Warren M. Lee wrote last March. “We support the idea of reclaiming the mined area for agricultural use after resource extraction has taken place. However, to expect the reclaimed site capable of economically producing sugarcane may be overly optimistic.”
Volume 3, Number 8 February 1993
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