The citizens of Maui responded in great number to the Department of Transportation’s proposal to expand Kahului airport and to the Maui County Council’s proposal, eventually adopted, to include a curb on airport growth in the county General Plan Update. Their written comments and testimony range from the eloquent to the technical to the banal, as these samples show:
From William Merwin of Haiku, testifying before the County Council, August 21, 1991:
Well, here we are again.
Members of the County Council, fellow friends and residents who love Maui and Hawai’i nei for what they still are and not for what they can be sold for, familiar exploiters of anywhere convenient, obedient and trusting employees – of course we have been here before. I am happy at least to be able to have a chance to express my admiration for the courage and integrity that have been displayed recently by some members of the council in standing up to the tide of misrepresentation, menacing economic double-talk, public pressure, and forms of intimidation and persuasion that we simple voters can only guess at. I hope these members of the council will continue to find honor in defending what remains of Maui from the exploding scramble of rapacity that we have had to watch turning this island from a place of rare beauty, with a character, and silence and fragrances, and even some remnants of culture of its own, into another unit of prefabricated Anywhere USA, in concrete or under asphalt, at as much as possible per square foot, with a fast turnover, a few supposedly Hawaiian motifs in the packaging, and a rising sewage problem. The epidemic syndrome to which we owe, among other things, the extension of Los Angeles that has already been forced upon us by way of an airport, the traffic that congests our roads, the roads that daily cover more of the flayed island, and the smell that greets visitors to Kahului as they pass on of the last pathetic nesting grounds of the Hawaiian stilt, and tells them right away what they have come to, and what the place is turning into.
I have been shown, in the August issue of Mirabella, an expensive national magazine with a large circulation, an interview with Andre Harper, often described as a travel guru, with a wide readership of his own. He was asked among other things what places prospective tourists should forget about, and one of the first ones he named was Maui, which he said, except for Hana, had already been “ruthlessly overdeveloped.” His opinion concurs with Paul Fussell’s reference to tourist Hawai’i, a few years ago, as “the rubes’ Valhalla.”
But that would not bother the masters of costeffectiveness in the tourist traffic. A few days ago, in a commentary in The Maui News – no need to single out the author, a generic figure, entirely replaceable and predictable, a former executive director of the Maui Chamber of Commerce – a passing plastic bone is thrown to the quaint notion of keeping Maui Maui, but the real matter is discussed not in terms of quality naturally enough, but of numbers, and he insists that hotel owners now have a right to fill their rooms. Were we voting residents given the right to live with the Maui we loved before all those speculative units were piled on top of each other?
From Wayne N. Hedani, president, Maui Chamber of Commerce.
Attached please find 102 additional letters of support received by this office for the extension of the runway at Kahului airport. The average number of years of residency of the attached is 16 years. Many are lifelong residents of Maui who were born and raised here like myself.
Keep the visitor industry healthy and vibrant while working to create new and viable opportunities in diversified agriculture and research and technology.
From Richard P. Wirtz:
In rushing to get visitors here faster, we alter significantly the nature of the place being visited. When the beaches of Kihei are as close as the beaches of California (to the visitor), we’ve lost one of the major attractions Maui provides. As Hana is enhanced by the difficulty of getting there, so is Maui.
Personally, I think the hotels should offer canoe rides from the Honolulu airport.
From Peter O’Colmain, manager of the Four Seasons Resort in Wailea:
The reality of the current situation is that the inventory which has been added during the past few years is here to stay. The hotel industry must have the business volume to now support these developments which have all been approved by the council. We need your support and approval to provide for additional visitors to fill the hotels and condos islandwide. We need the runway extended to support what inventory we currently have.
From state Representative Joe Souki and state Senator Mamoru Yamasaki, May 7, 1991:
If the county [of Maui] is to continue to share in the Transient Accommodation Tax and excise tax revenues through various state programs and to support the providers of social services to the people, you must provide support to the industry that provides those revenues. You must certainly not take actions that would jeopardize the state and county in terms of liability.
For this reason, we request that you at least delay any decision-making on limiting the length of the runway until the environmental impact statement requested by the legislature is complete.
We are doing our best to provide you with the necessary funds to support your budget requests. We ask you to do the same in support of the state’s planning for Kaliuhi Airport improvements.
From Brett Huske, chairman, and Lynn Britton, president, Maui Hotel Association
Never before have businesses and labor groups so united on an issue. Membership in KARE (the Coalition for Kahului Airport Runway Extension) includes the following organizations: Maui Carpenters Union, Maui Chamber of Commerce; Maui Contractors Association; Maui ILWU Local 142; Maui Economic Development Board, Inc.; Maui Farm Bureau; Maui Farmers Cooperative Exchange; Maui Hotel Association; Maui Operating Engineers Industry Stabilization Fund; Maui Visitors Bureau.
Figures show that the period January through June 1991, Maui has had 6 percent less visitors than the same period in 1990. Add to that the increase in hotel rooms we experienced last year and will experience even further this year with the opening of the Grand Hyatt and Kea Lani Suites, and you have a most depressed situation.
From Donald G. Malcom, president, Maui Economic Development Board
The Maui Economic Development Board, Inc., urges that the committee take action to remove all language relative to the extension and internationalization of the Kahului Airport from the proposed revision of the general plan.
MEDB’s efforts to help Maui build a diversified job base have centered on development of the Maui Research and Technology Park in Kihei. Our experience in trying to attract companies and capital to Maui have given us a clear indication that target companies will only locate in an area where free and ready access to modern airport facilities are available. We have been told that our airport runway needs an appropriate extension in its length in order to meet their travel needs.
From Dana Nione Hall and Isaac Hall, commenting on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement:
On Visitor Forecasts
The forecasts are admitted to be unreliable in the DEIS; fluctuating economic and political conditions may cause substantial variations in the forecast. In fact, the DEIS does not address the five percent decrease in visitor numbers on Maui in 1990 from 1989 levels and the continued sluggishness of visitor numbers through 1991. Nevertheless, the DEIS does not include alternative forecasts and, instead, proposes projects based upon rigid adherence to a single set of forecast figures.
In addition, the forecasts are based on “unconstrained” demand. This approach conflicts with both state and county planning policies. For instance, a hotel moratorium is in effect on Maui, a priority system has been established by the Maui County Council for issuing building permits and the Maui County General Plan prohibits the internationalization of Kahului Airport and the extension of Runway 2-20 beyond 7,000 feet. The impact of these three laws on forecasted aviation demand is not analyzed.
Another important factor not considered in the DEIS is the extent to which funds spent to promote tourism affect demand. There is no disclosure as to the amounts of money spent by the Hawai’i Visitors Bureau and other entities to maintain and promote tourism. Nor is there a discussion of the amount of taxpayers money granted to the DBED Office of Tourism for distribution to these entities. Clearly, there is a connection between the amounts spent on tourism promotion and marketing, and increases in the number of visitors. Otherwise, the State legislature would not have voted during the last legislative session to appropriate an additional $6 million for a marketing campaign designed to jump start the industry after precipitous declines during the Persian Gulf War.
The DEIS makes liberal use of information supplied by the hotel and visitor industry in forecasting aviation demand. Having done so, it seems arbitrary on the part of the DEIS consultants to refuse to accept the position of the hotel and visitor industry that extensions of the runway are necessary to fill an expanded inventory of hotel rooms by serving new markets through direct destination flights.
Historic data on aviation activity demonstrates that new direct flights increase the number of passengers. The DEIS relies extensively on historic aviation activity at the airport in forecasting aviation demand. This same data demonstrates that the introduction of direct flights to new locations has created an immediate increase in the numbers of passengers at the Kahului Airport. This data has been compiled and disclosed in earlier DOT documents. It is presumably not included in the DEIS because it does not support the position taken by DOT.
This information rebuts the basic assumption relied upon in the DEIS. It demonstrates that there were a significant number of travelers who would fly to Maui on direct flights from West Coast locations who would not have done so if only indirect flights had been available. There is no reason to expect that the response would be any different if direct flights to other locations on the mainland, including Denver, Dallas or Chicago, are made available as an alternative to indirect flights.
On Endangered Species
The DEIS discloses that the Hawaiian Stilt and Hawaiian Coot (which are described as the Black-necked Stilt and American Coot) are present at the state’s Kanaha Pond Wildlife Refuge, which is located on airport property. However, the DEIS fails to note that these species are listed as “endangered” under the federal Endangered Species Act and also under the Hawai’i Endangered Species Act.
In addition, the DEIS does not address the issue of whether the airport expansion will violate the Endangered Species Act [which] prohibits any person, including state agencies, from “taking” any species listed as endangered. The definition of “take,” as set forth in the act, includes actions which can “harm” or “harass” endangered species. The definition of “harm” includes those actions which may significantly degrade or modify habitat or significantly impair essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering. The term “harass” includes intentional or negligent acts which create a likelihood of injury by annoying an endangered species to such an extent as to significantly disrupt its normal behavioral patterns.
The consultant’s report, which is attached as Appendix D of the DEIS, clearly implicates a violation of the Endangered Species Act. The report discloses that increased noise from lower flying aircraft may “adversely influence” resident native birds, and that contaminants from storm water runoff associated with airport operations could degrade the water quality of the Kanaha Pond Wildlife Refuge. These impacts, of themselves, have the potential to disrupt nesting and feeding behavior, or to significantly degrade endangered species habitat, and thus would constitute “harm” or “harassment” under the act.
On Wetlands
The conclusion that no potential impacts to Kanaha Pond as a wetlands area are expected has not been and cannot be supported. Runoff impacts to Kanaha Pond should be delineated, not only in terms of extra cubic feet per second in the 10-, 50- and 100-year storms, but also in terms of quality and constituents of runoff waters. Wetlands by nature receive runoff from surrounding areas. It is not only the quantity but the quality of runoff that needs to be examined. That portion of runoff which is lipid soluble will tend to bioaccumulate. Small increments of these types of constituents over time can lead to high levels in tissues of living organisms affected. Both in Kanaha Pond and in marine environments, water sampling is inadequate to evaluate the potential impacts of some of these compounds over time.
Worst-case scenarios – fuel spills, fires, crashes, etc. -were not examined at all. The impact of these situations on the wetlands could be devastating and irreversible. Apparently there is already some discussion of birds being killed by entering the flight path of planes. This problem is not mentioned, nor ramifications of the proposed changes on this problem, not mitigative measures for this problem.
Conclusion
It will be insufficient to simply respond to the comments received on the DEIS in the same fashion in which the DEIS has been prepared by denying or ignoring the environmental impacts that will be caused by the proposed projects. The inadequacies of the DEIS are so severe that the document must be rewritten, republished as a DEIS, and public review recommenced.
From William Smith, of Kula, commenting on the DEIS:
Simply by professing the dogma (assumed from DOT projections) that the number of passengers is not subject to change, the DEIS is empowered with some magic to chant a litany rendering moot the quantitative evaluation of important environmental impacts, such as water quality; increases in vehicular traffic volume, rental car operations, and fuel consumption, growth of the visitor industry and visitor industry jobs; the amount of water demand; the amount of sewage generated; the amounts of solid waste generated; the amount of electrical demand, requirements to provide fire protection and emergency services; the potential for aircraft emergency (i.e., demand for emergency medical services); and the potential for introduction of pests.
The ability to finesse these important issues is made possible only by acceptance of the requisite dogma. Had the DEIS not assumed an absolute and unalterable number of passengers, it would have been compelled to quantitatively evaluate each of those potentially significant effects on the environment. That dogma of an absolute and unalterable number of passengers ill serves the statutory purposes of environmental impact statements. Recitation of a litany of indifference premised upon such a flawed premise misrepresents the actual potential environmental impacts.
From Dick Meyer, instructor in economies and geography Maui Community College, commenting on the DEIS:
For approximately 15 years I have been reviewing EIS documents for the Environmental Center at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. During that entire period I have never seen an EIS which was so obviously biased and unfair to the spirit of the EIS legislation. This EIS is nothing more than a defense of the expansion of the Kahului airport. There is no attempt made to provide a neutral, unbiased environmental assessment of the positive and negative impacts of the proposed project Rather it is a one-sided, prejudiced defense of the project. It is not an EIS.
From Albert Perez, Fredrick Sands, and Anthony Ranken, of Maui Tomorrow, commenting on the DEIS:
Of the 100 or so EIS documents that we have reviewed over the last several years, this one is the second worst in terms of adequate compliance with state EIS rules. We would like to point out that the DOT has consistently produced EIS documents that are so grossly inadequate that they are invariably challenged in court. We find this to be a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money.
Volume 2, Number 8 February 1992