Board Talk

Had they known it would end up this way, they probably wouldn’t have done it. Earlier this year, members of the state Board of Land and Natural Resources directed the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ State Parks Division to determine who was best qualified to run He`eia State Park by issuing a request for proposals (RFP) for a long term lease. At the time, it seemed the fairest way to address the issue. The Friends of He`eia, a grassroots, non-profit group that has run educational programs at the park since the mid-1980s, was no longer the only entity interested in the job. The Friends, who had struggled to obtain grant funding on the basis of no more than a revocable permit (cancelable on 30 days notice) for a portion of the park, sought a long-term lease a few years ago, but were met with opposition from other area residents who expressed interest.But at the Land Board’s May 22 meeting, board members clearly wished they had given themselves a larger voice in the outcome. At that meeting, Division of State Parks administrator Dan Quinn asked the board to approve the posting of the highest-ranked applicant. Because of recent changes in the state’s procurement law, Quinn said, the division could not disclose the name of the winner, the names of the applicants, or even the number of applicants.

Given the restrictions and the fact that several members of the public had shown up to testify, at-large board member Sam Gon asked, “What should I be listening for regarding the testimony?….Testimony doesn’t really bear on the board’s decision?”

In the end, it didn’t, and the Land Board voted unanimously to approve Quinn’s recommendation, although some members were clearly unhappy with the situation. Despite the inevitable outcome, before the vote, board members and supporters of the Friends of He`eia testified that the RFP process was flawed. Jim Anthony, executive director of the non-profit Hawai`i La`ieikawai Association, claimed that State Parks staff solicited one of the applicants to bid on the project. Friends of He`eia executive director Carole MacLean confirmed to Environment Hawai`i that the head of Kama`aina Kids, which submitted the winning proposal, told her board that the Parks Division’s Steve Thompson recommended that Kama`aina Kids apply.

When MacLean complained to the Land Board that the criteria used by the DLNR’s evaluation committee (made up of State Parks staff, including Quinn and Thompson) failed to include any requirement that the applicant have some knowledge of the area, board chair Laura Thielen said that such a standard would favor some applicants over others. In response, MacLean pointed out that the criteria, which seemed to value only child education and not education or other programs for the broader community, also favored one applicant over the others – in this case, Kama`aina Kids over the FOH and the Ko`olauloa Hawaiian Civic Club.

Kama‘aina Kids is a private, non-profit organization that provides childcare programs, including, preschool programs, before- and after-school programs, day camps, environmental education programs, enrichment programs, sports clinics, and hotel programs. According to its website, the group employs about 1,000 people, serves nearly 9,000 children and families a day and is one of the largest childcare providers in the state.

The FOH, on the other hand, founded in 1982, was formed by community members when the former owner of Ke Alohi Point proposed building a condominium complex there and replacing the 600-year-old He’eia fishpond with a marina. Using grants and volunteers, including interns from the University of Hawai`i, the FOH conducts natural resource and cultural programs for children and adults.

MacLean says that she and her attorney met with State Parks staff after the Land Board’s meeting to discuss how the winning proposal was selected, raising many of the same concerns she expressed at the board’s May meeting. Unless the DLNR decides to grant her an appeal, she says, the FOH is supposed to vacate the park by the end of this month, although she says representatives from Kama`aina Kids expressed a willingness to collaborate and told her, “Nobody’s going anywhere.”

Should her appeal or her attempts to work with Kama`aina Kids fail, MacLean says, “the Friends of He`eia will still be the Friends of He`eia, we just won’t be based [at the park], probably.” She adds that fighting the Land Board’s decision could become a very expensive, very long process, which she says her group doesn’t want. They just want the park taken care of, she says.

“I’d like to be optimistic this is going to happen,” Kaua`i Land Board member Ron Agor said at the board’s June 12 meeting. “Are there any viable candidates should this not go through?”

Since the mid-1990s, Tradewinds Forest Products, LLC, has struggled with its plans to build a timber mill/co-generation plant and to log the Waiakea Timber Management Area, just south of Hilo. Over the years, the Land Board has granted one license amendment after another to keep the project alive, but with recent efforts by the state to promote renewable energy development, Division of Forestry and Wildlife administrator Paul Conry told Agor that should Tradewinds again fail to meet the conditions of its timber license with the DLNR, “there are bioenergy companies that may be interested” in taking over the license area.

At the time of the June meeting, Tradewinds was in default of its license because it had failed to pay pre-stumpage fees to the DLNR. At the same time, the company was attempting to partner with GMO Renewable Resources, which Conry said he was glad to see, since the company also has access to timber. “This looks like a partner that’s got some staying power,” he said.

Tradewinds president Don Bryan explained to the board that he was trying to get a total of $20 million in equity funding; $10 million from existing partner Rockland Capital and $10 million from GMO. He said he expected the funding to be secured in September and pointed out that Tradewinds has paid the state more than $300,000 already.

While Conry recommended amending the license to push back the pre-stumpage payments until Tradewinds could secure its capital, Board chair Laura Thielen wasn’t as eager to do so, at least not without including some kind of additional benefit to the state.

“A lot of people are coming to the department and seeking to lock up land….You’re asking the state to take 100 percent of the risk of your funding efforts,” she told Bryan.

When Big Island board member Rob Pacheco asked what the risk really was, aside from a few hundred thousand dollars in pre-stumpage fees, Thielen again pointed out that there are other companies interested in the area.

“Nobody comes in and asks for a 15-year extension,” she said, referring to the fact that Tradewinds has been trying to get its project off the ground for about that time. “It just happens. One way to ensure progress is to have a cost for occupying lands.”

Big Island resident Scott Enright, who has been critical of Tradewinds in the past, testified that the company did not even have a building permit.

Still, the board voted to amend the license as Conry requested, but ordered DOFAW to give a report to the board in October on the status of financing and also to prepare a submittal for termination of the license.

It used to be routine, but board chair Laura Thielen was uncomfortable letting things carry on as usual.

“Six-hundred pounds of live rock?” she asked Dan Polhemus, administrator for the department’s Division of Aquatic Resources at the Land Board’s June 12 meeting. Polhemus had recommended approval of a collection permit to Andrew Sim of the Seattle Aquarium to gather fish and live rock (coral skeletons usually covered by coralline algae) for use in displays. In the past, such permits had been issued by the division, but, according to Polhemus, a deputy attorney general advising the DLNR had recently determined that such applications must be brought to the Land Board for approval.

Because the Land Board has fined people tens of thousands of dollars over the past year for taking stones – for a church imu or to be sold as hula implements – from the Conservation District and for boat damage to coral, Thielen wasn’t sure why the department would bless an application for the take of 600 pounds of live rock.

“Do you have a statewide limit so there’s a clear line? We’re doing a lot of enforcement actions regarding coral and live rock. This seems really inconsistent. I’d be more comfortable not having live rock in the permit [and having the division] come up with a policy for the state,” she said.

Polhemus said his division viewed the collection as part of an educational program.

When Rob Pacheco asked how much aquarium collecting goes on, Polhemus said that while there are not many permits for it, “There’s been a certain amount of staff ambivalence about mainland aquarium collecting.” The DAR’s Alton Miyasaka said that only the Waikiki Aquarium, the Maui Ocean Center, and the Seattle aquarium have been issued collection permits in the past and that those permits are only issued every other year.

Given Thielen’s concerns, the board approved the permit with the deletion of live rock from the list of target items.

At the Land Board’s July 22 meeting, at the board’s request, the DAR submitted for approval a review policy for the collection of live rock and protected coral through special activity permits.

Among the many guidelines proposed, the DAR recommended that a single permittee be limited to taking ten fragments of live rock, no longer than 50 cm, per site and no more than 50 pieces per year. The DAR would cap the number of total pieces covered by all permits in a given year to 200 per reef and fewer than 10,000 statewide.

The DAR also recommended that no out-of-state transport of live rock be allowed “without justification as to the benefit to the people of the State of Hawai`i or to management of the protected resource equal to, or exceeding, the need to fully protect the trust resource as provided by law.”

The DAR also included guidelines for field methods and the take of stony corals. In a separate item, the DAR proposed penalty guidelines for damaging, killing or illegally taking stony corals. Proposed fines ranged from $100 for minimal damage to a small coral colony in a low-value area to $1,000 for maximum damage to a large colony in a high-value area.