CNMI-ning: Last month, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management moved forward with plans to open up to seafloor mining more than 69 million acres offshore of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. The action was part … Continued
In a letter to the Public Utilities Commission on March 25, Douglas Codiga, attorney for the Wailuku Water Company, reported that the recent severe storms so severely damaged its irrigation and water delivery systems that the company is on the … Continued
In February, the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity, Office of the Chair, entered into a $250,000 non-bid contract with Sunrise Strategies USA LLC. The contract was to take effect March 7 of this year and run through September 6, 2027. … Continued
If the state does not acquire the system as a whole, basically it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” the Land Division’s acting assistant administrator Lauren Yasaka told the state Board of Land and Natural Resources at … Continued
Above photo: A discharge from the Cox Drain in 2021, looking seaward. The drain is one of the outlets whose discharges are regulated under the NPDES permit issued in October. A decade ago, the state Agribusiness Development Corporation let lapse … Continued
ADC Squatters: Last March, Environment Hawaiʻi reported on Pacific Biodiesel’s rent-free use of 1.53 acres of land owned by the Agribusiness Development Corporation. The ADC’s “Hawaiʻi Agribusiness Plan 2025” report, dated January 2026, states that the parcel, in Shipman Industrial … Continued
The lawsuits over activities at Marconi Point on Oʻahu’s North Shore just keep coming. This time, they’re over the development of a large solar photovoltaic system on the rooftops of eight agricultural warehouses on land owned by RCA Trade Center, … Continued
Here we go again. On October 29, Environmental Court Judge Lisa W. Cataldo issued an opinion in the Sierra Club of Hawai‘i’s appeal of a 2022 Land Board decision to grant revocable permits to Alexander & Baldwin and East Maui … Continued
At a hearing of the Hawaiʻi County Board of Appeals last August, neighbors of a 10,000-square-foot house in the state Agricultural Land Use District challenged the decision of the planning director dismissing their complaints that the fellow who managed the … Continued
What, exactly, is going on in Hawaiʻi County? Its own laws and rules specifically forbid the operation of vacation rentals on properties that lie within the state Agricultural District. It passed an ordinance in 2018 that limits these uses to … Continued