{"id":11554,"date":"2019-06-30T02:04:53","date_gmt":"2019-06-30T02:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=11554"},"modified":"2019-06-30T18:48:44","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T18:48:44","slug":"new-noteworthy-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=11554","title":{"rendered":"New & Noteworthy: Hu Honua, Endangered Species Lawsuit, and a Coming Event"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hu Honua in the News: <\/strong>On June 6, Judge Greg K. Nakamura of the 3rd Circuit Court in Hilo denied several motions to dismiss a lawsuit against Hu Honua and state agencies brought by Claudia Rohr, owner of a Hilo bed-and-breakfast. Last September, Nakamura had thrown out a similar lawsuit filed by Rohr, but this day, speaking from the bench, Nakamura said there was now a trend to \u201cstricter enforcement of environmental laws\u201d and that the courts should exercise restraint in resolving matters of environmental importance on a summary basis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also took note of the state Supreme\nCourt\u2019s May 10 remand of Hu Honua\u2019s\npower-purchase agreement with the Big\nIsland utility back to the Public Utilities\nCommission with instructions to take\ngreenhouse-gas emissions into account.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rohr\u2019s lawsuit seeks to force Hu Honua to comply with Chapter 343 of Hawai\u2018i Revised Statutes \u2013 the state\u2019s\nenvironmental policy law \u2013 by preparing\nan environmental impact statement or\nenvironmental assessment for the power\nplant it is building about 10 miles north\nof Hilo.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Hu Honua, defendants\nare the state departments of Health and\nLand and Natural Resources and several\ncounty agencies.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(More details on the hearing are\navailable in our EH-xtra item of June 6,\navailable on our website, environment-\nhawaii.org.)\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On June 20, the Public Utilities Commission reopened the Hu Honua docket. The first deadline in the PUC schedule is July 8, when Hawaiian Electric and Hu Honua are to file an updated power-purchase agreement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawsuit over Hawk, Hoary Bat: <\/strong>Sandra Demoruelle, a longtime resident of Na\u2018alehu, has sued several Hawai\u2018i County officials over the construction of a transfer station in the Ka\u2018u community of Ocean View. The lawsuit was filed on May 29 in federal court in Honolulu. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work began on the project in March, and, at the time the lawsuit was filed work continued. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under conditions set forth in the 2008 final environmental impact statement for the project, however, no land clearing was to be done from April 1 through April 31, so as to avoid interfering with the pupping season of the endangered Hawaiian hoary bat, ope\u2018ape\u2018a. In addition, to protect breeding of the Hawaiian hawk, or \u2018io, if any clearing was to be done in March, the county was to hire a qualified ornithologist to conduct a pre-construction nest search, and if \u2018io are present, no land clearing was to be allowed until at least September. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Land clearing actually began in March,\nDemoruelle says in her complaint, and\nthe contractor was not required by the\ncounty\u2019s Department of Environmental\nManagement to have the survey for \u2018io\ndone beforehand.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Named as defendants are William Kucharski, director of the county Department of Environmental Management, Allan Simeon, the department\u2019s deputy director, and Gregory Goodale, county Public Works Department director. Also named was David Bernhardt, secretary of Interior. He has since been dismissed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A scheduling hearing is set for July 29.\nA request for comment to Kucharski\u2019s\noffice was unanswered by press time.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Save the Date: <\/strong>On November 8, Jeff\nPolovina will be the featured speaker at\nEnvironment Hawai\u2018i\u2019s <\/em>annual benefit\ndinner. Until his retirement, Polovina\nwas senior scientist and chief of the\nEcosystem and Oceanography Division\nof the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science\nCenter in Honolulu, an agency of the\nNational Oceanic and Atmospheric\nAdministration. Last year, he received\nthe Distinguished Career award from\nNOAA in recognition of his many\npathbreaking contributions to climate\nand marine ecosystem research.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As in past years, the dinner will be held at the Imiloa Astronomy Center. Details to come. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donate<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hu Honua in the News: On June 6, Judge Greg K. Nakamura of the 3rd Circuit Court in Hilo denied several motions to dismiss a lawsuit against Hu Honua and state agencies brought by Claudia Rohr, owner of a Hilo … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[455,18],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-11554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-july-2019","category-new-noteworthy","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}