Backtracking:<\/b> In 2006, the Board of Land and Natural Resources, bowing to pressure from the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai`i Authority, lifted the requirement that subleases for NELHA tenants be approved by the Land Board or its chair. NELHA administrator Ron Baird was chafing under the Land Board\u2019s oversight, which he claimed dragged out the approval process.<\/p>\n
\tLast month, the Land Board was asked to approve an attornment agreement relating to the NELHA sublease to Cyanotech, one of the larger tenants. The approval was required because of several oversights and mistakes made in documenting a mortgage Cyanotech had obtained earlier this year. An attornment agreement assures the sublessee \u2013 Cyanotech \u2013 and its creditors of its right to remain a tenant even if the master lease is lost.<\/p>\n
\tIn its report to the board, Land Division staff recommended that, should a similar event occur in the future, \u201cthe BLNR consider reinstating its authority to review and consent to all subleases issued by NELHA as a means to ensure that NELHA\u2019s subtenants are acceptable to the BLNR and Department.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLand Board deputy director Russell Tsuji says the problem hasn\u2019t come up much, but if it should become more frequent, he will advise the Land Board to return to requiring board review of NELHA subleases. \u201cIf every sublessee is going to ask for this,\u201d he told Environment Hawai`i, \u201cwe might as well review the underlying sublease to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the Brink of a Shutdown?<\/b> In her zeal to cut state spending, Governor Lingle has ordered all departments to submit for her personal approval any contracts over $10,000. And the result has been a near-catastrophe for some of the state\u2019s most important natural resource programs, including island invasive species committees, or ISCs.<\/p>\n
\tAlmost all ISC staff are so-called temporary hires paid through a contract between the state and the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai`i. On October 15, the contract for the Big Island ISC ended, forcing the layoffs of nine people. The next day, Lieutenant Governor Aiona signed a purchase order bringing them back, but not before the staffers \u2013 who work to curb such invasive plants as miconia and strawberry guava and invasive animals such as the coqui \u2013 had been led to despair over their future.<\/p>\n
\tAccording to Paul Conry, head of the Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Division of Forestry and Wildlife, \u201cwe did end up with maybe some staff having one or two days of leave without pay before the paperwork could get through.\u201d
\n\tOther programs that will need to have paperwork processed soon to keep staff on board include Maui and O`ahu ISCs, the Kaua`i Endangered Plant Program, the Kaua`i Endangered Seabird Program, the Leeward Haleakala Watershed Restoration Project, and the Natural Area Reserves System. Some of these projects include federal matching funds; if the state cannot ante up its share, federal dollars will be lost as well.<\/p>\n
\tConry seems to think the problem is being addressed. The initial hiccups came when \u201ca number of contracts were on the verge of being signed, right when the governor\u2019s directive hit.\u201d Now, he says, \u201cwe\u2019ve got requests being processed, and they seem to be going through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Irradiator Dispute Keeps Simmering:<\/b> The dispute over a proposal to build a food irradiator near the Honolulu International Airport has seen several key developments recently. In October, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected the effort of the irradiator developer, Pa`ina Hawai`i, to have the board find that it was now categorically exempt from review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Although the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff had made a claim of a \u201ccategorical exclusion\u201d for the irradiator in 2005, in a settlement worked out in April 2006 with irradiator opponents Concerned Citizens of Honolulu, the NRC staff agreed to prepare an environmental assessment for it.<\/p>\n
\tThe ASLB was unequivocal in rejecting Pa`ina\u2019s request. \u201cOnce the staff prepared the environmental assessment, the issue of whether the \u2018categorical exclusion\u2019 status under NEPA applied to the \u2026 irradiator became moot and totally irrelevant,\u201d the ASLB found. \u201cFurther,\u201d the ASLB continued, Pa`ina\u2019s motion \u201cevidences a serious misapprehension of the various procedural rulings in the proceeding.\u201d The motion \u201cis meritless and denied,<\/u>\u201d the board concluded (emphasis in original).<\/p>\n
\tStill before the board is the more serious issue of how to deal with the 12-page environmental assessment for the project that Concerned Citizens argues is seriously deficient. David Henkin of Earthjustice, the attorney for Concerned Citizens, explains: \u201cUnder NEPA case law, the environmental assessment is supposed to disclose all of the project\u2019s potential impacts as well as reasonable alternatives that could achieve the project\u2019s goals with less environmental harm. You\u2019re not supposed to remedy deficiencies by just adding more information\u201d in front of a hearings board, without the possibility for public review and comment. Instead, Henkin argues, the EA should be rewritten and once more be placed before the public for comment.<\/p>\n
\tLast, but not least, in August, the NRC overruled the finding of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that the safety of irradiated food should be addressed in an environmental assessment. In doing so, it rejected the contention of Concerned Citizens, saying that for the NRC to undertake such an analysis would be second-guessing the Food and Drug Administration.<\/p>\n
Volume 19, Number 5 — November 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Backtracking: In 2006, the Board of Land and Natural Resources, bowing to pressure from the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai`i Authority, lifted the requirement that subleases for NELHA tenants be approved by the Land Board or its chair. NELHA administrator … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[158],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-november-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","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=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}