{"id":13275,"date":"2021-02-01T17:57:37","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T17:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.environment-hawaii.org\/?p=13275"},"modified":"2021-02-08T17:58:14","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T17:58:14","slug":"new-noteworthy-sunset-seawall-maui-water-permits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=13275","title":{"rendered":"New & Noteworthy: Sunset Seawall, Maui Water Permits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sunset Seawall Court Case:<\/strong> On February 10, 1st Circuit Judge Jeffrey Crabtree will hear arguments on the state\u2019s January 12 motion to compel Sunset Beach homeowners James and Denise O\u2019Shea to produce documents supporting their claims that the state holds some of the blame for their unauthorized 2017 construction of a boulder and concrete seawall on the public beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That year, the Board of Land and Natural Resources proposed fining the couple $75,000 for the work, which they initiated after the seawall fronting their home and that of their neighbors fell apart, and which continued for five days after the state ordered them to stop. The matter was deferred after they requested a contested case hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dispute, now in Circuit Court, has since drawn in that Ke Nui Road neighbor, Rupert Oberlohr. The O\u2019Sheas claim that modifications Oberlohr made to the original seawall caused it to move and ultimately collapse. They also claim that the wall was built in the 1950s \u201cby or for the state of Hawai\u02bbi, on state property,\u201d and that the state\u2019s failure to maintain the wall \u201cand\/or the state\u2019s negligent or intentional acts or omissions directly or proximately caused the collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The O\u2019Sheas, in a September 2018 counterclaim, attempted to \u201cfoist blame upon the state,\u201d as state deputy attorneys general put it. So on October and again in December of last year, the state asked the O\u2019Sheas to produce documents (maps, plans, photos, and correspondence, etc.) regarding the old seawall, including those relating to its construction, repair, maintenance, condition, or location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On December 18, the O\u2019Sheas\u2019 attorneys filed a response with the court explaining why they objected to the state\u2019s requests. Among other things, they argued it wasn\u2019t the O\u2019Sheas\u2019 obligation to meet the state\u2019s over-broad, vague, burdensome, and expensive request. What\u2019s more, some of those documents might, for various reasons, be confidential, they argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

East Maui Permit Case: <\/strong>When met with a request for a contested case hearing, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources often pauses its regular meeting, holds an executive session, and upon its return immediately and without explanation votes to deny the request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of seeking a court order forcing the board to hold a contested case hearing, the Sierra Club, in the case regarding the 2018 and 2019 revocable permits for the diversion of East Maui streams by Alexander & Baldwin and East Maui Irrigation Company, chose to ask the court itself to decide on whether those permits were properly approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With regard to the companies\u2019 permits approved by the board last year, however, the Sierra Club is pressing the court to force the Land Board to hold a contested case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/strong>Ittook more than 19 months for the Sierra Club\u2019s lawsuit over the Land Board\u2019s 2018 decision to go to trial, the Sierra Club\u2019s attorney, David Kimo Frankel, noted in his opening brief last month. \u201cThe trial itself lasted more than two weeks. And more than two years after the Sierra Club filed that complaint, no decision had been reached. In the meantime, A&B has been allowed to continue diverting streams and draining them dry pursuant to both the 2018 and 2019 BLNR decisions. A&B continued to take all the baseflow most of the time from 13 streams and waste most of that water.  \u2026 Given this court\u2019s calendar and COVID, it is completely unrealistic to expect that a trial on the merits of BLNR\u2019s decision could be held\u2014and a decision rendered\u2014by the end of 2021. Moreover, it is inappropriate to burden this court with a task that BLNR should be fulfilling,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He cited the Hawai\u02bbi Supreme Court\u2019s decisions in cases involving the Maui electric utility that found that the Public Utilities Commission violated the Sierra Club\u2019s due process rights to a clean and healthful environment by approving a power purchase agreement without holding a contested case hearing on environmental impacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/em>He argued that the Land Board violated the Sierra Club\u2019s due process rights when it authorized the continued diversion of East Maui streams without holding the requested contested case hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that there is \u201ca plethora of evidence that the August 2020 trial did not consider,\u201d including the state Division of Aquatic Resources\u2019 determination that four of the streams the Sierra Club is seeking protection for \u201cshould be a high priority for stream restoration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quote of the Month<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is an era where oceanfront property is no longer a benefit, but a major liability.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Sam Gon, Land Board<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunset Seawall Court Case: On February 10, 1st Circuit Judge Jeffrey Crabtree will hear arguments on the state’s January 12 motion to compel Sunset Beach homeowners James and Denise O’Shea to produce documents supporting their claims that the state holds … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[479,18,28],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-13275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-february-2021","category-new-noteworthy","category-water","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13275","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=13275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}