Peter Young expected there would be mo ments of uncomfortable silence when the Hawai\u2018i Ocean and Coastal Council met for the first time on March 9.<\/p>\n
The freshly minted council was established by an executive order of Governor Linda Lingle, signed January 16, 2005. Its 30 or so appointed members are drawn from county, state and federal agencies with a stake in coastal issues. According to the EO, the council is \u201cto gather information and provide advice and recommendations on direction and planning for addressing Hawai`i\u2019s ocean and coastal matters throughout the state to foster coordinated approaches that support local initiatives on ocean and coastal con cerns\u201d (sic).<\/p>\n
A press release from the governor\u2019s office on the occasion of the EO was only slightly more specific, stating that the council would help implement the initiatives of President George Bush\u2019s U.S. Ocean Action Plan and develop an agenda for a Hawai\u2018i Ocean Sum mit to be held in October \u201cin concert with the All Islands Coastal Zone Management meet ing here in Hawai\u2018i.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was the background against which the first council meeting was held. At the March 9 meeting, many of the commission ers seemed to be puzzled about what, exactly, was expected of them.<\/p>\n
HOCC member Arnold Lum, represent ing the Marine and Coastal Zone Advisory Council, pointed out that the state had al ready reviewed President Bush\u2019s Ocean Ac tion Plan. As far as reviewing a new coastal policy for the state Board of Land and Natural Resources, which was also on the meeting\u2019s agenda, Lum asked, \u201cAre we supposed to come up with a report or work product?\u201d<\/p>\n
Lum\u2019s bewilderment was echoed in the comment of HOCC member Larry Lau, deputy director for the environment of the state Department of Health. \u201cWhat are we doing here?\u201d Lau asked.<\/p>\n
After listening to the discussion that fol lowed, one might answer, \u201cReinventing the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the early 1990s, a council of governmental and non-governmental agencies met regu larly to discuss coastal issues and advise the Coastal Zone Management program. It was called the Marine and Coastal Zone Manage ment Advisory Group, MACZMAG for short. The CZM program is housed in the Depart ment of Business, Economic Development and Tourism under its Office of Planning. Before MACZMAG, there was the Coastal and Ocean Management Policy Advisory Group, and before that, the State Advisory Council (SAC).<\/p>\n
By the mid-1990s, it became clear to then Office of Planning director David Blane that MACZMAG was not particularly effective, so he reorganized it to include only private non governmental organizations and renamed it the Marine andCoastal Zone AdvisoryCoun cil (MACZAC).<\/p>\n
MACZAC had been a driving force behind the Summit-to-Sea (Mauka to Makai) con ference, which was to have been held last December. The aim of the conference was to help the CZM program update the state\u2019s Ocean Resources Management Plan, which had not been updated since the plan was first developed in 1991. To MACZAC\u2019s surprise, Governor Lingle unilaterally cancelled the conference two months before it was to be held.<\/p>\n
Lingle said she took the action \u2013 which she described as a postponement \u2013 because she was worried that another major conference that had been scheduled for the same time would spread staff resources too thin. Young told Environment Hawai\u2018ithat there were actually two major conferences scheduled for early December, a homeland security sum mit, which he attended part of, and a women\u2019s conference.<\/p>\n
Young said that the \u201ccommunications people\u201d with the governor\u2019s office didn\u2019t want the summit to distract from those two confer ences, which were expected to include people from out-of-state.<\/p>\n
On October 6, MACZAC chair Susan Sakai wrote Lingle, \u201cAt our MACZAC meet ing last week, we were informed that a meet ing was to be held among members of your cabinet to assure that there was adequate support for it by the department heads. We have learned that the meeting was held and that the discussion was generally positive.<\/p>\n
However, to our surprise, the CZM Program was asked to postpone its plans for the confer ence because of scheduling conflicts. This Conference has already beenrescheduled once [because of 9\/11 and the SARS epidemic in Asia] and to do so again would not be a good idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sakai went on to say that OHA and the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs had been advertising the conference at commu nity meetings and that people were looking forward to the ahupua\u2018a-themed event.<\/p>\n
In her October 26 response to Sakai, Lingle wrote, \u201cIt was and is unfortunate that the conferences were scheduled so very close to gether and that this conflict resulted in the necessity to request that the Summit-to-Sea be postponed and rescheduled\u2026. I look for ward to the continued commitment shown by the various volunteers\u2026as we move for ward to host the Summit-to-the-Sea in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two-and-a half months later, Lingle formed HOCC, whose first agenda included an item on an Ocean Summit. This did not sit well with the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs, which had helped in developing the Summit-to-Sea conference but which had not been given a seat on HOCC.<\/p>\n
On March 7, Antoinette Lee, president of the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs wrote Young, \u201cWe are distressed to hear that while we were continuing to plan for and anticipating an Ocean Summit, your depart ment was instead organizing a Hawai\u2018i Ocean and Coastal Council \u2013 a council where there is no seat for a Hawaiian voice outside of a state agency. We are insulted that this has occurred, and consider this affront a grave injustice to the Hawaiian people, the host culture of Hawai\u2018i\u2026.Executive Order no. 5, which es tablished the [HOCC] seems to be duplicating the efforts of many agencies, organizations, and community input gathered over the past five years.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the March HOCC meeting, its first order of business was to add as members the Civic Club association, the Office of Hawai ian Affairs, the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and the University of Hawai\u2018i\u2019s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology to its membership.<\/p>\n
When asked about the decision to add these organizations before such a need was even discussed formally at an open meeting, Young said that after HOCC\u2019s membership was set forth in the EO, \u201cIt was one of those things, where you slap your palm to your forehead, and think what about them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Young says it was never his or the governor\u2019s intention that the CZM program\u2019s conference be cancelled (in fact Young says he strongly supports such a conference), it be came clear at the HOCC meeting that the postponement may have killed it, at least in the near future.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Office of Planning\u2019s Coastal Zone Management program, which was the lead for the Summit-to-Sea, is not going to organize a separate conference,\u201d said OP acting director Mary Lou Kobayashi, adding that resources for the conference \u201care not currently avail able.\u201d CZM\u2019s Lynn Nakagawa told the coun\u00adcil that federal CZM money had been available for five years, but after the governor\u2019s post ponement, that money lapsed.<\/p>\n
Heidi Guth, a policy analyst with OHA, said that her office would be willing to provide money for a HOCC-sponsored conference. OHA had planned to help support the Sum-mit-to-Sea, as it had conducted extensive community meetings with Native Hawaiians statewide and was going to use the conference as an outlet to address the issues raised in those meetings.<\/p>\n
Regarding the proposed HOCC confer ence, Kobayashi noted that it would be diffi cult to plan something for this year. Whether HOCC can pull off a whole new conference at all is questionable given the fact that HOCC is only a temporary body, set to dissolve at the end of the 2006 legislative session.<\/p>\n
HOCC member and University of Hawai\u2018i coastal geologist Chip Fletcher was also sty mied by the lack of purpose of a HOCC conference, given that CZM is looking at alternative ways to update the ORMP.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlanning for this [the Summit-to-Sea] was quite far down the road, with tracks and speakers\u2026 Is what we\u2019re being asked to do is say to the organizers, \u2018Go ahead\u2019? To a great degree, you might be reinventing the wheel. Also, who\u2019s staffing this? Who\u2019s doing the heavy lifting?\u201d<\/p>\n
In response, Young said he didn\u2019t \u201cwant to make it like we\u2019re taking over someone else\u2019s thing.\u201d The purpose of a HOCC -sponsored conference could be an outreach effort, an opportunity to get community feedback and \u201cget together to show our cooperation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Fletcher and HOCC member Wendy Wiltse of the EPA were more interested in pursuing the goal of the original conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be irrational to go off in another direction when we have this document [the ORMP]\u2026 I\u2019m interested in how we can imple ment the ORMP,\u201d Fletcher said.<\/p>\n
Wiltse added that the conference should help devise recommendations on how to bet ter manage ocean resources. \u201cIt would make sense to plug it into the ORMP,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Sea Grant\u2019s Chris Woolaway, who helped draft the ORMP, said there wasn\u2019t the political will to follow the ORMP when it was created more than a decade ago. \u201cOne of the things that comes out of this is developing that political will,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Given that the proposed conference lacks a secure source of funding, Lum suggested that HOCC forgo a conference. Given the exper tise of the council members and their exposure to a wide range of coastal issues, he said, the council could simply meet on its own to come up with recommendations to update the ORMP.<\/p>\n
In the end, the council voted to postpone a decision on the conference until after HOCC members have had chance to review the ORMP and public comments gathered by OHA in its public meetings. The council\u2019s next meeting was set to be for some time this month.<\/p>\n
After the council\u2019s vote, Leimana DaMate of the Big Island Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs asked Young, \u201cDoes this council have any kind of budget at all?\u201d<\/p>\n
The short answer, Young said, is no.<\/p>\n
That may change shortly. The Coastal Zone Management Program has a few hun dred thousand dollars in federal grant money available for distribution in Hawai\u2018i in 2005. In January, Kobayashi issued a request for proposals. Among the responses she received were grant requests from the Department of Land and Natural Resources totaling about $150,000, to be used to support development of the DLNR\u2019s coastal policy and to pay for staff to administer HOCC as well as other DLNR ocean-related efforts. (Copies of the grant proposals were requested by Environ ment Hawai\u2018i; they had not been made avail able by press time.)<\/p>\n
The Office of Planning advised Young in mid-March that grant money cannot be used to hire DLNR staff to address user conflicts. To get around that, Young has proposed contracting someone to do the job. The deadline to submit proposals to the CZM was February 25. No decision had been reached on DLNR\u2019s grant requests by mid-March.<\/p>\n
(The DLNR has received CZM grants in the past, but under a different administrative structure. In 2003, Lingle gave Young direct oversight of the OP after her efforts to move the OP from DBEDT to DLNR failed to get Legislative approval. When asked if he thought it was appropriate for him to submit those requests to CZM when he oversees the office that administers that program, Young responded that he does not make \u201cthose kinds of decisions,\u201d and that DBEDT administrator Ted Liu is still the head of the Office of Planning.)<\/p>\n
According to Young, both HOCC and the DLNR\u2019s recent efforts to develop a coastal policy grew out of a November 2003 meeting he convened with DLNR divisions heads and representatives from the state departments of Transportation, Health, and Business, Eco nomic Development and Tourism, the Of fice of Planning, Hawai\u2018i Tourism Authority, and the University of Hawai\u2018i.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the same birth,\u201d Young says of HOCC and the DLNR\u2019s coastal policy. \u201cIs sues are clearly overlapping.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the 2003 meeting, each agency priori tized its top five ocean and coastal concerns, and from that, the group came up with five issues of general concern: the changing shore line, public and private improvements, user conflicts, nearshore water concerns, and juris dictional issues. The Land Board\u2019s coastal policy roughly covers these same areas.<\/p>\n
At the Land Board\u2019s January 28, 2005 meeting, staff with the DLNR\u2019s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands sought the board\u2019s permission to \u201cwork directly with the Hawai\u2018i Ocean and Coastal Council, county agencies and other agency stakeholders on the development of a policy to protect beaches and coastal communities from the negative impacts of erosion and other coastal hazards and that the OCCL report back top the BLNR on a quarterly basis on the status of this effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands administrator Sam Lemmo told the board, \u201cThe system is currently not working well in the shoreline area.\u201d As part of a new, compre hensive coastal policy for the state, Lemmo\u2019s office, a branch of the DLNR, will be develop ing a coastal shoreline policy, working with the state Department of Transportation and the counties on how to better manage the state\u2019s shorelines.<\/p>\n
The board approved OCCL\u2019s request, as well as one from the DLNR\u2019s Division of Aquatic Resources, which sought authoriza tion to develop definitions and a framework for marine-protected and marine-managed areas and to conduct a public process on development of a marine managed area policy. In the months since, the Land Board also approved requests by the Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation and by the Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement to proceed with new policies to manage user conflicts and public outreach projects, respec tively.<\/p>\n
Lemmo says his \u201cchapter\u201d of DLNR\u2019s over all coastal policy will probably take a few years to develop. He says his office already has a good relationship with Maui County, and plans to start meeting with all the county planning departments to discuss shoreline issues.<\/p>\n
The DAR\u2019s Athline Clark says her division\u2019s chapter won\u2019t happen any time soon, either. Her office recently lost its marine protected area coordinator and is in the process of hiring a new one. When that happens, she says, her office will begin convening small focus groups to refine the state\u2019s MPA system.<\/p>\n
Land Board member Tim Johns said in January that he was \u201cnot sure how much we aren\u2019t already doing\u2026but I\u2019d support any thing that raises the profile of issues important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
In March, however, when the board voted to allow DOCARE to partner with coastal communities to help enforce DLNR laws, Johns was outright skeptical.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, this is a great effort,\u201d he said of DOCARE administrator Gary Moniz\u2019 plans to get coastal communities to form neighbor hood watch-type groups. But the \u201cmom and apple pie\u201d presentation by Moniz, The Na ture Conservancy, and the Community Con servation Network failed to address the fact that \u201cGary\u2019s guys need more money\u2026Let\u2019s not fool ourselves that this will make a differ ence by itself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
— Teresa Dawson<\/p>\n
Volume 15, Number 10 April 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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