At the Board of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 meeting of August 25, the agenda did not include any item relating to the Maui fires. Still, member Aimee Barnes did not hold back in expressing her own views on the treatment of Kaleo Manuel, who, following the complaint of a major developer, was \u201credeployed\u201d from his position as director of the Commission on Water Resource Management to another, undisclosed post within the Department of Land and Natural Resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI know this is not on the agenda,\u201d Barnes said. \u201cBut I did just want to say something briefly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe situation on Maui has been heavy and I want to mahalo you and all the staff for the work you\u2019re doing. \u2026 I did just want to say that I\u2019m really deeply concerned with how Kaleo Manuel is being treated, in the media in particular, and some of the very nasty \u2013 I would say racist, in some cases, anti-Hawaiian \u2013 articles that have been written about him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know him personally, but from everything I know about him, he is a kind, good human and an upstanding public servant. I know that the state has the investigation it needs to conduct, and I\u2019m very much looking forward to hearing more about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut I did just want to say mahalo to him for his service and the work he has done for the state. I find some of the discussion around the impossible situation that he and many public servants were put in over the past two weeks \u2013 the discussion of that has really been disturbing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dawn Chang, chair of the BLNR, replied:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis has been extremely hard for all of us. And for those who are on Maui and for those of us, many of us, we care, our people are on the front line. This is an \u2013 undoubtedly it has pained and hurt all of us. And I appreciate what \u2013 my job is to protect the department staff and all of our employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry that I cannot share more on this. The matter is under investigation. The attorney general has changed her review into an investigation and we have been sued, so the matter is in litigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes, you know, Kaleo \u2013 I want to be very clear, and I know this is totally out of order, but the actions that have been taken in no way \u2013 no one\u2019s blaming Kaleo, no one is punishing Kaleo, because he has made an extremely pa\u02bba, solid foundation at the Water Commission to address some of the historic disparities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve not intended to \u2013 I won\u2019t get into any more of this. Thank you for your sensitivity and the sensitivity of all those on Maui. No one was prepared for this. We\u2019re all trying our very best to navigate through this very sensitive time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Patricia Tummons<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the Board of Land and Natural Resources’ meeting of August 25, the agenda did not include any item relating to the Maui fires. Still, member Aimee Barnes did not hold back in expressing her own views on the treatment … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,515,28],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-15344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-board-talk","category-september-2023","category-water","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15344","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=15344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}