Land Board OKs first segment of new saddle road
By Hugh Clark
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — The state Board of Land and Natural Resources has cleared the way for construction of the first segment of a new road running across the Big Island from Hilo to Kona.
Because the road will serve the Pohakuloa Military Training Area and astronomy facilities atop Mauna Kea, a good portion of the expected $200 million cost will come from the federal government.
"This is positive for the whole Big Island, whether you live in Kona or Hilo," said Marni Herkes, president of the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce.
Herkes, who drives between the island's two largest towns at least once a week, said 25 percent of West Hawai'i tourism workers reside in East Hawai'i.
The new road will be about 43 miles long and will take motorists on a more direct route across the "saddle" between the Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea volcanoes, and farther away from military operations.
The existing Saddle Road, which has been the scene of numerous traffic fatalities and the target of lawsuits over its unsafe conditions, will be abandoned.
Bids for the $46 million first phase of the four-part project are expected to be opened in May.
The initial work will involve creating a 14-mile stretch of road from the turnoff to the Mauna Kea astronomy access road at the 28-mile marker to the 42-mile marker on the eastern side of the military training area.
"It will be safer and shorter," said Mel Hewitt of Waimea, chairman of the Saddle Road Task Force Advisory Committee, created five years ago by U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye. "It really does unite the island in a very important way."
Friday's Land Board approval of a conservation district use permit ended 18 months of delay caused by a contested-case hearing on concerns over the loss of state conservation lands used for hunting and ranching.
Former state Sen. John Carroll of Ahualoa and former county attorney Katsuya Yamada of Hilo had requested the hearing. Carroll said yesterday that he would not pursue further opposition to the road, and Yamada declined to comment on the permit approval.
The two had accused the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of a "land grab" in the name of the endangered palila, a gray, yellow and white Hawaiian honeycreeper. The service raised its own concerns about the impact of the project on the bird's habitat.
Inouye mediated a compromise between the Fish and Wildlife Service, the state and the Federal Highway Administration in 1998. The result was that the service relinquished 114 acres of palila habitat in exchange for 9,345 acres of adjoining state land leased to ranchers and also used for hunting.
