Environment meetings clash
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Leeward O'ahu Writer
Both sides call the federal foul-up a fluke. But the result has left folks along the Wai'anae Coast trying to figure out how the government expects them to be in two places at the same time.
Against all odds, two government bureaucracies have scheduled two important public comment meetings for the same time and date along the Leeward coast — one in Wai'anae, the other in Nanakuli.
Neither side knows quite how the scheduling confusion occurred.
"It's two different issues, two different federal entities — the Army and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration — and both meetings were set up for 6 p.m. on April 9," said William Aila, a local leader involved with both issues.
Both scoping meetings are an essential part of the environmental impact statement process.
And each begins the protracted procedure that, according to Aila, means it's critical he attend both.
The Army meeting deals with a contentious legal settlement reached more than a year ago that gives the military, in exchange for conducting an EIS, the right to conduct live-fire exercises at Makua Valley — 4,190 acres many Hawaiians consider sacred ground.
The NOAA meeting has to do with changing the status, from reserve to the more protected sanctuary, of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands — a 1,200-mile stretch from Nihoa Island to Kure Atoll that is the largest marine wilderness under U.S. jurisdiction.
Aila represents a coalition of Hawaiian groups that have worked for years to determine the environmental effects of the military's use of Makua Valley.
He also has spent years on the advisory council of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Reserve.
"To me, both meetings are equally important," he said.
Aila said he asked the Army to change the date. It said it could not.
Then he contacted the NOAA, which said it would schedule a special presentation an hour earlier, at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
"We understand that Makua Valley is very near and dear to those folks," said Robert Smith, co-coordinator of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve. "We couldn't rescheduled our meeting, so we're going to do a short version of the meeting at 5 p.m., and then we're going to do the full-length version at 6 p.m."
Aila and other concerned parties still faced the problem of attending the hourlong 5 p.m. NOAA meeting at the Multipurpose Building at Wai'anae District Park and then getting to the Army meeting at Nanakuli High School Cafeteria five miles away by 6 p.m. — virtually impossible given the only route via busy Farrington Highway.
Then Aila was told by the Army that speakers at the Nanakuli meeting would be taken on a first come, first served basis.
"If that's the case, I won't be able to make the NOAA meeting, because I'll need to be in Nanakuli early to sign up," he said, "because our strategy is to coordinate our speakers in order to present a more effective message."
The Army has told Aila he can have a proxy stand in for him until he arrives, but he's not sure that will work.
Troy Griffin, deputy public affairs officer for the U.S. Army, Hawai'i, said the military was unable to schedule the meeting at any facility other than the Nanakuli High cafeteria on Tuesday.
"We were trying to make all these things fit," said Griffin. "There was certainly no intent at all to have a situation where we were butting up against someone else's scoping meeting at the same time."
Griffin said the Army had scheduled two scoping meetings — the one Tuesday in Nanakuli and another at 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Wai'anae Park Multipurpose Building — simply because it wanted to give area residents ample opportunity to express their concerns.
"That's not good enough," said Aila. "What I need to do as a concerned citizen is to also listen to what others have to say that may spark something in me. That's why it's important to be there early, for the first meeting."
Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8038.
