Lava land turned down by county
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — Pity the property owners with land so worthless they can't give it away.
It sounds strange in these times of rising Hawai'i real estate prices, but a number of Big Island landowners have tried to give their lots to the local government and were disappointed to learn the county doesn't want them.
The lots were purchased as investment properties or home sites years ago, and then were buried or isolated by lava flows from Kilauea Volcano, which began its ongoing eruption in 1983.
Lava has covered or cut off 1,952 lots in rural Puna subdivisions such as Kalapana Gardens and Royal Gardens, according to a report by county Legislative Auditor Constance Kiriu. That left the owners holding basically worthless land they couldn't sell or even find after lava buried roads and their landmarks and turned the terrain into a moonscape.
But that doesn't mean they don't have to pay property taxes. The county generally charges a minimum annual tax of $25 a year for land under lava.
This has created an unhappy situation for people such as Esther Rian and her husband, Norman, who bought a one-acre lot in Royal Gardens shortly after sales began in the subdivision in the 1960s.
A friend suggested the lot would be a nice investment, and the Honolulu couple bought the property without seeing it. "We tried to find it when we went over there once, but we weren't quite sure we found it," Esther Rian said.
Rian believes she and her husband paid more in property taxes over the years than they paid to purchase the land in the first place.
"It's just the idea that we are getting older and we don't want our children to have to be fussing around with the legalities of this piece of property," said Rian, 88. "We want to get rid of it."
The Hawai'i County Council accepted 19 lava-inundated lots that were donated from 1993 to 1996, but then halted the practice because of liability concerns.
Now the council is reconsidering the issue. Some council members like the idea of "banking" land under lava fields for future generations, while others worry that accepting the donations might inadvertently benefit people who skipped out on their property taxes.
Most people whose property was buried by lava have been dutifully paying their taxes, including the Rians. But Kiriu said a third of the owners of lava-inundated lands stopped paying, and as of last year owed back taxes, penalties and interest totaling more than $630,000.
Ordinarily the county seizes property and auctions it off if the taxes aren't paid, but that makes no sense in this case. It costs $1,000 or more to prepare each property for auction, officials said, and the county doesn't expect anyone would bid on the lava land.
Some council members have suggested it would be unfair to those who paid their taxes to allow those who didn't to donate their land to the county and walk away.
Rian said the county ought to look at the donations as a long-term investment.
"I think they ought to take it," she said. "After all, that land is going to be valuable someday. It's just that Norman and I won't be living at the time that finally the vegetation takes over again and they can build and put their roads back again."
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.
