By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Along vast stretches of the interstate that runs through Oklahoma, you see homestead after homestead with collections of junk in the fenced yards. The homesteads cover several acres, and on those acres are broken tractors, broken trucks, broken barns, broken houses. It's as if, when something doesn't work anymore or has aged past the point of viable repair, folks just leave it where it is for the grass and vines to claim it. Then, they build a new barn or a new house or buy a new truck or tractor.

Hawai'i isn't Oklahoma. We don't have that kind of space to spare.

Amazing how many people don't seem to see that, though.

Twenty years ago, when Kaua'i voters overwhelmingly supported the resumption of construction of the controversial resort development at Nukoli'i beach, much of the rationale was based on concern that the island would otherwise earn the label "anti-development".

As if that's a bad thing on a small, beautiful island.

And now, that same tangled thinking is all over Maui's Makena Resort debate. It's Nukoli'i all over again, except there's more money involved, and more acreage.

Never mind that Maui's water supply is literally almost tapped out. Never mind that Maui's roads are more congested than the H-1 by Love's Bakery on a Friday afternoon when there's an accident and it's raining. Never mind Maui's affordable real-estate shortage, Maui's affordable rental shortage, Maui's mid-range real-estate shortage and Maui's growing homeless problem; what that island needs is more time-shares, more condos and more overpriced, overbuilt, money-can't-buy-taste cribs.

Meanwhile, just down the road, there are sad, aging hotels and condos that have lost their glamour or have never lived up to their pre-development hype. Oh, but leave them there to the tall dry grass, the sea rot and the foreign limu. There's always room to grow. And grow. And grow.

The Nukoli'i fight raged on for a decade. There were lawsuits and appeals and that 1984 public vote where pro-development forces pooled hundreds of thousands of dollars to advertise and organize and send out absentee ballots. Fishermen stood on the sand at Nukoli'i and cried and cursed as they saw money win over 'aina and over good sense.

All that, and for what? The hotel that sits there, which has been the Aston, the Hilton and is now the Radisson Kaua'i Beach Resort, is a mid-priced hotel on a beach that's usually too windy. It's the kind of place you go for award luncheons for nonprofit groups, the kind of place the visiting O'ahu high-school team stays in during the tournament.

So what if Maui gets the reputation for being "anti-development"? Being seen as "pro-development" is much more dangerous. The mindset on that island, on all the Hawaiian islands, has to change from this "build, build, build" madness to something more realistic to sustaining life and lifestyle on an island with limited resources.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.