HILO, Hawai'i — Government has been accelerating acquisition of private land in Hawai'i in recent years to preserve some huge parcels.

The added purchases were fueled by new injections of tax dollars and substantial public support.

The largest purchases have been on the Big Island, with the expansion of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park by 116,000 acres in 2003 in the largest land conservation purchase in Hawai'i history, and the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs' acquisition this year of 25,856 acres in the Wao Kele O Puna rainforest in Puna.

On O'ahu, the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit organization, acquired 1,129 acres of the Pupukea Paumalu coastal bluff for almost $8 million, and last year, a partnership of five government agencies completed a drawn-out purchase of the 1,875-acre Waimea Falls Park for $14 million. OHA has since taken control of that property.

This year, 3,716 acres of the Moanalua Valley were added to the state Forest Reserve system, an acquisition the Trust for Public Land described as "one of the last truly open spaces in the crowded urban Honolulu area."

Lea Hong, Hawaiian Island program director of the Trust for Public Land, said there is a "growing awareness among the public and concern that there is a loss of a sense of place in Hawai'i, we're losing a lot of things very quickly, and there's a greater sense of urgency about trying to keep little spots or kipukas of places that are still part of Hawai'i's past and history and culture."

More state and local matching funds also have become available in recent years to use to draw federal money for open-space purchases, Hong said. Federal funds were available before, but often could not be tapped because there wasn't enough local money available for the required county or state matches, she said.

Maui and Kaua'i established new funds in 2002 that set aside a percentage of their tax collections each year for public land acquisitions, and voters on the Big Island and in Honolulu followed suit in the 2006 elections.

The state Land Conservation Fund also was formed two years ago to manage part of the conveyance set aside for open space acquisitions. This year, $4.7 million from the fund helped acquire or preserve 1,860 acres on O'ahu, Maui and the Big Island.

Hong also said more land has become available as former sugar and pineapple lands are sold, and said staff with her group, the Nature Conservancy and state Division of Forestry and Wildlife have gained expertise in assembling grants to compete for federal funding.

Big Island County Councilman Bob Jacobson and Hong agreed that in some cases, people believe lands they have used for many years for recreation are public property, and are startled to discover the property is privately owned. That sometimes triggers a push to get government to buy the land, particularly when the land is scheduled for development.

"There are many areas of high-quality public resource lands that people think are public resources that are not," Jacobson said. "They've been used, but they're not ours."

On the Big Island, county officials now have a long list of properties they want to buy, with a combined price tag that some guess would be in the tens of millions of dollars. At the top of the list is 785 acres at Kawa'a Bay in Ka'u.

'GREENMAIL' FEARS

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the Big Island council's ambitious plans to buy land.

Rick Toledo, president of the Hawai'i Island Portuguese Chamber of Commerce, said about 94 percent of all land on the Big Island is already in government hands or locked up with large landowners or trusts such as Kamehameha Schools. The recent acquisitions are all going after the remaining 6 percent, he said.

Those smaller landowners don't generally have deep pockets to defend themselves in court, and Toledo argued they are sometimes subject to a kind of "greenmail" — in effect warned that that if they do not sell, they will face community opposition that will block them from developing their lands.

While some lands the County Council wants to buy probably belong in the public domain, "these kinds of transactions need to be fully disclosed. The public needs to know exactly what they plan to do, which is what a private developer would have to do, and exactly what the cost is to the people."

Toledo pointed to the purchase last year of 225 acres at Honu'apo Fishpond in Ka'u to preserve cultural sites, a historic coconut palm grove and an area that is one the few places to safely swim and fish along that coast. The purchase involved state, county and federal funds as well as private donations, and a local community group is working with the county to manage the property.

The purchase exposes the county to significant liability, Toledo said.

"Now that they own it, somebody goes down there and drowns, guess who's liable?" Toledo said. "There is no disclosure as to what they're going to do with it, or cost as to what they're going to do with it. Somebody's going to have to put in infrastructure. Somebody's going to have to appropriate capital money to put improvements."

PURCHASE PRAISED

Jacobson, who sponsored the measure to have the county acquire Honu'apo, praised the purchase as an example of government answering citizen demands for open space and preservation at a bargain price.

The county contributed only $500,000 toward the purchase to preserve about a mile of coastline, with the rest of the $3.4 million cost covered by federal, state and private money.

There will be some costs for improvements, but the area is being used to create a wilderness conservation sort of park experience, and the county does not need to spend large sums installing or upgrading facilities, Jacobson said.

"We have responsibilities to the taxpayers to provide certain park experiences," Jacobson said.

Jacobson said the partnership between a community group and the county to take care of Honu'apo is "a great management success. ... I've never seen it so clean in my life."

MANY FUNDING SOURCES

With rising real estate prices in recent years, Hong said buying open space has grown more difficult, which has required tough choices.

"It's getting harder because land values are increasing, so putting together a package of funding requires tapping multiple funding sources," she said. "In the past, you could tap one or two, one federal and one state, but now we're having to put together packages involving two or more federal sources, a state source of money, a county source of money and sometimes private funding to fill in the gaps."

"I almost feel like I'm doing land triage, like I'm in the emergency room trying to figure out if I'm going to save the leg or the arm, because it sometimes feels that dire," she said.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.