WAILUKU — It was a day devoted to details and then — after 20 years of stops, starts and rancorous debates — Maui County Council members voted 6-3 on first reading in favor of the Honua'ula development, The Maui News reported.

With a rare nearly empty gallery on hand to witness the proceedings Thursday, council members debated their final touches on land-use measures to pave the way for the 1,400-unit, roughly $800 million development in South Maui. Construction of the project, formerly known as Wailea 670, could begin within five years.

Council Members Danny Mateo, Bill Medeiros, Gladys Baisa, Mike Molina, Joe Pontanilla and Mike Victorino voted "yes" on all three bills. Council Members Michelle Anderson, Jo Anne Johnson and Riki Hokama dissented.

The bills face another full council vote when they return for second-and-final reading.

Then, if approved by Mayor Charmaine Tavares, the project would go before the Maui Planning Commission for Phase II approval.

That would involve a review of the project's overall designs for roads, grading, structures and landscaping, said Honua'ula owners' representative Charlie Jencks. The Planning Commission has the authority to approve Phase II without a County Council vote.

Finally, Phase III requires acquiring building permits before any shovels hit dirt or concrete is poured.

Plans for the Honua'ula project call for building 700 luxury and 700 affordable homes as well as a golf course and 90 acres of parkland and open space. Proponents said it would be the first housing development to fulfill the county's new affordable housing ordinance, which requires all new housing developments to be at least 40 percent affordable by federal income guidelines.

Baisa said she believed council members were torn between leaving the project area undeveloped and providing housing for "the real people of Maui."

"Our children have no homes. Our carpenters have no jobs," she said.

Pontanilla, Mateo and Molina essentially agreed with her in their final comments.

"We need to stop the bleeding," Mateo said of people born and raised on Maui who've left the island for more opportunities on the Mainland.

The project has been in the works since the mid-1980s and was shelved in the 1990s. It was reconstituted to roughly its current form five years ago by Honua'ula Partners LLC. In November, the council's Land Use Committee moved the Honua'ula bills forward after roughly six months of hearings and hundreds of testifiers — both pro and con.

Thursday's council meeting was arranged after members listened to Honua'ula testifiers for their entire regular meeting Feb. 8 and then met again on Monday and debated 15 new amendments to the proposal. Land Use Committee members, who make up the entire nine-member County Council, already had added 28 conditions to the project. And the council then supplemented the project ordinances with nine more amendments Thursday.

But the conditions still were not enough for council members voting with the minority.

"I don't believe the application is a full application," Johnson said. "When I look at an application, if it doesn't pass all the requirements, I'm not doing my job."

If all the issues had been addressed by the developer from the beginning of the process, then the dozens of council meetings on the project and numerous conditions would not have been necessary, Johnson said.

Hokama agreed with Johnson.

"This council is the tail of the dog being wagged around," he said.

It is up to the developer to come up with an adequate proposal, he said. And he said he felt as though the community is not getting what it should out of the project.

Hokama said he has concerns about the property titles as well as the wastewater and water treatment proposals.

Anderson, who holds the council's South Maui residency seat, said the council's action was not serving the public's interest.

"Members, our responsibility is to the public," she said. "What are we going to do to protect their rights?"

In dealing with the Honua'ula issue, Anderson has pushed again and again for more project conditions that she insists are needed to protect the environment, general public and county.

Ultimately, Anderson opposed the project, saying its housing would not be affordable for the people who need it most.

Throughout the day, Molina, chairman of the Land Use Committee, defended the Honua'ula conditions and wording. He repeatedly reminded council members that many of their proposed conditions were already in the bills.

Other council members said they've worked extremely hard to make Honua'ula the best possible project for Maui, which is suffering from a severe shortage of affordable housing. Many of the council members worked to accommodate the developers as well as people who advocated for the project because they want affordable housing and construction jobs.

"The saddest thing of all is this housing crisis," Molina said in his final remarks. "Strangers will continue to come here. … You cannot stop people from having babies; you cannot stop people from moving here."

Anderson said she was concerned that no language explicitly directs the developers to build the affordable housing units first.

"They could wait to build those (affordable) units until 20 years from now," Anderson said. "They're more likely to build the high-range units first and go down from there, which is what developers do. … All we're doing is letting them build the high-end units first and not providing for the infrastructure needed to support it."

The project's housing condition states that 450 affordable housing units would be built at Honua'ula and states that another 250 work force housing units would be built in Kihei. Jencks argued that the building cap would hamstring him from building 80 units one year and 120 the next, if that's how the financing works best.

These homes would likely be targeted to retirees, Anderson said, not the work force housing that Maui really needs. But the condition passed 7-2, with Anderson and Johnson dissenting.

In one amendment, Jencks objected to the word "minimal" as too vague when council members originally asked the developers to use minimal grading techniques in order to preserve as much of the area's natural topography as possible. The amendment to delete the word passed 6-3 with Anderson, Johnson and Hokama dissenting.

"Maybe Mr. Jencks thinks we're like Burger King, where you can have it your way," Anderson.

Council members rejected previously approved language that would have required the developer to build an estimated $50 million, 3-mile-long sewage transmission line to the Kihei Wastewater Reclamation Facility. That project's expense alone would have made the development too costly to proceed, Jencks said.

He also successfully argued that the developers would need all the nonpotable water to irrigate lawns, trees and the golf course. Hokama, Johnson and Anderson voted against that provision.

Any excess nonpotable water will not be dumped into underground injection wells, which are believed to cause algae blooms in the ocean. The council also passed a measure guaranteeing that people living in affordable housing at Honua'ula will pay sewer rates no higher that those of residents using county systems.

Council members unanimously voted in favor of a provision that requires the developers to conduct a sewage disposal analysis in order to help protect the groundwater and ocean.

Mateo also added an amendment that would give the county the right of first refusal to take over Honua'ula's planned groundwater system.

There remains a request by Maui Tomorrow for the developer to conduct a supplemental environmental impact study before it gets final approval for construction. The original environmental study was completed in 1988 to meet the needs of the Kihei-Makena Community Plan.

The makeup of the project, which was for years called Wailea 670, has changed considerably over the years. Most of the revisions have reduced the project's overall size, including fewer homes and the elimination of a hotel and golf course. Johnson said she may request a motion during the second reading to require the revised environmental impact statement.

Victorino said the amendments and conditions to the project's land-use bills amount to a new environmental study. They have instructed the developers to re-examine issues such as wastewater, highways, flora, fauna and potential archaeological finds, he said.

"I think that the developer has tried to be good stewards of the lands and the people's needs," Victorino said.

Anderson also successfully amended the ordinance to guarantee that 450-work force housing units be built within the project district. The remaining 250 units would be off-site, most likely as an apartment/condominium complex in north Kihei off of Piilani Highway.

Hokama asked that the development never contain more than 1,400 housing units and his colleagues all agreed with him.

Anderson won approval from her colleagues to demand that developers use the most up-to-date, energy-efficient technology in the homes, such as solar-heated water systems.

She used conditions set out in the existing Kihei-Makena Community Plan to justify many of her requests, such as widening Piilani Highway to four lanes between Kilohana and Wailea Ike drives before any housing construction begins.

She also asked for and won support for a condition that between 18 and 130 acres of critical Native Hawaiian dryland forest plant habitat be preserved. Anderson's amendment also called on the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the area.

Councilors also won access to traditional beach and mountain trails on the property along Kanaio Kalama Park Road.

For more Maui news, visit The Maui News.