Work on the Queen Kaahumanu Highway widening project won’t begin until after another 30-day comment period and however long it takes for federal highways officials to address concerns the public voices during that time frame. Work on the Queen Kaahumanu
Work on the Queen Kaahumanu Highway widening project won’t begin until after another 30-day comment period and however long it takes for federal highways officials to address concerns the public voices during that time frame.
Another potential delay — a lawsuit against state and federal officials for allegedly failing to comply with federal requirements to mitigate and address cultural and historical impacts — may also be down the pike, thanks in part to comments Gov. Neil Abercrombie made during a West Hawaii speech earlier this year.
The new comment period is to allow the public to review a supplemental archaeological impact statement, the result of Native Hawaiians’ questions and concerns about impacts to the cultural landscape through which the widened highway would run, Federal Highways Administration spokesman Doug Hecox said.
Fred Cachola, who participated in this week’s federal Section 106 consultation process, said his concerns are about the highway’s impact, as well as the greater impact federal agencies have had in Hawaii. He described an aerial photograph of the region, taken in 1954, that showed no harbor and no highway, but open land and trails.
“How much have we altered that landscape?” Cachola asked. “Who determines the destiny of our landscape?”
Hawaiians have thousands of years of history connecting them to the land, but federal and state officials are the ones more often
making those determinations about changing landscapes. Federal officials have recently acknowledged that applying some of the federal rules regarding historical properties is difficult for Hawaiian and Native American groups trying to preserve culturally significant sites.
“The rules for this are national, federal, United States of America rules,” Cachola said. “Hawaiians had rules before we were illegally annexed, but our rules don’t count.”
He said Hawaiians participating in this week’s consultation asked for a long-term study of the cumulative impacts of federal agencies in Hawaii, particularly federal highways and the Department of Defense.
A lawsuit has always been an option, he added.
“Has there been good faith compliance with federal law” about consultation and mitigation, Cachola said, describing what might prompt a lawsuit.
Abercrombie’s comments during a Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce meeting, in which he criticized Native Hawaiian organizations that “self-designate” and required cultural activities they “discovered six minutes ago,” may also have been a catalyst to consider litigation, Cachola said.
“He was saying we should be thrown out of court,” Cachola said. “He assumed we are in court. I said, oh my goodness, does he think we’re going to go to court?”
A message left for the state Department of Transportation was not immediately returned. The state has been trying to begin the project, which expands the highway from two to four lanes from Kealakehe Parkway to Kona International Airport, since 2008, when it first awarded Goodfellow Bros. Inc. the project. Two companies protested consecutive bid awards, with Goodfellow Bros. eventually remaining the contractor for the $76 million project.
In spring of 2011, DOT officials reported inadvertent archaeological finds of some kind near the project’s southern end, near Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park. A Native Hawaii hui approached the DOT with concerns about those finds, officials told West Hawaii Today last fall. The construction start date was pushed back from May 2011 to mid-November, then to April of this year, then August or September.
Hecox said the additional comment period and subsequent construction delay do not jeopardize the federal funding for the project.
“Not doing it would put the funding in jeopardy,” he said.
