Proposed updates to the Hawaii County General Plan promise many months of public debate as a series of public meetings roll out into next year.
Both the Windward and Leeward Planning Commissions held special meetings in November to discuss a series of amendments to the General Plan, a document that was last updated in 2005.
A final draft of the new plan, which is intended to guide the county through 2045, was published in August, beginning a lengthy public review period. The planning commissions’ special meetings, held Nov. 1 and Nov. 4 in East Hawaii and Nov. 21 and Nov. 22 in West Hawaii, are just part of that review process, with further meetings planned to go into further depth regarding each of the document’s subsections.
The meetings this month covered the first two sections of the plan, the introduction and a segment on “Biocultural Stewardship and Climate Change.”
Previously, Planning Director Zendo Kern had touted the climate change section of the plan as a major update, considering the 2005 version of the plan does not address climate change at all.
April Surprenant, long-range program manager for the Planning Department, told the commissions the updated plan has integrated the county’s 2023 Climate Action Plan to provide a general roadmap toward actions to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
The central climate-related objectives outlined in the plan are: to ensure all climate actions are equitable and uplift marginalized communities, to reduce the county’s carbon footprint to net zero emissions by 2045, and to improve the county’s ability to identify climate threats and adaptation options.
Some specific policy suggestions include installing electric vehicle charging stations at community facilities, launching a climate dashboard to allow the public to track the implementation of climate-related actions, and conducting mapping of the island’s infrastructure to determine which areas are at most risk of being impacted by climate change.
While the first meetings about the plan’s introduction also invited some negative testimony, the climate change meetings drew considerable negative feedback. Testifiers held court for several hours at both the Windward and Leeward meetings, many with a skeptical eye toward the very existence of climate change.
Hilo resident David DeCleene said the plan is “largely based on a theory … called climate change or global warming,” which he linked to the “Agenda 21” conspiracy theory, which posits that a 1992 action plan developed by the United Nations to promote sustainable development is a Trojan horse to establish a one-world government.
“The General Plan in front of us is riddled with Agenda 21 terminology,” he said. “… Shouldn’t there be a discussion across our county on whether we accept this theory or not?”
DeCleene and several other testifiers claimed the scientific community has become increasingly divided about the existence of climate change, with many citing the “World Climate Declaration,” a document supposedly signed by nearly 2,000 scientists worldwide claiming “there is no climate emergency.”
In truth, very few of the World Climate Declaration’s signatories are climate scientists, and many of them have ties to the oil industry. The claims of the declaration are commonly repeated canards among climate skeptics and have been rigorously debunked by the vast majority of the worldwide scientific community.
Hakalau resident Michelle Melendez wrote in a letter for the Leeward Commission meeting the General Plan will “add more rules and regulations and take away freedom. … It will restructure the Big Island way of life and give more power to the government.”
Not all testimony was skeptical about climate change, however. Waikoloa resident Matt Chalker urged the county to prioritize in the General Plan projects to improve evacuation routes in the wildfire-prone Waikoloa area.
“The climate isn’t just changing, it has changed, and fires are getting worse,” Chalker said. “If something like Lahaina were to happen in Waikoloa Village, we would have literally over 1,000 people dying, and many of those would be dying in a traffic jam.”
Captain Cook resident and former County Councilwoman Brenda Ford said the plan has too much emphasis on “surface-level things,” while neglecting subterranean factors on the island. She said the plan needs to better address how to manage the island’s aquifers and floodplains, while restoring the county’s “terrible” wastewater treatment facilities.
Ford added that the plan does not include any language about fracking — hydraulic fracturing, a drilling technique to extract fluids from a well — which she said is troubling, given that fracking could threaten the purity of the island’s water supply.
Other testifiers also urged the county to develop a Community Development Plan for Hilo, to allow for more area-specific policies to be tailored for Hilo, instead of leaving the island’s most populous area to be beholden to a general islandwide plan.
The commissions made no decisions at any of their meetings, because the special meetings will continue until every section of the General Plan has been discussed.
The next scheduled General Plan meetings will take place Dec. 5 in East Hawaii and Dec. 16 in West Hawaii, and will cover the document’s section on “Sustainable Development: Land Use.”
The General Plan can be viewed at tinyurl.com/8vpyka48.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.