Hawaii County planning officials last week addressed some misconceptions about draft revisions to the county’s General Plan.
As part of a monthly series of public meetings discussing amendments to the General Plan, the Windward Planning Commission on Thursday held a discussion about the third chapter of the plan, “Sustainable Development: Land Use.”
April Surprenant, long-range program manager for the Planning Department, presented the chapter’s largest changes, which establish a series of objectives dictating how the county will manage land throughout the 20-year lifespan of the General Plan.
Some of those objectives included policies to “maintain community character,” “reduce the threat to life and property from natural hazards,” and the like.
The updated plan also would create some new land use designations, such as splitting the industrial district into “light industrial” and “heavy industrial,” or renaming the current plan’s “important agriculture land” to the more straightforwardly named “productive agriculture.”
Surprenant said the updated plan does not retroactively change current zoning and land subdivisions. However, the updated plan would increase the amount of land considered “rural” from about 47,000 to 73,000 acres.
Despite all this, nearly all discussion by attendees was not about land use, but climate change, which had been the subject of last month’s meeting.
About a dozen attendees were present in person or online Thursday at the Windward Planning Commission meeting, most of whom reiterated comments from last month’s meeting, claiming that anthropogenic climate change is a politicized myth intended to mask the rise of an authoritarian one-world government.
“What’s meant by ‘climate change’ is that mankind is the cause of all of it, because of what we exhale and what we drive,” said Hakalau resident Kevin Hill. “And that presumption is the fundamental issue with climate change, and that comes into the conversation about how we do sustainability, and how we do zoning, and how we do everything else.”
Hill also argued that the sun, not human action, is the greatest influence upon climate fluctuations, while also claiming that there are worldwide efforts by governments to control the weather.
Some testifiers had other problems with the plan. Captain Cook resident Juhl Rayne took issue with language suggesting the General Plan will restrict how residents can use water catchment systems.
Newly appointed Planning Director Jeff Darrow chose to address some residents’ concerns after hearing their testimony. He said the only language in the plan that most impacts water catchment systems proposes establishing a series of standards with the state Department of Health for the construction and use of catchment systems to minimize the risk of chemical infiltration into those systems.
“It actually promotes (catchment systems),” Darrow said.
Surprenant also addressed repeated concerns about Hilo’s lack of an up-to-date Community Development Plan, which could tailor more area-specific policies for the island’s most populous district instead of leaving it to a generalized islandwide plan.
“They’re correct, there is not a current, formal Community Development Plan for South Hilo,” Surprenant said. “But the point is, based on the General Plan process, we were bound by a process … which mandated that we start the (General Plan) process within 10 years of the adoption of the last General Plan, which was Feb. 2005, so we started this process in Feb. 2015.”
Surprenant added that, while Hilo doesn’t have an updated CDP, it has several other plans, such as the Hilo Multimodal Master Plan, which other districts do not. Those plans, she said, also are influencing the General Plan updates.
Responding to requests from testifiers to postpone work on the General Plan to wait for an updated Hilo CDP or for additional public feedback, Surprenant said that work has been underway on the updated plan for nearly a decade, and the county has regularly notified the public about its progress.
Neither Darrow nor Surprenant directly addressed the climate change concerns, however.
The Leeward Planning Commission will have its own discussion about the land use section of the updated plan on Dec. 19. The next Windward Planning Commission meeting about the plan is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 6, and will continue to address land use.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
