Aloha Chair Baisa and General Plan Committee members,
The Save Honolua Coalition was formed as a result of the General Plan process. In January of 2007, a much different version of Maui Land & Pineapple Co. submitted conceptual plans for a luxury golf course, 40 home sites and a surf park/cultural area at Honolua. Much has changed in the last five and a half years, but our mission remains the same: Maintain open space, public access and revitalize the health of the Honolua Ahupua’a utilizing Native Hawaiian practices and values. Our community remains vigilant and committed to Honolua.
West Maui has seen Maui Land & Pineapple Co. go from a family plantation business belonging to the Camerons to a publicly traded real estate corporation. We have survived mass layoffs; we have witnessed the Kapalua Bay Hotel shut down, torn down and in its place a towering luxury condominium put up, which stands empty and less than a half decade later has gone out of business – shut down for lack of profit, jobs lost, small local landscape characteristic gone forever.
The all volunteer board and supporters of the Save Honolua Coalition have been working diligently since 2007 to show our concern for Honolua. We have collected over 16,000 signatures of people locally and internationally who believe the undeveloped areas mauka and adjacent of Honolua bay should be preserved in perpetuity, we have worked to fund port-a-potty services for over three years although we do not own the land and do not run a commercial business that makes a profit off of Honolua. We have helped to organize testimony and input on a wide range of issues including the Honolua Bridge, day-use mooring buoys and water quality.
If the Maui County General Plan is truly a comprehensive blueprint for the physical, economic, environmental development and cultural identity of the county then Lipoa point must be left in preservation as indicated by the professional planners and the mauka areas should be included in that designation as supported by the community. Traditional environmental knowledge is clear, to protect the marine life conservation district we need to protect mauka to makai. To leave Lipoa point in agriculture when there is no agriculture going on nor is there any planned, would be wrong. The corporation asks the council to consider it’s 1,600 pensioners, we ask the council to consider everyone, na keiki o ka aina, visitors, residents and future generations. Why have negotiations failed? It is not because the community is not committed.
A May 3, 2007 article entitled the Battle of Honolua Ridge by Maui Times’ Anthony Pignataro states, “We don’t usually associate mud-clogged drainage inlets, potentially unsafe drainage basins and poorly graded roads with new Kapalua Resort developments, but a new owner’s association report concerning Honolua Ridge is saying exactly that.” In February 2007, the Plantation Estates Lot owners association wrote to ML&P about the ill designed drainage system at Honolua Ridge.
Upzoning this development area from agricultural to rural would set an extremely bad precedent especially since recent history shows that the infrastructure at the time of development in this environmentally special area did not meet their own lot owner association standards. Allowing a change to rural designation would increase the number of “empty” mansions to be built, currently there are 50. It also would not require any Environmental Impact Statement from developers, mauka of our state Marine Life Conservation District.
I am also against the development of Olowalu and am distressed to see heavy machinery already in the area when I drove past Olowalu this morning.
Ua mau ke ea o ka aina I ka pono – The life of the land is perpetuated in balance, it is up to you as our leaders to keep the balance between development and natural beauty.
He aliʻi aina, he kauwa ke kanaka. The land is our chief and we are its servants.
