Don’t return Makua Valley to line of fire

he most recent steps by the Army to construct a live-fire training complex at Pohakuloa on Hawaii island have raised some troubling questions about another training area: Makua Valley, on Oahu’s West side.

The Army announced this week a record of decision — the final step in the environmental impact statement process — that stated its intention to build a $29 million Infantry Platoon Battle Course on 110 acres of land at the vast, 133,000-acre Pohakuloa Training Area.

However, the Army’s EIS includes a caveat: The proposed battle course at Pohakuloa won’t eliminate the need for company-level live-fire training in Makua Valley.

While Pohakuloa offers some advantages, such as night training and use of tracer ammunition, the EIS said that it would be too expensive to transport to Pohakuloa a company, which consists of three or four platoons.

"It would be unlikely that a company would travel alone to (Pohakuloa) to train," the EIS said. "Rather, it would have to travel with its larger parent unit," driving up costs.

That the Army needs to conduct live-fire exercises is beyond argument. So, too, is the need to conduct these exercises in Hawaii, where thousands of troops from every military branch are stationed.

But there are other costs to consider.

Since before World War II, military live-fire training in Hawaii has left a toxic trail in its wake — acres of land and underwater locations littered with unexploded ordnance (UXOs), chemical weapons and other such detritus.

Removing UXOs from such places as Kahoolawe, the idyllic Waikane Valley and Makua Valley have proven to be difficult and painfully slow, consuming many millions of dollars in the process.

Those cleanup efforts continue today, decades later. Despite long-running lawsuits and earnest remediation efforts, it’s become apparent that much of this contaminated land may never be completely cleared of the weapons of war, limiting their use for the indefinite future.

Makua Valley has suffered the depredations of live fire since the 1920s, and unfortunately it seems the Army wants to keep it that way — even though the valley is located close to a population center, contains numerous archaeological features and endangered species, is significant to the Hawaiian people, and has not been used for live-fire training in nine years.

In 2007, the Army insisted that Makua was "absolutely critical" to the Army’s live-fire training strategy. In 2011, the Army changed course, saying it would no longer pursue company-level live-fire training at Makua, but transfer the training to a new Infantry Battle Platoon Area at Pohakuloa.

Now the Army has modified its plans for a training ground and wants to preserve the option of returning Makua to the line of fire.

This recent history shows that the need to use Makua for live-fire training is not absolute. It can be done elsewhere. Given the more than 30 years of legal wrangling with environmental and Hawaiian rights groups over the use of the valley — some of which is still ongoing — it simply makes better sense for the Army to recalibrate, and put Makua Valley to a different, less destructive use.