Delay in copter-training permit will cost $8 million, Army says

The Army, which is completing a third environmental review for high-altitude helicopter training on Hawaii island, said it will have to spend $8 million to conduct most of the training in Colorado because it is running out of time to practice in Hawaii before a January deployment to Afghanistan.

Eight UH-60 Black Hawks already have been sent to Fort Carson, Colo., for the "High-Altitude Mountainous Environment Training."

Fourteen more Black Hawks and three CH-47 Chinook tandem-rotor choppers also will be shipped, the Army said.

The Army hopes to get state Land Board approval in September to be able to conduct high-altitude training on six landing zones on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in October before it has to ship its nearly 100 helicopters to Afghanistan in November, officials said.

Ninety pilots out of 260 would be trained in Hawaii if the state grants a "right of entry" permit for the conservation district land, according to the Army.

Eleven pilots were able to train in March on Hawaii island as part of flights to study noise and ground effects. Some of the others out of the 260 needing the training have already been sent to Colorado.

Opponents say the helicopter training will interfere with critical habitat for endangered species and is an affront to the sacredness of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

The latest draft environmental assessment for the Hawaii island training, released on July 23 and intended to cover both federal and state requirements, has a 30-day public comment period ending Aug. 23.

The 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, which had hoped to train all the pilots in Hawaii, conducted similar training in 2003, 2004 and 2006 on Hawaii island on individual permits prior to deployments.

With an increasing focus on Afghanistan, the Army standardized its high-altitude training. As a result, the Army said it undertook a federal environmental assessment for the Hawaii island training.

Three environmental assessments have now been done for high-altitude training where one was originally planned.

The environmentaldelays, which extend back to 2010, have been a frustration for helicopter crews, who will have to spend up to 45 more days away from families with the Colorado training requirement, according to the latest environmental report.

Col. Mike Donnelly, a spokesman for U.S. Army Pacific, said the deaths of 30 Americans in a Chinook helicopter crash Saturday in Afghanistan "is a stark reminder of how important training is and the inherent risks of flying a helicopter in a combat zone."

"So everything we do in terms of training is critical to the survivability of our soldiers," Donnelly added.

But Hanalei Fergerstrom, a Big Island resident who opposes the Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa training, said that, as a Hawaiian religious practitioner, "I’m not happy with the Army telling me they are going to fly helicopters in my temple."

The Army originally wanted to conduct the high-altitude training on Hawaii island from February to August, but community groups complained that the Army’s first federal environmental assessment, released in December, was inadequate.

The Army acknowledged the study was flawed, then revised it and hoped to get a permit for training from the state Land Board in June.

The assessment addressed impacts such as noise, disturbance to the land and effects on hunters and hikers caused by the Army helicopters flying over and landing on state conservation land.

The latest problem faced by the Army in securing a permit stemmed from a state Attorney General opinion — detailed in a June 20 letter from Gov. Neil Abercrombie to Lt. Gen. Francis Wiercinski, head of the Army in the Pacific — that the Army needed to complete a state environmental assessment for the training in addition to the federal studies it already conducted.

Wiercinski said recently that the state Department of Land and Natural Resources couldn’t continue to provide individual special-use permits to the Army as it did in years past. "I understand that, because people will always take you to court on a waiver, and then everything stops," Wiercinski said. "If you don’t do it right, it just keeps getting messed up."

The Army now wants flights from Bradshaw Army Airfield at Pohakuloa Training Area to six existing Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa landing zones.

The Mauna Kea landing zones are about two to three miles from the summit and its observatories. The Mauna Loa landing sites are about six to eight miles from the summit of Mauna Loa and its observatory, the Army said.

The Army report said the potential for impacts to endangered and threatened species, other species of concern, or habitat in general is anticipated to be "less than significant." No plant species of concern were identified within the operational areas of the landing zones, it said. Vegetation within the operational areas of the landing zones "is extremely sparse to absent."

The Sierra Club’s Moku Loa Group said helicopters will fly over the only designated critical habitant for the endangered palila bird, a finch-billed Hawaiian honeycreeper.

The Army said in its latest report that a 2,000-foot altitude has been established to protect the palila and its habitat from planned operations.

Cory Harden, a Hawaii island Sierra Club board member, said she is sympathetic to the greater cost and time away from families with high-altitude training in Colorado, "but I’m also concerned about the impacts (on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa)."

"I share the concerns about the endangered species and the impacts to cultural practitioners and hikers," she said. "That’s a beautiful peaceful place up there, and you have more helicopters going in and out. It destroys it."