The Sierra Club Hawaii chapter and several other environmental and cultural groups urged Gov. Neil Abercrombie on Monday to withdraw an emergency proclamation that he made to help the Army Corps of Engineers remove unexploded ordnance, but the governor declined.

The environmental and cultural groups say Abercrombie misused his emergency powers in June when he suspended nearly two dozen state land use and environmental regulations for five years to help the corps access and remove discarded military explosives.

Abercrombie invoked the state law intended to respond to enemy attack and natural and man-made disasters to help contain unexploded munitions that in some cases date back to World War II-era military training.

The environmental and cultural groups said that while the Abercrombie administration may have been well intentioned, suspending the land use and environmental regulations was ill advised and undermined transparency, accountability and community involvement.

In April, Abercrombie also proclaimed a civil defense emergency and suspended more than two dozen state procurement, public works, land use and environmental laws for five years to help relocate a nesting colony of more than 400 Hawaiian nene geese near Lihue Airport on Kauai.

While the nene relocation has been previously reported by the news media, it was not apparent that Abercrombie had invoked his emergency powers under the state’s civil defense law. The governor cited the potential for collisions between the nene and aircraft as a threat to public safety.

“Plainly, it’s a broader fear that the justification here — to protect the public, essentially — could be utilized for just about any circumstance,” said Robert Harris, director of the Sierra Club Hawaii chapter, which sent the appeal jointly with the Conservation Council for Hawaii, Friends of Lanai, Hawaii’s Thousand Friends, KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance, Life of the Land, Malama Kauai and Na Kupuna Moku o Keawe.

“Using that rationale and logic is basically saying the executive has all-encompassing power regardless of what the Legislature has done,” he said.

Donalyn Dela Cruz, an Abercrombie spokeswoman, said the governor would not withdraw the emergency proclamation on unexploded ordnance.

“This is about ensuring public safety,” she said.

Dela Cruz said she would have to discuss the emergency proclamation on the nene relocation with the state Department of Transportation before responding.

The Abercrombie administration posted a summary on the governor’s website on Monday that described the emergency proclamation on unexploded ordnance as an “uncommon but necessary use of the governor’s emergency powers.”

The administration said state land use and environmental regulations were holding up the Army Corps of Engineers’ ability to enter state land to search for and destroy unexploded ordnance. The administration said Hawaii was at risk of losing millions in federal money to help with the cleanup.

But staff at the state Department of Land and Natural Resources reported in December that the department had issued 14 right-ofentry permits to the Corps of Engineers between September 2009 and September 2010, including three emergency permits that allowed engineers to detonate unexploded ordnance.

The department’s staff and the state Office of Environmental Quality Control had also determined that the Army Corps of Engineers was exempt from the state’s environmental review law in unexpected emergency situations where explosives are discovered and must be detonated. The Abercrombie administration, however, said Monday that a blanket exemption was not available and that engineers would have had to stop work to conduct environmental assessments after locating unexploded ordinance.

In the letter to Abercrombie, the environmental and cultural groups said the types of disasters listed in the state’s civil defense law do not include “the cleanup of decades-old munitions and the removal of a specific population of endangered birds, nor does it include language indicating the list can be interpreted broadly.”

The Abercrombie administration, the letter claims, appears to be “simply looking for a shortcut to avoid Hawaii’s decades-old environmental laws.”

Several state lawmakers have also questioned whether Abercrombie should have issued the emergency proclamation on unexploded ordnance and were disappointed the governor did not consult them. Three years ago, lawmakers attempted to restrict the governor’s emergency powers after then-Gov. Linda Lingle declared an emergency to help build homeless shelters on the Leeward Coast. Lawmakers argued that the civil defense law is not meant to address societal problems or bypass publicpolicy debates.

The Abercrombie administration did not post the emergency proclamation on unexploded ordnance on the governor’s website until late August, more than two months after it was issued. The emergency proclamation was not widely discussed publicly until environmental activist Carroll Cox mentioned it on his radio show this month.

Dela Cruz said last week that the lack of public disclosure was an oversight that would not happen again. The administration said on Monday that in the future the Governor’s Office would issue public releases of all emergency proclamations.