Red tape ties up groups’ fishpond restorations

Hi‘ilei Kawelo said government rules haven’t been a help in her more than 10 years of trying to restore an 88-acre traditional Hawaiian fishpond at Heeia-Kea.

"It’s such a deterrent. It’s probably easier to blow up a mountain and put a road through it than it is to re-build a fishpond," said Kawelo, executive director of the nonprofit Paepae o He‘eia.

She said her group is treated as if it were proposing a new commercial development and required to receive several permit approvals — the latest an Army Corps of Engineers review that will take at least two years to repair an 89-foot section of a wall damaged in a 1965 storm.

But Kawelo needs help now.

"We need to grow food now. … Government needs to figure out how to make it a one-stop shop," she said.

This low-tech alternative was once successful enough to be a major source of food for Native Hawaiians in the early 1800s, with an estimated 400 fishponds statewide, including 96 on Oahu. There are now about 10 fishponds remaining on Oahu, Kawelo said.

The fishponds can become a resource for economic export, as shown by a six-acre commercial project in part of the Heeia fishpond that once produced 70,000 pounds of moi annually and 1,000 pounds of ogo weekly for a number of years before 1999. The operation sold the moi and ogo to various local markets in Hawaii, California and Canada before it closed.

At Kalepolepo Beach Park in south Maui, a group of Native Hawaiians has taken nearly 10 years to receive all the federal, state and county permits to restore a three-acre fishpond — a project supported by the nearby Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.

Despite no opposition, the work to prepare the permits to restore Ko‘ie‘ie Fishpond took about 1,600 to 2,000 hours and about $60,000, project leader Kimokeo Kapahulehua said.

"For us, it wasn’t a cheap deal," said Kapahulehua, president of Ao‘ao O Na Loko I‘a O Maui, a group trying to restore Maui’s fishponds.

Kapahulehua said the group has restored about half the fishpond and is still raising funds to complete the repair and restoration of the rest of it.

He said he sees the fishponds as a method to revive the ocean environment and Hawaiian culture.

"The fishpond can be an embryo for revitalizing marine life. It can be a birthplace for all these things we’re losing," Kapahulehua said.

The partial restoration of Ko‘ie‘ie Fishpond already had a beneficial impact, allowing sand to collect along the shoreline fronting the park, federal officials said.

State Land Board Chairman William Aila said many rural communities on the neighbor islands and Oahu are asking for a larger role in maintaining resources, including fishponds.

"They’re coming and saying, ‘We have a problem, and we’d like to be part of the solution,’" he said. "The challenge is to find a balance."

A group of government officials, conservationists and Hawaiian cultural practitioners, including Aila and Kawelo, recently visited the Republic of Palau in the western Pacific, where tribal villages still maintain fishponds and are developing ecotourism.

Kawelo said compared to Hawaii, Palau’s population is small, about 21,000, and the vast majority of them are native Palauans who follow fishpond rules set by village chiefs.

She said people in Hawaii come from various cultural backgrounds and many are not reliant on nearshore resources to feed themselves.

She said government officials need to reorder priorities to enable the restoration of environmentally friendly fishponds.

"I think it’s obvious rules and regulations need to change," she said. "I think our government needs to put the environment first."