When problems dismissed, resort’s review means little

Everyone acknowledges that the plan to massively expand the Turtle Bay Resort to 625 hotel rooms and 750 residences will massively expand the number of minivans, SUVs, convertibles and all variety of motorized vehicles traveling to, from and through the region on its one and only narrow coastal road.

People who live close-in as well as other Oahu residents realize this. Business owners along the thin string of Kamehameha Highway recognize it. State and city officials admit to the unwelcome traffic congestion the resort’s enlargement will generate. Even the resort’s owners and investors concede the problem, not really needing its new environmental study to tell them so.

Yet, little stands in the way of the resort’s developers gaining a permit for the project and fulfilling the prophecy of a hell on wheels.

People from Waialua and Haleiwa and all along the Windward Coast know how difficult traveling Kamehameha on weekdays, weekends, holidays, afternoons, evenings and even in the early mornings can be. Many of them oppose the resort expansion for this reason, if not for the other remarkably harmful consequences of foisting an ill-fitted tourism center on the North Shore.

They have weak recourse. They can link to Turtle Bay’s supplemental environmental impact statement website, register, log in and key in their comments until Jan. 18. That deadline is 11 days past the usual 45 days allowed in the feeble review process, extra time generously granted by the resort’s developers.

Their arguments and reasonings could be given thoughtful consideration or merely blown off. I suspect the latter.

Even the government agencies that are charged with representing the interests of citizens will not likely take a stand against the expansion. Both the city’s planning and the state’s transportation departments claim they cannot step in. The planning department says its role is merely to check the boxes to make sure the developer has complied with rules and regulations of environmental review and, if so, approve the permit.

It seems that damaging effects of a proposal have little to do with whether a project is accepted. Had it not been for a state Supreme Court ruling that a 1985 environmental review had too many cobwebs on it to remain valid, the project would likely be in construction.

It was money, or lack of it, that put the resort expansion on hold for more than two decades, and it is money that now pushes it forward. Money is also what will be needed for the state and city to deal with the mess of traffic in years to come — money neither government has much of.

But bureaucracy and elected officials have little in the way of backbone. Bureaucrats just do the job their appointed bosses give them. Political bravery against financial forces is rare and, if exercised, as Ben Cayetano did in his quest to stop a poorly conceived rail system for the city, it is unfairly bashed and beaten.

The last course of action could come with a lawsuit. The oft-maligned Sierra Club, one of the community groups who went to court to force the updated environmental review, is considering filing another.

When just completing the environmental review is the goal, when people’s voices are dismissed as noise, when the problems and potential damage uncovered are merely jotted down, the value of the process is lost. The courtroom then becomes the final venue.

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Cynthia Oi can be reached at coi@staradvertiser.com.