Native Hawaiians to fight phased impact reviews

Native Hawaiian activists said Tuesday they will ask the state Legislature next year to repeal a new law that allows for the phased review of the impact of development projects on historic preservation.

Hawaiians also said they will urge the public to make the law a political issue in Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s re-election campaign.

Walter Ritte, a Hawaiian activist, said at a news conference outside the Governor’s Office at the state Capitol that activists will do whatever it takes to "protect our historic sites, protect our cultural heritage and to protect our iwi kupuna and the dignity that they deserve."

Ritte and other Hawaiians delivered a petition opposing Senate Bill 1171 to the Governor’s Office.

The Abercrombie administration sought the law in response to a state Supreme Court ruling last August that temporarily stopped the Hono­lulu rail project. The court ruled that the city should have conducted an archaeological inventory survey on the entire 20-mile rail route before construction instead of doing the research in phases. The city has since completed the survey along the route.

The Abercrombie administration feared that the court’s ruling could have stalled state highway projects. Before the court’s decision, state and county governments routinely conducted historic preservation reviews in phases.

The law, which Abercrombie signed last week, allows phased reviews of projects along corridors or large land areas, where access to property is restricted and where circumstances dictate that construction be done in phases.

Federal historic preservation law allows phased review through the administrative rules process. Hawaiian activists, along with the Society for Hawaiian Archaeology, had recommended that lawmakers address the court’s ruling through the state’s administrative rules process rather than change what many consider a strong historic preservation law.

Moses Haia III, executive director of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., said the law creates a "huge hole" in the historic preservation law "that would allow just about any project to phase its archaeological inventory survey."

Haia indicated that there could be a legal challenge to the law. The Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. represented the Hawaiian woman who successfully challenged the city in the Kalei­kini v. Yoshi­oka case.

"We’ve all grown up being taught the lesson that it is important to think before you act, look before you leap, measure twice, cut once. Later on we were taught to call this ‘informed decision-making,’" he said. "The legal review process under (the old historic preservation law) puts these precise lessons into the review process with the intended effect of requiring the identification of significant historic sites in the project areas and the creation of plans to handle the impact of development on such sites, in many cases by preservation in place."

Abercrombie said in a statement that he signed the law "because every admonition about historic preservation and respect has been taken into account. Act 85 brings state law into line with federal law, which is complete and takes into account environmental and historical requirements in regular order.

"The state of Hawaii obeys the law. We understand environmental laws and historic preservation laws. We respect both the spirit and the letter of the law."