Be vigilant about grading permits

Amid all of the concern about federal surveillance lately, there are limits to what the government, speaking broadly, can track. On the local level, a lot goes on without the city’s say-so, the most recent example being the unpermitted use of dredged material as grading fill on private land in Waianae.

That’s why more needs to be done to deter people from doing the wrong thing, because a lot of the time, they won’t be caught.

The Waianae Coast communities have been vigilant about dumping in that region for some time. So it’s not surprising that people are up in arms about the trucking of earthen material, dug up from the bottom of the Hawaii Kai Marina, from Hawaii Kai to a private parcel in Waianae Valley.

Neighbors who spotted the activity reported it to state Sen. Maile Shimabukuro, prompting a visit by city Department of Planning and Permitting inspectors. They discovered that the dirt was being used for grading, without a permit, and issued a notice of violation. On one level it would seem the system worked as it’s supposed to.

Still, with a fine as light as $150 per day, assessed against the owner and lessees of the property once they have a chance to get a permit, there is little hope of deterring activity like this from happening in an uncontrolled fashion. And that’s a vulnerability government needs to resolve, by ensuring that contractors are held accountable for proper disclosure of what is being moved where, and for fines a lot stiffer than $150 a day.

In this case that’s especially important since the owner of SER Silva Equipment Rental, the subcontractor hired to dispose of the sludge, also owns the Waianae property.

There have been assurances from the Hawaii Kai Marina Community Association, which had contracted for the marina dredging, that the pulled-up sludge had been analyzed and found to be safe. Those findings should be made clear to the public if the fill material is to remain in place in Waianae Valley, given that runoff could reach nearby Kaupuni Stream and ultimately into the ocean.

City documents show that the property is owned by Silva and leased to Xian Xing and Fanny Huang, who will be on the hook for the fines unless they correct the violation or secure a permit by Oct. 7. This, according to DPP, is standard procedure in issuing violations: Those warned have 30 days to make the correction or get a permit.

Silva had a stockpiling permit but it covered a different kind of material — dirt and rocks — being stored for farming and a gravel driveway. The Hawaii Kai association had the permit it needed to stockpile the material near the marina temporarily.

The profile of this case was raised quite by accident, when an SER truck spilled sludge it was hauling in the Waianae direction on the H-1 freeway. At that point the association president, Robert Clark, insisted that everything was fine, dismissing the community’s concerns as "total ignorance." Clark added that he didn’t have time to "educate those people out there" about the situation.

A lot of Waianae people have been bristling about those remarks since they were reported last week, and with good reason. What’s lacking is information, which needs to be publicly available in order to gauge rules adherence. That’s the essence of most environmental regulation. Being concerned about what’s being placed in your back yard shows anything but ignorance.