A state agency and a nonprofit foundation have agreed to a new relationship for managing a cultural park on public land in Kalaeloa after clashing over an illegal dirt and construction debris stockpile on the site.

The Kalaeloa Heritage and Legacy Foundation intends to sign a stewardship agreement for Kalaeloa Heritage Park in place of its 40-year lease with the Hawaii Community Development Authority, the state agency that owns the park site.

Meanwhile, HCDA this month received a contractor’s report that roughly estimated the cost for dealing with the 2,259-cubic-yard stockpile at $757,000 to $860,000.

The stockpile, which could fill about 100 to 150 dump trucks, has been a huge headache for the foundation and HCDA over the last seven years.

All the trouble originated one year after the 2011 opening of an initial 4-acre phase of the park, which is on 77 acres of the former Barbers Point Naval Air Station and features remnants of unique coral structures that show how Native Hawaiians lived in the area 400 years ago.

Foundation representatives in 2012 bulldozed some former military infrastructure on the property and received donated material from a construction site in an effort to grade an area for a future visitors center near the park’s initial phase.

A visitors center is part of a $9.5 million conceptual plan to expand the park with a cultural center, car and bus parking, ticketing area, theater, art gallery, kitchen and dining area, meeting and workshop rooms, office space, restrooms, gift shop and other features.

However, no one obtained city permits to create the stockpile. Furthermore, concrete rubble and other materials in the mounds of dirt aren’t permissible for grading.

In late 2013 the city Department of Planning and Permitting cited HCDA as the landowner and soon began assessing $750 daily fines.

Foundation officials said the missteps were oversights, and they committed to curing the violation. But their effort was beset with engineering requirements, discovery of an asbestos pipe, a State Historic Preservation Division review and other difficulties.

The state Department of Health in 2014 issued a warning letter that ordered all solid waste be removed from what it considered an illegal dump.

City fines reached $363,000 by the time the foundation was able to obtain a stockpiling permit in mid-2015.

Despite all the trouble, HCDA signed a 40-year lease with the foundation at the end of 2015 but reserved a right to terminate the lease if the stockpiling violation wasn’t resolved within a year.

The foundation provides interpretive tours at the park and is supported with volunteers but not much money. The foundation presented a corrective action plan but couldn’t carry it out. The plan involved removing solid waste and donating soil to a developer at a projected cost of $103,150 to $210,300.

After frustration at the foundation’s inability to resolve the matter over the next three years, HCDA made an offer in October to give the foundation an initial one-year stewardship agreement in return for giving up its lease and having HCDA shoulder all the burden for resolving the stockpile issue.

The foundation balked, and that prompted a January vote by HCDA’s board to authorize the agency’s executive director to cancel the lease.

At a February HCDA board meeting, foundation supporters encouraged the agency not to go through with lease termination.

Regina Hilo, former president of the Society of Hawaiian Archaeology, told HCDA directors that the foundation put a lot of work into creating the park and is best suited to manage the resource.

“What they are doing out there is absolutely remarkable,” she said.

Eric Matanane, a foundation board member, said the volunteer organization needs to be forgiven for its mistake. “KHLF is the entity that needs to be there,” he told HCDA directors.

Kawika Shook, another foundation board member, said leaders of the organization have the kuleana, or responsibility, along with a historical and cultural knowledge specific to the area that makes them the best caretakers. “I do not believe there is another organization that has the cultural credibility, the endurance, the knowledge and aloha for this place,” he said. “To remove the KHLF from its stewardship kuleana of the (park) would be a disservice to our state, community and future generations.”

About 25 foundation supporters also emailed the agency, including retired Kamehameha Schools teacher Jan Becket, who wrote a book on Hawaiian cultural sites and in the mid-1990s first visited the artifacts in Kalaeloa, which include ancient trail markers and fortified sinkholes used for planting. “The Kalaeloa Heritage and Legacy Foundation is uniquely qualified to continue its stewardship of Kalaeloa Heritage Park,” she wrote.

In March the foundation informed HCDA it would agree to the stewardship agreement and lease termination. Without a lease the foundation can’t fulfill its conceptual plan, though a new lease in the future could be possible.

“This ‘right sizing’ approach will allow the KHLF to focus on continuing the important work of preserving and protecting the cultural, historical, and archaeological landscape at the park,” Dwight Victor, foundation board president, announced on the organization’s website.

HCDA, which hired engineering firm Tetra Tech to assess the stockpile under a $100,000 contract, was relieved to receive one report that said no environmental remediation was necessary.

However, a subsequent Tetra Tech report presented to the agency’s board earlier this month provided a $757,000-to-$860,000 “rough order of magnitude” cost estimate for removing half or all of the stockpile. The lower cost estimate assumes that half the stockpile can be used as acceptable fill material on the site. Such work would include environmental monitoring, sorting and screening but not grading and compacting. The biggest estimated cost is $409,200 for loading, hauling and dumping the other half of the material in a landfill.

The agency’s board directed agency staff to explore less expensive possibilities that could include finding entities that might want the material.