State, city step in to protect Niu Valley archaeological site

State and city officials have taken action to protect historic Hawaiian archaeological features on a hillside residential lot being redeveloped in Niu Valley.

Officials with the State Historic Preservation Division have asked the landowner to create a cordoned no-work zone around what SHPD identified as several historic features on the property at 418 Halemaumau St., including a large dry-stacked rock wall extending up a ridge, rock-faced terraces and stone enclosures.

SHPD representatives visited the property Tuesday and Wednesday after the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs alerted the city Department of Planning and Permitting Monday to community concerns that remnants of a long-ago documented heiau, a place of worship often associated with burial sites, were threatened by work to replace a 67-year-old single-­family house on the site with a $1.2 million duplex.

DPP, which had an inspector on the site Tuesday with two SHPD archaeologists, said some historic properties identified by SHPD might be affected by plans to build a retaining wall on the 22,140-square-foot residential lot that extends up the foot of a ridge.

Construction work may continue in the area where the former home stood until it was demolished last year.

DPP said it expects SHPD will issue further recommendations that could include an archaeological inventory survey to be done by the landowner.

Some neighborhood residents and local historians were alarmed that SHPD and DPP only reacted to public complaints instead of proactively protecting the area where Kulepeamoa Heiau was documented in 1933 and referenced in other work including a 2009 city sewer project.

“This lack of regulatory oversight leading to the destruction of irreplaceable ‘public trust resources’ time and time again seems to be a recurring systemic problem,” OHA said in its Monday notice to DPP.

Alan Downer, SHPD administrator, said in a statement that the heiau is “well mauka” of the construction area and was not visited by agency archaeologists who were accompanied Wednesday by a geographic information systems specialist.

Some of the historic archaeological features documented during SHPD’s visit to the construction site extend into the construction area, and others are upslope, Downer said.

Jan Becket, a retired Kamehameha Schools teacher who photographed 125 documented historic sites on Oahu for a 1999 book that includes a 5-foot-tall upright stone described as a feature of Kulepeamoa Heiau above the now demolished home, said on Monday that such culturally significant historical sites often aren’t respected as they should be.

“You need cultural monitors when you are disturbing a known site like that,” he said. “That’s common sense. I’m really sad every time I hear about a place being further desecrated.”

DPP said it relies on SHPD to flag properties where construction could affect known historic sites so that the information can be considered in processing building permits, and that the Niu Valley home site wasn’t flagged by SHPD.

Archaeologist J. Gilbert McAllister described the heiau in 1933 as having a rock terrace that was 120 feet wide, 5 feet high and varied in length from 40 to 100 feet along the rise of the ridge that is named after the heiau. McAllister also noted that only portions of the heiau remained in the area where ranching existed and most heiau terrace stones had been used in walling a cattle pen.

The home site is at the foot of this ridge, which bisects an upper portion of Niu Valley.