LAHAINA >> U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg toured what remains of Lahaina on Wednesday and heard from members of Mayor Richard Bissen’s advisory counsel, who reported sometimes conflicting pressures as Maui continues to recover from the Aug, 8 wildfires.
Speaking at Lahaina’s Launiupoko Beach Park as humpback whales breached in the background, Buttigieg reemphasized the Biden administration’s commitment to support the people of Maui in the years to come if reelected.
“His whole government is with you,” Buttigieg said.
U.S. Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono, U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda and Bissen joined Buttigieg as he noted the beauty of the day but also the ongoing pain of Maui residents who lost loved ones and continue to struggle with uncertainty over what comes next.
After touring Lahaina, Buttigieg said he saw “unbelievable and shocking destruction” that came with “the pain.”
He said he will leave Lahaina with “eyes wide open about the scale of work.”
As Schatz said, “We still have suffering to alleviate. We’re still in an emergency situation.”
Buttigieg went on a private tour of Lahaina led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and met with legendary waterman Archie Kalepa, a descendant of generations of Hawaiians on Maui who serves as a member of Bissen’s advisory committee.
Buttigieg’s office in a statement said his day outside of the gaze of journalists “included a residential stop where the Secretary saw the devastating impact on homes in the community, an active debris removal site, Front St and the sea wall, the cultural heritage site of Moku‘ula, and the harbormasters house and the ferry terminal which the USDOT is helping to rebuild.”
He was joined by U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Michael Connor and Brig. Gen. Kirk E. Gibbs, commander and division engineer, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pacific Ocean Division.
As the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., Buttigieg said he appreciated Bissen’s role in dealing with the aftermath of the wildfires, which killed at least 101 people.
Buttigieg had lunch with other members of Bissen’s advisory committee and later said that what he heard was “a commitment to balance the urgency of getting things done and making swift decisions with the importance of taking time to gather input from people whose voices need to be heard. I met a diverse array of people who are impacted in different ways and their homes and families, their businesses by what happened here. I understand they never hesitate to let the mayor know — good bad, or indifferent — what the people they represent and the people they speak to think of the different ideas that are being brought forward. And I can only imagine the complications, the challenges and the opportunities but also the tension that come with balancing the desire to restore what was lost and the awareness that new things can be done a little different than how things looked a year ago. And what I heard were heartbreaking stories about how many family members have been lost, what it’s like to be in temporary housing that has been arranged, but also a sense of optimism.”
There is also pressure to build new evacuation routes to help residents escapes future disasters, Buttigieg said.
He also got a firsthand look at other U.S. Department of Transportation-funded projects to address climate change and sea level rise not directly related to the wildfires.
Buttigieg’s visit was part of the the Biden Administration’s fourth Investing in America tour.
The Maui projects include $50 million in federal transportation funds to help realign Honoapiilani Highway; $25 million for the “Liloa Drive Extension project which will improve the road and reduce dependency on vehicles,” according to Buttigieg’s office, $13.4 million for vehicle, bicycle and pedestrian safety improvements on Keawe Street in Lahaina and future upgrades to Kahului Airport’s Transportation Security Administration screening area.
The projects, Buttigieg said, also will help provide “good union jobs that you can raise a family on … for people with or without college degrees.”
His day began with a briefing on the side of Lahaina Bypass Road where it turns into Keawe Street.
Lahaina Bypass Road will be augmented with a future bypass road where it runs along the shore near Olowalu General Store and gets inundated and impassable during high tides and storms, blocking the only way in and out of Lahaina.
With climate change and sea level rise, Ed Sniffen — the director of the state Department of Transportation — told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser following Buttigieg’s Lahaina Bypass Road briefing that “by 2100, that section is gone.”
The current stretch of the road where it runs along the shoreline will remain as a county road, Sniffen said.
The state hopes for $25 million in federal funding to complete the $160 million realignment project, which is currently undergoing environmental review.
Later, at Launiupoko Beach Park, Sniffen said that Buttigieg’s visit allowed Buttigieg to see firsthand “our needs,” specifically for Maui transportation to better connect residents to other parts of the island.
Buttigieg plans a similar tour on Oahu today.
Tokuda, who represents the neighbor islands and rural Oahu, said Buttigieg got to understand the importance of transportation to an island state and especially on Maui, which Tokuda called “the piko of our community.”
She and Hirono emphasized that Maui will be rebuilt according to what the community wants.
“The recovery must reflect the values of the people here,” Hirono said. “We’re in this together everybody.”
