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CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / 2017
Hundreds of people turned out for the funeral services for John Martin Pahinui at Hawaiian Memorial Park in July 2017. The owner of Hawaiian Memorial Park has filed a new draft environmental impact study in a bid to add 30,000 more burial sites to the Kaneohe cemetery nearly a decade after a similar effort was rejected by a state commission.
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In response to the letter from the president of the Pohai Nani Retirement Community (“Conservation lands should be preserved,” Star-Advertiser, Nov. 18), I support the Hawaiian Memorial Park cemetery expansion of 28 acres for a burial/cremation inurnment site.
As a Hawaiian cultural practitioner and naturalist who is also a resident at Pohai Nani, I support the cemetery project for these reasons:
The petition to the state Land Use Commission to reclassify 53 acres zoned conservation and develop only 28 acres for urban cemetery use addresses a degraded alien invasive forestry area with few if any Hawaiian endemic trees. The cemetery site can be landscaped with native trees and plants.
The petition designates 130 acres as a conservation easement where native forests can be grown and restricts future development in perpetuity.
It also preserves 14.5 acres of the Kawa‘ewa‘e Heiau.
Unlike the first plan a decade ago, it now establishes a 2,000-foot buffer zone from Pohai Nani and a 150-foot buffer from nearest homes.
As a Star-Advertiser editorial stated, “(O)verall this improved project seems to have made the necessary adjustments” (Our View, Sept. 22).
Charles K. Burrows
Kaneohe
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