Kauai to
finally hold
parasailing hearing

A permit to get the
business up in the air was filed
three years ago

By Anthony Sommer
Star-Bulletin

LIHUE -- On Feb. 15, 1996, Jeremy Hillstrom of Anahola applied for a Department of Land and Natural Resources permit to operate what he hoped would be the first parasailing company on Kauai.

More than three years later -- probably sometime this spring -- the department plans to hold a public hearing to determine whether parasailing should be allowed on Kauai.

If it is, Hillstrom will be allowed to compete with parasailing operations from other islands for available permits, which will go to the highest bidders.

If not, Hillstrom said he may go to Oahu, Maui or the Big Island, where parasailing for years has been a major visitor activity.

"Kauai is my home. I'd really like to be able to run my business here," said Hillstrom, 21.

Hillstrom and his family -- he has two brothers in the parasailing business on Oahu -- have invested about $50,000 in a boat and equipment for parasailing. They incorporated under the name Paradise Parasailing.

Last year, they took visitors outside the three-mile limit to what is legally termed "the high seas," where they said the state has no jurisdiction.

But Paradise Parasailing shut down on Dec. 31 after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Vaughan Tyndzik, Kauai district manager of the department's Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation, threatening to impound its boat if they kept operating.

"I have to admit we were playing a little game of cat-and-mouse with DLNR," said Karen Hillstrom, Jeremy's mother. "They never actually did catch us in the act."

She said she disagrees with Tyndzik's claim that they were violating a state law by engaging in parasailing "on or above state waters," since they were only going through state waters to run their business outside of Hawaii.

But they weren't willing to risk losing their boat during a long legal fight. The boat is parked in Koloa and Jeremy Hillstrom has, for now, gone back to being a Kauai Community College student.

The department maintains that as long as they were taking paying customers anywhere in state waters, even if they were on their way to somewhere else, they were illegally operating a business on state property without a permit.

The Hillstroms argue they sought a permit in good faith three years ago and the state has failed to even write rules for parasailing on Kauai, let alone consider their application.

"We have a ramp permit, we have tax licenses, we have permits for everything except the actual parasailing," Karen Hillstrom said

Tyndzik said, "They're getting the cart in front of the horse. If they don't have a permit, they can't operate."

But the Hillstroms say if rules are approved and permits become available, they will have to show they have the equipment to operate a parasailing business. They were essentially required to make the investment up front, Jeremy Hillstrom said.

The story goes back to 1991, when the state

Legislature passed a law requiring the department to adopt rules governing commercial parasailing throughout the state. Regulations were put in place for Oahu, Maui and the Big Island.

Tyndzik said the decision to exclude Kauai was based on testimony at public hearings in 1988, when the Ocean Recreation Management Act was being drafted.

The vast majority of residents in Poipu, where most of Kauai's large resorts are located, clearly indicated they did not want parasailing, Tyndzik said.

He added that, based on many community meetings he's attended, the anti-parasailing sentiment still dominates.

"For 10 years we've been getting feedback from the community that they don't want it," Tyndzik said. "So there was no reason for us to initiate the process of drafting rules."

But when Hillstrom applied for a permit, the department was obligated to draft some regulations so the permit could be granted or denied -- and, slowly, it has.

The rules, however, never have gone to public hearing so they never have been implemented.

The department repeatedly has told the Hillstroms it didn't have the money to conduct a public hearing. Instead, it has decided to conduct a "joint" hearing on both parasailing and rules for Wailua River kayaking.

The Hillstroms have been waiting, sometimes less than patiently, while the Wailua River rules bounced back and forth between the department and the attorney general's office for the past year.

Finally, both issues are ready for public hearing, probably in April or May.