Owner looks to sell
Molokai resort, pipes

By Gary Kubota
Star-Bulletin

WAILUKU -- A major landowner on Molokai has decided to abandon plans to develop a 9-mile water pipeline and is looking for a buyer for its 4,100-acre Kaluakoi resort.

Kukui (Molokai) Inc., a subsidiary of Tokyo Kosan Ltd., has removed the pipes from the ground and is trying to sell them to the county water department, said Maui County Council Chairman Patrick Kawano.

Kawano said one person who has looked at the Kaluakoi property is David Murdock, chairman of Dole Food Co., the developer on Lanai of the Manele Bay Hotel and the Lodge at Koele.

Kawano said he likes what Murdock has done in developing first-class resorts on Lanai and hopes Murdock's firm buys the Kaluakoi resort.

Officials with the Molokai environmental group Hui Hoopakele Aina said they expect other companies to eventually try to build a transmission line.

Still facing Molokai is the question of how it wants to use its water for economic development, said Hui spokeswoman Kathy Bennett. "Do we want to use it for farming or tourism?" she asked.

Kukui was developing a pipeline as it applied for a permit to develop three additional 18-hole golf courses and 600 additional luxury home lots.

Kukui officials said it needed the pipeline to transport water to its resort because it agreed to stop transporting water through the state's Molokai Irrigation System.

The firm stopped work in 1994 because of legal disputes.

Critics charged that the developer failed to obtain storm water permits and that the construction was resulting in huge discharges of muddy water into the ocean.

Hoolehua homesteaders were worried that the pipeline, capable of transporting up to 10 million gallons a day, would commit Molokai's water resources to tourism.

Kukui and builders of the pipeline arrived at a consent agreement in 1996 that provided $382,250 to an environmental protection fund.