Parks official
By Anthony Sommer
takes heat on Kauai
Star-BulletinPOIPU, Kauai -- Kauai Mayor Maryanne Kusaka took a verbal swing yesterday at Tim Johns, director of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.
The Poipu Beach Resort Association -- executives of many of Kauai's most expensive hotels and owners of many of the island's commercial visitor activities -- also let Johns know they are far less than pleased with his agency's handling of state parks, harbors, trails and rivers.
Johns irked the mayor when he announced new public bathrooms and a waste treatment facility at Kee Beach State Park are in the "design stage."
"Twelve years ago we (the county and the state) started a plan for Kee Beach. Twelve years later there isn't a plan," Kusaka told Johns.
"You're telling us you're in the design stage?" she asked. "We have portable toilets. We have summer coming up and it's going to be a zoo again."
"There's no excuse for that, for 12 years, but I can't print my own money," Johns told the mayor.
Kee Beach, also known as Bali Hai because that's what it was in the movie "South Pacific," is a major visitor attraction on Kauai. Located at the very end of Kuhio Highway on Kauai's North Shore, for more than a decade it has been plagued with insufficient parking and bathrooms that don't work.
Margy Parker, association executive director, introduced Johns by pointing out that of all the islands, Kauai has the most key tourist attractions managed by the state.
Johns responded by noting he had been in office only four months and the Legislature had been in session most of that time. He also was preoccupied by the fatal Sacred Falls rock slide and, besides, he said, the agency doesn't have any money.
"When the governor wakes up in the morning, he isn't thinking about DLNR. He has other priorities," Johns said.
He announced his opposition to state participation in a proposed marina at Kukuiula, a project strongly endorsed by the Poipu Beach Resort Association. "It's not going to happen during my term as chairman," he said.
On the subject of rest rooms, Kauai Visitor Bureau Executive Director Sue Kanoho pointed out a Department of Land and Natural Resources policy that prohibits tourists from using state-owned toilets at Port Allen Small Boat Harbor, the island's major berthing area for tour boats, fishing charter boats and scuba diving boats.
Kanoho said it makes it difficult to pitch Kauai to travel agents "when I have public bathrooms that can't be used by visitors."
Kanoho also told Johns there is a lack of coordination between the tourism industry and his agency.
She pointed out the current edition of Aloha Airlines' in-flight magazine has a major article in praise of hiking the Alakai Swamp.
Problem is, she noted, hikers can't get to the Alakai Swamp because the state Parks Division hasn't fixed the potholes that forced closure of the road to the trail head last fall.
