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NEIGHBORHOODS
Kauai to take
road out of ‘limbo’
In the '60s the state pushed off
By Anthony Sommer
any such roads on the counties
Star-BulletinMOLOAA, Kauai -- The final stretch of Moloaa Road, the part that dead-ends on one of the prettiest bays on Kauai, may hold a world's record: 14 "No Parking" signs along 75 yards of street, or one sign for every 15 feet of road.
None of which impress Wilford Alayvilla in the slightest. He artfully slides his car into a spot between two of the "No Parking" signs but not exactly in front of any one of them.
He then announces: "There's no sign here, so it's OK to park," shuts off the engine, grabs his fishing net and heads for the beach in search of mullet.
Alayvilla, who works for a local trucking company, has been throw-net fishing in Moloaa Bay all his life. It's his day off, and he's going fishing where he's always gone fishing, and he's parking his car where he's always parked his car, signs or no signs.
It's a sure bet his car won't get a parking ticket. Neither will the half-dozen other cars parked along the road. That final 75 yards of Moloaa Road isn't a county road, and the Kauai police don't patrol it.Moloaa Road is a "road in limbo," an orphan road not owned by anyone.
The "No Parking" signs went up two years ago to pacify the Kauai Fire Department. Fire officials said beach-goers' parked cars could block emergency vehicles from reaching the new vacation rentals that recently sprouted up along the beach.
But when local residents protested the new parking restrictions, they were told, yes, the county put up the signs but, no, the county doesn't own the road. And neither does anyone else.
This week, for the third time in as many years, Moloaa Road residents asked the Kauai County Council to clear up the road ownership mess. There was a thinly veiled threat of court action or an appeal to the Legislature.
Howls of protest came from both the mayor's office and the county attorney who said area residents were creating a precedent that could cost Kauai County untold millions of dollars if every "road in limbo" becomes a county road.
But in the end, the Council agreed to begin the process of taking the road into the county highway system.
"Roads in limbo" are not unique to Moloaa or even Kauai. They exist all over Hawaii. And no one is even sure how many miles of "roads in limbo" there are.
All were once "territorial roads" built and maintained with funds from the federal government. Four years after statehood, someone at the Capitol figured out the state of Hawaii could save a whole bunch of state money by pushing off the old "territorial roads" on the counties.
So the Legislature passed a law. Although it appears to require the counties to adopt the roads by county council resolution, Kauai County officials knew an "unfunded mandate" when they saw one. They decided to ignore the whole issue and the enormous expense that came with it. The resolution never was introduced, let alone voted on by the Kauai County Council.
That worked for more than 30 years on Kauai until residents who live on Moloaa Road, or use it to go to the beach, began storming the Kauai County Building. Everyone had heard it all before in 1997 and 1999, but at Wednesday's Council meeting it was beginning to look like the third time may be the charm.
Native Hawaiians invoked the Supreme Court's recent PASH decision guaranteeing them access to traditional fishing and limu gathering places, and claimed the inability to park along the road leading to the beach is denying access to the bay.
Many longtime residents simply objected to the signs as an eyesore. One even complained that the big "No Parking" sign right at the road's dead end, the one local people regularly remove so they can drive onto the beach, is too heavy.
"Someone's going to get hurt lifting that thing," the Council was told.
The county is in the precarious position of having maintained the road for as long as anyone can remember while at the same time vigorously claiming it doesn't own it. As recently as last year, the road was paved by county crews.
"If ownership (by the county) is established, everything else will fall in its place," Llewella Zablan, one of Kauai's most articulate activists and part-owner of several parcels in Moloaa, promised the Council.
