Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Making a stand
on the land
Kamilonui farmers fear
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
new housing in Hawaii Kai
could lead to their demise
Star-BulletinDevelopment pushed vegetable farmer Katsumi Higa from land along the slopes of Koko Head into Kamilonui Valley. Nurseryman Charles Nii got displaced three times, first from the Waialae Golf Course area, before settling in the valley.
Now the farmers fear they are threatened again.
Higa, Nii and others in the Kamilonui Farmers Cooperative fear plans for a housing project on a 17-acre swatch of land that separates them from the rest of Hawaii Kai could mean the beginning of the end for their community in the largest chunk of agricultural acreage left in urban Honolulu."We're not against building homes," said Higa, 73. "But we were here before them."
Maunalua Associates, landowner of the project site, and developers Bob Gerell and Joe Leoni believe the farms and homes can live side by side. In response to the farmer's concerns, they reduced the size of the proposed development from the 312 units originally proposed to 58 homes.
They also promised to put up a 50-foot buffer between the farms and the nearest house. Far from hastening the farmers' demise, said project consultant Don Clegg, the project and the buffer will help protect them.
"We are creating a border for them so they can be protected," he said.
How they got there
The Maui-born Higa remembers when he joined his in-laws' Manoa lettuce and mustard cabbage farm on Lunalilo Home Road, near Kaiser High School, some 40 years ago. Hawaii Kai was all farms, no homes, and what's now the Koko Marina Shopping Center was Lucky's Tavern owned by the late radio personality Lucky Luck, Higa said.But by the late 1960s, plans by landowner Bishop Estate and developer Henry Kaiser to transform Hawaii Kai into middle-class suburbia pushed the Higas and their friends into the back of Kamilonui Valley.
Bishop Estate worked out 55-year leases with the farmers allowing them to stay through 2025. Hawaii's congressional delegation helped the cooperative's members secure loans through the Farmers Home Administration.
"We were about the last to leave," said Higa, who now grows mostly green onions and some corn. "Kaiser started to build right up from Kalanianaole Highway, and they were right up to our boundaries and they said, you cannot be here; you have to move."Nii, now 84, remembers farming in Waialae and after that, near what's now Mariners' Cove.
A 30-year-old copy of the Hawaii Farm Bureau Journal shows a photo of a younger Charles Nii, after a day's work at his Mariners' Cove farm, working on clearing his haole koa-ridden property in Kamilonui.
"You know, through my father's lease, we've been on Bishop Estate land for 75 years," said the son of the late Tsunesaburo Nii. Charles' son Glenn now runs the nursery while brother Shigeki and nephew Richard run their own farm next door.
The buffer zone debate
Instead of 30 feet, the Kamilonui Farmers' Cooperative wants a 300-foot buffer zone."That destroys the whole project," said Clegg, who added that the buffer the cooperative is proposing is simply an attempt to stop the project by taking away too much developable flat land.
The state Department of Agriculture is also opposed to the project and added that any amount of buffer "will not effectively mitigate the noise, dust and odors associated with normal farming activities."
Charles Nii said he wonders what will happen when he has neighbors who don't like his nursery.
"If they build the homes over there, and the people buy over there, and they come against us in a lawsuit or something, who's going to take the rap?" Nii asked.
The farmers fear the complaints and lawsuits caused by what they deem everyday activities, such as spraying insecticides and driving tractors.
"The noise -- when you plow, it echoes," Higa said. "It goes all the way down; you can hear the tractor, clearly."
"This is tropical country so we have to use bug spray," said Don See, vice president of the family-owned Great Outdoors Inc. "They'll get their plush condos up, and then they're going to start complaining about our smelly bug spray and we know it will happen."Maunalua Associates is offering a 30-foot planted buffer and an additional 20-foot setback to the first house, Clegg said.
"And all the units will be air-conditioned so that helps whatever else might be there," Clegg said.
Agricultural consultant Jack Keppeler said 40-foot ironwood trees would act as a wind barrier for the tradewinds blowing from the farms, and hau bushes that would provide thicket in lower elevations.
Keppeler and Clegg said the effects of farm activity from Kamilonui would be less than other areas because there is no livestock.
Clegg said that in 30 years, there have been no complaints against the farmers by residents who live near the farms.
Farmers dispute that.
The developer said it will also require home purchasers to sign a covenant agreeing "not to object to these agricultural activities" or take "frivolous" legal action alleging nuisance on the part of the farmers.
Entangled at Honolulu Hale
The housing project has run into opposition since its rezoning application arrived at City Hall in 1997.First, then-acting Planning and Permitting Director Lorrie Chee recommended denial of the 300-plus units project.
The Planning Commission twice deadlocked at 4-4 on making a recommendation to the Council on the subject.
The Council last month voted to approve the plan, on the second of three required readings, by a 5-3 vote after months of extensions.
Councilman John DeSoto, chairman of the Zoning Committee, said last week he won't give the project another hearing before June.
Randall Fujiki, who now heads the Department of Planning and Permitting, said he has not yet made a recommendation on the new version of the project.
Then there's the dispute over whether the zoning application is legal.
In 1999, the Council approved an amended East Honolulu Development Plan that redesignated the property from low-density apartments to two-acre agricultural lots.
City attorneys earlier this year ruled that the application was legal and the developer could proceed because the application was submitted in 1997 when low-density apartments were still allowed.
James Stone, an attorney for the farmers, disagrees with the interpretation.
"This pending proposal goes contrary to that multi-hearing, multi-month process that everyone worked so hard on," Stone said.
"Does it mean anything if someone can simply come along and change it?"
Charles Nii said that regardless of what happens with the zoning application, he sees the writing on the wall and knows that farming in Hawaii Kai will likely end with his son's generation.
"The land is too valuable, I can see that," Nii said. "When we got the land over here, there was a lot of room available at that time."
