State pays $2.7 million
to help Kalapana clans

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Associated Press

KALAPANA, Hawaii >> State officials have contributed $2.7 million toward the infrastructure of a new subdivision for four dozen native Hawaiian families displaced by Kilauea's lava flows through Kalapana, more than a decade after the Legislature promised to help rebuild.

At a ceremony at the Kalapana Painted Church on Monday, officials from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources signed an agreement to contribute $1.35 million each for the new community of 50 1-acre house lots.

Tootsie Peleiholani, vice president of the Kalapana Community Association, lobbied for the project on behalf of 50 families, including herself and four of her children.

"Kalapana people, we just like the opihi -- stuck to the rocks," she said. "In 11 years our people been busy. We've been making a nation."

In 1938, a federal law was passed intending to preserve the unique way of life at one of the Big Island's last Hawaiian fishing villages -- provided that native Hawaiians in Kalapana be given leases for homesites and fishing rights in the area.

In 1990, the rivers of lava that began flowing from Kilauea in 1983 wiped out Kalapana, turning much of the once lush coastal landscape into barren rock.

More than 180 homes were destroyed, including 58 owned by native Hawaiians.

A 1991 state law opened the way for the native Hawaiians displaced at Kalapana to set up a new community two miles away in the Kikala-Keokea homestead area adjacent to the Kalapana-Kapoho Beach Road, with long-term leases on one-acre lots.

Conditions of the leases, however, prohibit the residents from building new homes until the state installs waterlines, paved roads and electricity. The money from OHA and the DLNR will pay for that infrastructure.

"My husband is not well and I want him to be able to see the ocean again," said Mazie Roberts, 85, who lost her home to lava in 1986. "I can still swing a hammer. I can still saw wood."

Minnie Kaawaloa of Nanawale, 80, who owns the sole house remaining in Kalapana, plans to save her lot in the new village for one of her children.

"I'm happy for the young ones," she said. "They are the future of tomorrow."