Kauai road project LIHUE >> Frustrated by six months of inaction by the Kusaka administration, a Kauai County Council committee has voted to ask the county prosecutor's office to initiate criminal charges against retired Oahu auto dealer Jimmy Pflueger.
draws anger
The Council may ask the
prosecutor to investigate
retired auto dealer PfluegerBy Anthony Sommer
tsommer@starbulletin.com
The Council is expected to endorse the action of its Planning Committee at its next meeting.
Last November, heavy rain flooded a road being built by Pflueger to connect a subdivision he is developing and nearby Pilaa beach, and caused a major landslide.
Mud poured down on properties where three families live. The heaviest damage was to the property of Rick and Amy Marvin, who own a Na Pali tour boat company. The mud did not reach their house but buried much of their land. The Marvins have filed a $1.3 million lawsuit against Pflueger.
Pflueger did not have a grading permit for building the road, nor has he applied for any permits for subsequent grading he has done to try to remedy the problem, but county officials have taken no action to sanction him.
Grading without a permit is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 a day and up to 30 days in jail.
Pflueger has installed a culvert that channels mudslides from the Marvin home but dumps it onto the coral reef in Pilaa Bay.
"This is very extreme. I don't know when we've seen grading of this scale going on," Planning Director Dee Crowell told the County Council Thursday night. But he said the most he could do was deny Pflueger a subdivision permit.
Wally Rezentes Sr., Kusaka's administrative assistant, said there was little the county could do because the fines in the laws are so small.
Acting County Engineer Ian Costa could not attend the meeting, but he sent a memo stating that the state departments of Health and Land & Natural Resources are not actively taking any enforcement action against Pflueger.
Council members were not happy with what they were hearing.
"I'm not getting there's a sense of urgency here. Is there one?" asked Councilman Randal Valenciano.
Councilman Gary Hooser said the county's grading law gives the county engineer the power to hire a contractor to repair the damage from un-permitted grading and send the landowner the bill.
"It's beyond my scope of understanding why we haven't slapped a cease-and-desist order on him," Hooser said. "We have the power to fix the problem and charge it to him."
Pflueger did not attend either of the two Council meetings. Friends said he was participating in an off-road race in Baja California.
Kauai attorney Max Graham, who has been hired by Pflueger to deal with state and county agencies, said he agrees the culvert should be removed.
"I'm not in a position where I can say much, but we've been told we can't take any corrective action in the conservation district and the special management area without permission from the state and the county," Graham said.
Two years ago, without a grading permit, Pflueger built a mile-long 15-foot berm along Kuhio highway on the north boundary of the same Pilaa subdivision. He was granted an after-the-fact permit only after he cut the berm down to 5 feet.
But then he planted trees on top of the berm to block the view of the highway from the home sites.
On June 28, 2001, Pflueger was fined $12,500 by the Department of Land & Natural Resources for diverting stream water on the same Pilaa property without state permits. He also was ordered to "restore the stream channel as closely as possible to its former condition."
Kauai County
