ANTHONY SOMMER / TSOMMER@STARBULLETIN.COM
Sonny Waialeale's tour boats continue to operate from the state-owned Wailua Marina, despite the revocation of his lease on March 25.
Kauai tour operator
won’t budgeThe native Hawaiian claims the
state has no jurisdiction over his
Wailua River tours
LIHUE » On March 25, the state Board of Land & Natural Resources revoked Sonny Waialeale's lease that had allowed him to run his tour boats from the state-owned Wailua Marina up the Wailua River to the Fern Grotto since 1968.
As of Friday, however, Waialeale was still operating his five boats -- actually more like motorized barges than boats -- hauling tourists daily to the Fern Grotto and back.
Waialeale said he takes about 400 tourists a day to the grotto. Other tour operators on the river say, however, that his boats do not go out often, and when they do, they have less than a half-dozen customers aboard.
Waialeale is still operating and has told the state Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation that he does not intend to pay the state the $108,000 he owes in back rent.
Waialeale told the state that because he is a native Hawaiian and because the Wailua River is owned by the kanaka maoli of Polynesia and not the state of Hawaii, "I will no longer honor your invalid and fraudulent lease."
Asked last week why he has not acted on the 3-week-old mandate from the Land Board to evict Waialeale, acting Boating Division Administrator Steve Thompson said, "We are working on how that will have to take place."
Waialeale is one of two operators of large tour boats on the Wailua River, the only navigable river in Hawaii. The other is Freckles Smith, whose family pioneered Wailua River touring in the 1950s.
Waialeale's current lease dates to 1992 and was scheduled to expire in 2008. The lease payment was $3,500 a month or a percentage of his gross income. It included the use of the marina, the use of the river and the use of docking space at the Fern Grotto.
According to Boating Division records, Waialeale stopped paying rent on Nov. 1, 2000.
Last October, the state proposed a plan that would allow Waialeale to pay back the overdue rent over a period of time. Waialeale agreed to the payment plan and responded that he was in the process of refinancing his house and would use the money to pay of the debt to the state.
State records said a check with the Bureau of Conveyances showed Waialeale never refinanced his house.
Instead, on Jan. 26, Waialeale wrote that as a native Hawaiian he did not feel bound to honor the lease.
On March 25, when the debt had grown to $108,00, the Land Board pulled the plug on Waialeale's lease.
Waialeale responded by hiring attorney Mark Zenger, whose first step was to ask the Boating Division to produce every document it has regarding Wailua River ownership.
Zenger is not arguing the Hawaiian sovereignty issue -- yet -- but he is claiming that there is a question whether the state owns the property and legally is Waialeale's landlord.
The attorney is asking for "all deeds, royal patents, foreign testimonies, land commission awards, leases, subleases, executive orders, statutes, ordinances, mortgagees, liens or any other kind of document, recorded or unrecorded, which conveys or affects title in or to all or any part of subject property."
Zenger said the state, like any landlord, will have to go to court to obtain an eviction order. He said that if the state does not provide the requested documents, he will ask the court to order the Boating Division to provide them.
Bill Wynhoff, a deputy state attorney general who represents the Boating Division, said he has no problem providing Zenger with the requested documents and that they are few in number. He disagreed, however, that the state must go to court to evict Waialeale.
"We don't have to go to court, but it is an option. We haven't decided what course of action to take yet, but the guy owes us a hundred thousand dollars and we're going to do something."
