Print This Article Lawsuit filed against Honolulu Rail Project; Groups Say City Should Reconsider
BY GREG WILES - The city’s $5.5 billion rail transit project has been hit with a lawsuit, while 10 community groups are calling for a rethinking of the proposed 20-mile heavy rail line.
The lawsuit is being filed on the behalf of Paulette Kaanohi Kaleikini, a native Hawaiian who says she is a cultural and lineal descendent of people who lived in areas in Kakaako where the project will be built.
Kaleikini said The Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. is filing the lawsuit in state Circuit Court claiming an environmental impact statement on the project was incomplete and did not take fully explore issues surrounding native Hawaiian burial sites.
The lawsuit is the first of what may be several legal challenges to the environmental impact statement for the project. Former Hawaii Gov. Ben Cayetano spoke at the community groups’ press conference at City Hall, saying he believes not enough due diligence was done on the project and that several lawsuits could be filed.
“The one thing that everyone agrees on is that this EIS is flawed,” said Cayetano, flanked by the heads and supporters of the community groups.
“I’m amazed the EIS could have gotten this far without the consultation of certain groups.”
The lawsuit and community group press conference comes as the city nears breaking ground on the elevated rail project to be built from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center. In January, the city reached a milestone for the project when the Federal Transit Administration issued a Record of Decision that confirmed the project has met all the requirements of the environmental review process.
The decision is a step toward a groundbreaking for the rail system, which the city says may occur during the early part of 2011. The decision also came after dozens of meetings on the project, some of which included public input.
Mayor Peter Carlisle called his own press conference, saying the issues they raised had been discussed previously and that city should prevail in the law suit. He also downplayed Cayetano’s remarks, saying they came from someone who had always been opposed to rail.
“None of the statements that Governor Cayetano made are things that we haven’t heard in the past already,” Carlisle. “So this frankly is nothing new.”
“We’re ready to get going and we appreciate his concerns, but frankly after evaluating all the evidence that’s available to us after years and years of work and evaluating all the actions that have been taken, it’s time for us to get going on rail.”
Carlisle said the city had yet to be served with the lawsuit, but that the administration had already looked at it.
“Our brief and very cursory look at it suggests these are not new issues we are absolutely 100 percent satisfied that we followed all the laws that have been necessary to be abided with,” said Carlisle. He said the lawsuit wasn’t anything the city hadn’t already anticipated and most likely will be handled by city attorneys.
But Kaleikini said she previously had had some success in challenging Walmart Stores and General Growth Properties on burial issues in Honolulu.
A diverse amalgamation of community groups that included The League of Women Voters of Honolulu, Life of the Land, the Outdoor Circle, Hawaii’s 1000 Friends, rail opponents and the Oahu Farmland Alliance came together for the press conference.
They issued a statement saying they support the building of a sensitive transit system through downtown Honolulu but that they believed the city’s elevated heavy rail project will destroy mauka-makai view planes establish a barrier between the city and its waterfront and disturb native Hawaiian burial grounds.
“We believe that the proposed system will be an intrusion on the landscape, will forever alter the character of the communities through which it is built and will negatively impact the lives of the people who live and work in Honolulu’s urban core,” said Pearl Johnson, chair of the League of Women Voters of Honolulu’s Planning and Transportation Committee.
Members of the group held up artist-renderings of what they believe the project will look like from ground level. The pictures depicted cars traveling beneath the elevated tracks and others showing the fixed guideway as an eyesore in downtown Honolulu.
Johnson said the groups were strongly urging consideration of a less destructive and more neighborhood friendly system.
Cayetano said he didn’t believe all alternatives were considered for mass transit and that the Honolulu City Council should be contemplating what might happen if the city isn’t successful in getting the $1.55 billion in federal New Starts construction money it wants.
Or what would happen if costs balloon by $1.7 billion such as projected by a state study, he said.
The former governor also criticized the way the archaeological studies are being done on the project. He said they should have been conducted prior to the route selection for several reasons, including the identification of historic sites that might be destroyed.
He said the plan includes looking at a mitigation plan for native Hawaiian burials – iwi – as the project progresses.
“It seems to me the proper word for that is ‘kapakahi’ - it’s backwards,” Cayetano said, noting the city council was asked several years ago to set aside $300,000 to fight expected lawsuits on the project.
Cayetano said he had endorsed Carlisle’s run for mayor in part because the former Honolulu prosecutor had pledged to have an open mind on rail.
But “transparency went out the window the minute he was sworn in,” said Cayetano, who also criticized former Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s handling of the rail project.
“These people here haven’t been heard by the current mayor.”
Carlisle when told of Cayetano’s remarks, noted that he and the former governor are good friends and that the two have disagreed about issues in the past.
“He has been opposed to rail and has always been opposed to rail. He doesn’t like where it starts; he doesn’t like how it’s been thought through and he is a bus guy from start to finish.”
City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi said she had asked the city questions similar to those being raised by the community groups along with requesting architectural renders similar to those produced by the groups.
“I’ve asked them for drawings. They just didn’t have any,” Kobayashi said. “I said how could you do a $5 billion project without drawings.”
The city reiterated yesterday that many of the questions had been raised during the decades of discussion on mass transit and during a review of alternatives about what to do about growing traffic congestion. There also had been public input during City Council hearings.
Some of the opponents to the plan said they don’t oppose mass transit but that other, less intrusive alternatives such as a street-level light rail system in downtown Honolulu should have been given more of a look. Kioni Dudley, a rail opponent who attended yesterday’s press conference, said he hoped to organize a rally against rail in coming weeks.
Johnson said the groups also hoped to make inroads with new City Council members.
“We hope the new City Council will slow down and engage in some clear-headed thinking,” she said.
Short URL: http://www.hawaiireporter.com/?p=29495
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I now like Cayetano as sensitive to long term Hawaii.
50 feet underground would be before human contact with the islands and cost less to build through. Nothing is good if UH Manoa, Kaneohe, Mililani, Wahiawa and Waianae are eliminated. Workers need to get to Waikiki, industrial areas, hospitals, airports and downtown Honolulu from Ewa and other parts. Students need to get to their schools. A rethink is needed and someone who jailed innocent opponents is not a viable leader in the game here, Peter vice Panos - hummmm. Panos was the better transportation planner. Spending 160 minutes a day in stifling traffic is insane when only going 20-29 miles each way daily. Give a viable option and 20 years from now it will be a vital part of infrastructure. Limit the scope and expand the future is the means to a better future for all! Why saddle out great grand children with a poorly thought out plan that will result in something 50 feet in the air that is noisy, blocks views, does not go where people come from or go?
I will be willing to pay for something that takes people from where they live to there they go. Current rail plans do not do this. Adverse traffic reports all point to schools starting and a bottleneck road system. We all need good education, so make the ease getting there better. We need a viable income and it happens to depend on Waikiki and who might imagine connecting Kaanapali with Waikiki in the future? Connecting Downtown Hilo with Kapaa might cost a bit more, but good future planning makes all possible. Military stops and uses could result in even bigger federal assistance, but think of long term maintenance of any system. Think public fountains and their lack of funding maintenance. Rail can be good, but not the way it is now.
Let's explore logical things that do not have a huge eyesore in the air that could even compete with landing patterns due to the height. If Japan can tunnel, why can we not do the same? The island is riddled with tunnels and a little deeper will not offend anyone connected with my home.
Creativity could even link islands (gasp!) to each other. Combine cable funding with rail funding and grandma and aunty can link Oahu and Hawaii islands for greater family connections. Think differently and broader.
Tunneling is way too expensive. Just cannot be done here.
HONOLULUTRAFFIC.COM WRITES
Federal judges opposition to rail route may be a problem:
From comments made to us today it appears that few people were aware that all of our Hawaii Federal Judges and Judge Magistrates, with the exception of Judge David Ezra, who "recused himself from consideration of this issue," signed a petition to "strongly voice our opposition to the proposed route of the Honolulu Transit System. The petition is here.
It raises the question of who hears any lawsuit filed against the FTA filed in Hawaii Federal Courts.
Good for Ben!! Any rail that does not go to UH is a 'train to nowhere." This presently proposed system is way too expensive. I would be for a light rail if it includes UH. We all know this thing will not come in on budget and we also have a 7 billion dollar sewage bill looking us in the eye. The new Mayor and Council need to show some political courage instead of looking at this thing as a jobs project. If we are going to do this we should do it right. It is mind boggling that we would allow a five story, elevated, steel on steel monster going along our coast and through our lovely city.
The current rail project is nothing more than a sop to the unions, paid for by the taxpayers. Gov. Ben is correct in that a rail line that doesn't serve UH is worthless.
If they want to build a mass transit rail line, it would be prohibitively expensive in order to be done correctly. It would have to run from Waianae to Hawaii Kai. The portion of line from west Oahu to Ewa can be built on the old sugar cane train right-of-way. The train would be below ground from there eastward. Look at subways on the east coast in cities like Boston, New York, and Washington DC and you will discover that, indeed, they can be built underground in conditions similar to those in Honolulu. Boston, for example, has a blue clay layer at the water table which is more difficult to deal with than the coral and lava present in Honolulu.
The real solution to the traffic problem lies in dealing with the actual traffic. The actual solution would be similar to what Tampa, Florida, did to alleviate their traffic problem: construct an upper deck. Here the deck would run from Pearl Harbor/Hickam out past the H2 interchange and and possibly onward to Campbell Industrial Park. An upper deck can be constructed for a fraction of the cost of the Mayor's choo-choo. Detractors say an upper deck would be an eye-sore. An 8-lane highway isn't all ready an eye-sore?