Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 24, Number 4, 1 April 2007 — Country discomfort [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Country discomfort

Hawaiian and North Shore groups rally to protectburialsatthe planned Turtle Bay expansion site

By Sterling Kini Weng | 'ublicatiūns Editor On March 17, about 100 Native Hawaiians and North Shore eonununity members marched onto the grounds of the Turtle Bay Resort in a rally to protect Hawaiian burials located within the area where the resort may build up to five new hotels. The protesters, wearing red Tshirts and holding signs stating "keep the country country" and "respect iwi kūpuna," walked from Kamehameha Highway through the resort to a small cove for a rally on the sand that included hula and speeches. Vicky Holt Takamine, one of the organizers of the march, said she would like Turtle Bay's owner, the Kuilima Resort Company, to amend its 20-year-old development plan to ensure the protection of the Hawaiian burials located in the sand dunes within the 880-acre development area. "We will not have the same thing happen here at Turtle Bay that happened 20 years ago with the desecration at the Ritz Carlton," she said, referring to

the construction of the Kapalua, Maui, resort that affected more than a thousand of Hawaiian iwi. Other speakers expressed their concern that the development would impact not only burial sites, but also the overall rural character of the North Shore as well as traffic on the two-lane Kamehameha Highway, the only major road through the district. Margaret Primacio, a Native Hawaiian and life-long resident of Kahuku, said that the Turtle Bay expansion is one of several developments on the North Shore that threaten to raise the cost of living in the area and displace loeal people. "In Kahuku, there's a plan to build 18 luxury lots on one-and-a-half miles of open shoreline. There are resorts and timeshares coming up along the coast. Where will our keiki go?" she said. "Culturally, this isn't what Hawaiians stand for." Kuilima CEO Nieola Iones said that Kuilima has yet to approve a final development plan, and they are not sure how many structures they will build or where the buildings will be

located. She added that they've agreed to plaee several open parks in the areas where iwi would most likely be discovered, to ensure that the remains are not disturbed. "Kuilima has been working with a group of people from Kahuku, and we are making a conscious effort to be respectful and sensitive to the concerns of the community," she said. In 1986, the Honolulu City Council approved a plan that would permit the resort to expand from less than 500 hotel units to 4,000 and allow for development near Kahuku Point and at pristine Kawela Bay. For 20 years the project stalled, until Kuilima recently indicated that it will move forward with

the development. In November, Circuit Iudge Sabrina MeKenna ruled that Kuilima is not required to prepare an update to its 20-year-old environmental impact study for the resort's expansion. The eommunity group Keep the North Shore Country and the Hawai'i chapter of the Sierra Club had sued the resort, demanding that an additional study be conducted to account for the development's impact on the area's infrastructure and environment. The plaintiffs have since filed an appeal. Calls for Kuilima to revise their development plan increased in October, when Melanie Chinen, the administrator of the state's Historic Preservation

Division, sent a letter to the resort owner recommending that the development be set back 500 to 650 feet from the shoreline to avoid disturbing the burial sites. Chinen noted that in addition to the 24 documented individual human remains located in sand dunes within the development site, there is a "high probability" that one or more large burial grounds may be found during the construction of the proposed hotels. North Shore community members are also pushing a Senate bill that would move that setback a hundred feet farther inland, to 750 feet, and require Kuilima to conduct a comprehensive historic and cultural preservation assessment. E3

NŪ HOU • NEWS

About 1 00 people participated in a rally to protect Hawaiian remains that they believe will be affected by Turtle Bay Resort's proposed expansion. - Photo: Sterling Kini Wong