Permanent Loss Of Hawaiian Homelands & Danners Involved
The Garden Island - March 11, 2013
ANAHOLA — If local residents have their way, the Anahola Renewable Energy Project will be stopped dead in its tracks. Project supporters, however, are saying much of the opposition is being fueled by misinformation and rumors.
The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands is proposing to lease more than 2,000 acres of Anahola lands to Green Energy Team, LLC of Kaua`i for the purpose of clearing existing albizia trees for its planned biomass-to-energy facility near Koloa.
More than 200 residents, mostly from Anahola, showed strong opposition to the project — concerned that the lease would privatize Hawaiian homestead lands — at a Beneficiary Consultation meeting held Friday evening at Anahola Clubhouse.
“With this lease, even a blind man can see, we’ll never get our lands back,” Joe Borden, the newly-elected president of the Anahola Farmers and Ranchers group, said prior to Friday’s gathering.
Tempers flared during the event — which lacked any sort of control by the meeting’s organizer, DHHL — with people screaming over one another from start to finish.
“Somebody along the way recommended this as a good deal for Hawaiians,” Anahola resident Shane Cobb-Adams said. “And I want to know who they are … It’s a bad idea.”
The 30-year proposed lease is for 2,143 acres of land belonging to native Hawaiians under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920. If approved, the land would be used for clearing trees and replanting and harvesting biomass feedstock, which would be delivered to Green Energy’s state-of-the-art, $90 million facility....
...“How much more land are you going to take?” a man repeated more than a dozen times.
“How come you feel like you got to help us so bad?” another man screamed from the audience. “Why Anahola?”
