Maunakea Access Road Not A State Or Public Highway
Hawai`i Tribune-Herald - August 6, 2020
Plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the state over its management of land around the Maunakea Access Road are seeking partial summary judgment in the case.
The lawsuit, filed in February by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, argues the departments of Transportation and Land and Natural Resources have used the more than 65 acres of land around the Maunakea Access Road illegally and without providing compensation for decades.
According to the complaint, the state failed to obtain authorization from the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands or the Hawaiian Homes Commission to build the Maunakea Access Road on DHHL land in 1964. Therefore, subsequent use of the land has been unlawful, and the DHHL has failed in its duties to act exclusively in the interests of its beneficiaries, the lawsuit argues.
The plaintiffs in the suit are Big Island Hawaiian community leaders Pualani Kanakaole Kanahele, Edward Halealoha Ayau and Kelii W. Iaone Jr.
Iaone and Kanahele were among more than 30 Hawaiian elders, or kupuna, arrested on July 17, 2019, during the months-long occupation of the access road by people protesting the planned construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope. Ayau is a former DHHL employee who resigned his position in 2019 during a meeting of the Hawaiian Homes Commission, in protest of DHHL’s failure to act in its beneficiaries’ interest regarding the access road.
The motion filed July 13 asks the Oahu judge to declare that defendants Department of Transportation Director Jade Butay and Department of Land and Natural Resources Director Suzanne Case breached their trust obligations and violated the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 by asserting control over Hawaiian home lands underlying the MKAR and using the same without compensation and that those defendants are liable for breach of the Hawaiian home lands trust.
Further, it asks the court declare that control of Hawaiian home lands underlying the Maunakea Access Road rests solely with members of Hawaiian Homes Commission and to find that the 6.27-mile road is not a state or public highway....
