2020-01-16 Leeward Exh B (REZ 19-237, SMA 19-073 & SMA 379)

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So, our experience is long with this, and so, I've submitted public testimony to you, written testimony to you, to background you on the efforts of the community starting 50 years ago before me. I'm second-generation. We've got third and fourth generation happening, with an overall goal and desire to create a resource for the entire island of an open coastline that is accessible to all. And we have been pursuing this for years, documented in there. Now, what this comes down to then is, what is the highest and best use for this land? And you've heard what the owner and their representatives say; the highest and best use is six mega homes. What we are saying is the highest and best use is preservation. And we've been saying this for a lot of years, and we've said it to them, we've said it through this process we've been involved with these people, all the way through, and all the way through we've been saying preservation is really what is up for this parcel. It's steeply undulating, it has 40 registered historic sites, 36 of which have been identified as precontact, meaning before Captain Cook. The, there's been no extensive study of underneath the surface really of what's going on there. We look at it as a library of what the Hawaiians were like before the western culture came. We look at that, the burial sites and the historic sites, as being a major part of this. Second major part that we see is that this land has been used by the people of Kohala for over 700 years, for fishing, for gathering, for camping, for hiking. It has been available to us to do that, and we have done so up until it was, the gates were locked a few years ago, so. So, we see it both as a recreational and subsistence source, and we see it as a historic source. And this is what we've been saying all along. So, the letter that we submitted to you is very similar to the letter that we submitted to the second environmental assessment. And it basically says that the study of this land, the assessment did not adequately address the alternative of preservation. It's not mentioned really. And when we mentioned it and it went on Ala Kahakai in their comments on the EA mentioned that preservation needs to be looked at as an alternative to building. The comments that we got back were basically that we really didn't, as a group, we didn't really have a right to call for that because the cultural assessment, the cultural impact assessment, was, is based on the impacts on ethnic groups, and in our case I suppose that's Hawaiians. But the people like the rest of us who could have for six generations used this place for fishing and hiking and camping, that we don't have the standing to say, "Can't you look at this as an effect on us that you are going to put these rich houses down there and keep us from parking where we want to, we have to do it up above?" So, that's sort of what we are saying is that we would like you, as a commission, to say to the developer we are not sure that you adequately addressed the alternative of preservation. I think that that, I mean, we cannot, we cannot really go against because we have participated in, so far, in all the details and the conditions and all that other stuff, but the truth of the matter is that they didn't, never looked at that. The owner had a single-minded idea what the owner wanted to do. Another thing I just, I'd like to add is that the owner says that he wants to build his own house there. And I, I would like to caution you on this, because we've had a lot of owners who've come in to, for County permits of various kinds, and said that they were doing this for their own use, and truly, I've been involved in planning in North Kohala for 40 years and I cannot recall 14 EXHIBIT B