2007-05-04 THICDC ORI - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

GRAHAM:Yes, Mr. Miller, you are taking a bit of time though. MILLER:Okay. No, Ill keep it real, well, I will ask the Commissioners to imagine this morning as you stood in front of the big gear and if you looked down towards the ocean, all of the rain that falls on that land belonging to Mr. Richard Ha flows down through a culvert and flows down to the area where you were standing before you got into your vehicles before you came back to town. Right? The Planning Commission (sic) and the developer want you to believe somehow or other that water flows along lines on a map rather than downhill. The simple fact is that all the water that flows down through that culvert. All the water that flows down the other properties, all the water that flows under my house, my house is the one where the lower room floods, all of that water will flow down into the area where this development is proposed. So the simple fact as I see it is if urban development is to occur in this property, it should be required to occur contingent to the existing urban area connected to the sewer system. Secondly, and my final point, is it was my understanding that property owners, and my property is12feet,wellwithinthe500-footdefinitionpropertyownersweresupposedtobenotifiedof whatever the proposal is. The original proposal was sent to us with a map. Theres a new proposal thats quite different. And the final point, the developer has said first develop, first give us the zoning and then well do the drainage study. I think it has to be the other way around. I think this a very bad idea. Im not at all opposed to low income housing. But I think it makes much more sense to put new urban development next to existing urban development and to use existing sewer systems rather than to allow, whether its 30, or 19, or however many new septic tanks to drain down -- and we have a report from the Health Department that specifies this -- directly into the well where we get our water. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. GRAHAM:Thank you, Mr. Miller. Our next testifier is Sheridan Kobayashi. Mr. Kobayashi, give your name and address and carry on. KOBAYASHI:Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Hawaii Planning Commission. My name is Sheridan Kobayashi, I reside in Hilo, 61 Wilson Street. Im here to testify on this matter as an individual. Id like to give you a brief background. I am a former agriculturalist and former state president of the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation. While I do know Mr. Inouye and his family and have supported his sister-in-law in all her elections and stuff -- and I commend them for proposing these affordable housing units -- however, my primary concern is were disregarding the LESA and ALISH studies of prime agricultural lands in the State of Hawaii. If this area is to be cut down to smaller acreage lots, it would make it affordable for some of the farmers to get into but not all of them. And I think that, you know, this area is considered prime agricultural land; and if this is taken away, theres no going back. We talk about a lot of how we should be self-sufficient in agriculture in the State of Hawaii and we can grow practically anything on this land. I took a drive out there one day. I swear the soil is about 8 feet deep and maybe no rocks. And with an irrigation system Im confident that we can grow practically anything. And this is why Mr. Ha is doing so well out there. And this is also why in the past theyve tried to grow papayas in the area and I told some of the people out there that if youre going to grow papayas in that rich soil youre lucky if you can harvest two crops, the trees are going to grow so fast; and thats exactly what happened. So my primary 19EXHIBIT A