2015-01-08 Hearing Transcript-Steven Schropshire _SMA 14-058_

Home

MIYASATO: Could you please state your name and residence? LOCKWOOD: I’m John Lockwood, Dr. John Lockwood, if you wish, the, the tag. I live in Volcano, Hawai‛i. I’ve been a Hawai‛i resident for over 40 years. MIYASATO: Okay, go ahead. Well, would you like to speak on that property as far as your study? LOCKWOOD: Okay. You’d just like me to make a general statement about the property or—? MIYASATO: In regards to your study on the property. LOCKWOOD: Okay, yeah, I’m prepared to answer your specific questions, I can—I lecture at the University so I can talk story long time. MIYASATO: Well, there was, there was a concern in previous testimony on the erosion— LOCKWOOD: --okay— MIYASATO: --of the property, and contamination of the ocean, so if you have anything pertaining to those concerns. LOCKWOOD: Presumably, members of the Commission, you’ve read my report so you have the basic geologic findings in hand. The realities are that the Hāmākua Coast all the way from just north of Hilo all the way to, to--to Waipi‛o, that steep coastline is being eroded. These cliffs will be eroded over time, and in the next thousand years, there will be considerable, considerable migration of those cliffs inland. In respect to this particular property, which I have spent time looking at, it’s before you, I find no evidence of major landslides, rock falls having occurred. I found there are clear examples that rock falls have occurred in fairly recent time, but the width of these particular falls was, at the maximum, was about six feet wide, the amount of material that fell at any one time. These are clearly relatively rare events. Views from off-shore show that most of that cliff is heavily vegetated. It’s been vegetated for a long time. A critical bit of evidence regarding the, the stability of the property over the, over the human periods of time, rather than the geologic framework, the geologic time, is the fact that Ironwood trees, Casuarina, were planted along that coastline by sugar planters long time ago. We don’t know when. Maybe in the twenties. Many of those Ironwood still remain so although there are infrequent, relatively small collapses of that, of that cliff face, overall, to generalize the overall cliff face, most of it has been stable for a period approaching a hundred years, perhaps. The, a problem, a problem with the evaluation, a problem with the regulations that reference everything in terms of setbacks to specific erosion rates, a determination of a general erosion rate for this long coastline are not possible simply because we don’t have the resources to evaluate the very small changes that have occurred over time. It would be nice if we had detailed aerial 2 EXHIBIT A