2019-01-03 Public Testimony Transcript - Office of the Master Visionary SPP 18-200

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SILVA: Thank you for having us. Aloha. Aloha, my name is Megan Silva or Megan Ugalde Silva, and I have a letter to submit later, but I have, I am a long-time resident of the lower Kula`imano area in which this issue has come up. I was born and raised there, and I received notification in regards of the desired development of a wellness center in my community in which I was born and raised since I was—in 1976. But, my family has been there since the time of the Great Mahele, actually, so my ancestors has inherited the property in which I grew up on from the, back, way back when. It would be safe to presume that since I've grown up there and live there, my friends and I have watched the many changes that has occurred since the closing of the plantation era, and we were the last generation of children who grew up with the very special time of, with plantation heritage in that area. We have seen how the closing of the plantation economy has affected families economically, socially, and culturally as lands have since been subdivided, sold, and developed. Those of us who were lucky enough to stay stayed, and we continued to raise our own children, and for many of us, our grandchildren as well. Because of its eloquent uniqueness and the pride and the respect of the plantation heritage in which we come from, it has been embedded in our everyday lives. From the way we treat our neighbors, our elders, and our children in our small village to the way we approach the world. The current means, to give a little background, I'm a teacher with the DOE, been working with the DOE for 17 years. I've worked both in this, on this island and outside of this island, so in my community and outside of my community, I've travelled quite a bit around the world and in doing so, my eyes have opened a little more to what I've become aware and which raises a concern for me with the development of a wellness center. My life and career path has allowed me to see different things, and actually it's kind of scary to see what the idea of a wellness center development, the ripple effect that it could bring to our small village. I'm writing this letter in the hopes of preventing that for many reasons. I'm not an engineer so I can't speak to the mechanics of how water mains work and things of that nature, but what I can tell you and speak to is my experience and experiences of my neighbors whom we've come to know each other as family, not by blood, but because we go back generations and generations. And, even today, when I talk about it outside of our home, refer to each other as family which is very unique from what I've seen from many parts of the world, and I'm very proud of that fact. I know that our water mains break all the time leaving us without water when there's storm. Storms, like this last storm, there was no water for at least a week, and I'm, like I said, I'm not an engineer. I'm just assuming that the infrastructure is not made for the development that is happening around us today. Next, there's the problem of traffic. When plantation closed 25 years ago, the State removed, there was a speed bump in front of the house in which I grew up, so the property I own is just feet away, yards even, from the house in which I grew up. There was speed bumps. People drove slowly in the area back then. You knew to slow down. There were tourists, but not much, you know, there were cane trucks even. As children, we could play in the streets. Our parents had no fears of us walking up and down the street to the rivers. As you might be well aware, that EXHIBIT B 2