HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0896.186 2022-2024From: Elizabeth Dunn
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2024 10:17 AM
To: Council Testimony
Subject: Opposition to Bill 169, Draft 3
Aloha County Council:
Please consider my testimony against Bill 169, Draft 3, for the following reasons:
This project is OPPOSED by: -
• County of Hawaii Cultural Resources Commission
• County of Hawaii Kona Community Development Plan Action Committee
• County of Hawai'i Leeward Planning Commission "
• Kona Soil and Water Conservation District (funded by the County of Hawai'i R&D Department)
• Na Ala Hele Hawai'i Trail and Access Program (DOFAW, DLNR)
• Volunteer, unpaid Archeologists
• Hundreds, if not thousands, of residents living and working in this area.
The Reasons to OPPOSE:
Other major developments - over 750 multi -family units, including workforce housing - have already been approved in
the immediate area. If other projects have been approved, and not yet built, why is this project so important? If
affordable housing is an issue of "island wide" significance", is the Council comfortable with the language in the
Conditions of Approval to ensure that the County gets all of the affordable units it needs, and its residents deserve?
• This is a social and environmental justice issue. Development is in a floodplain, with the applicant intending to place
the lowest -income households at the bottom of the runoff, and providing no mitigation for those living makai.
• Testimony has been given regarding pre- and post -contact archaeological and cultural significance, critical habitat
loss, ongoing water shortages, and drought.
• These parcels are in HECO's power shut-off wildfire area.
• You've got another evacuation issue if there's an emergency and there's only one road into and out of the
development.
• Lack of concurrency required by the KCDP, putting additional strains on infrastructure, including the "Kona crawl."
• Impact on the Kealakehe Wastewater Treatment Plant, which is already violating the Clean Water Act by dumping
effluent into nearshore marine waters.
• The supportive testimony heard was almost exclusively given by those who already have or who will make money off
this application.
Please have the political courage to say that 40 years is enough time to get a project built, and do not approve the time
extension.
Mahalo.
Elizabeth Dunn
From:
Elizabeth Dunn
Sent:
Tuesday, August 2O'20249:S4AK4
To:
Council Testimony
Subject:
Support Communication 896.150
Aloha County CounoiL
Please support Communication 896.150 associated with Bill 169.
At its July 10, 2024, meeting, Council Chair Heather Kimbatt suggested the Council conduct a site visit of
the Royal Vista property. I encourage the Council to vote for this site visit. Touring the site, whether it's in
a car, or walkingvarious locations, witl. demonstrate the difficutt terrain, and how much grading must
occur in order to construct buitding pads and terraced areas for housing, the tocations of previous
floods, and where the water has flowed foryears, and how constrained vehicutar access to the site
would be. This is in addition to the location of the buriat grounds at the far southeast of the property, and
the nesting and habitat areas of the'io, pueo, hoary bat, and Btackburn's sphinx moth. Additionatty, it
would be hetpfut for the Councit to have the site ptan, with the relevant exhibits with them when they
conduct the site visit.
If the Council does vote for a site visit, I'd ask that some form of documentation is taken, whether it's
videography or drone footage, so the pubtic can experience, at a tater public meeting, what the Council
saw OD the site visit.
Thank you for your consideration on this matter.