HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0377.655 2024-2026From:
Julie Stowell
Sent:
Tuesday, September 2, 2025 12:04 PM
To:
Council Testimony
Cc:
Kimball, Heather, Kagiwada, Jennifer, Onishi, Dennis; Kierkiewicz, Ashley, Kanealii-
Kleinfelder, Matt, Galimba, Michelle M.; Villegas, Rebecca; Inaba, Holeka; .,,Hustace�
James
CDM
Subject:
Please continue your SUPPORT for Res. 234-25 v
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Aloha Chair and Council Members, ::9
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Please continue to support Resolution 234-25 to protect the health, safety, and cultural integrity
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Hawaii Island.
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Resolution 234-25 that will help end Pohakuloa live fire and bombing practice, and further contamination
and destruction of the landscape and soiUair quality in the Pohakuloa Training Area, rejecting land swaps
and lease renewals with the military unless specific stipulations are established, with the U.S. Military
adheringto our Hawaii State Constitution and motto through the Ka Pa'akai Analysis on the area.
For decades, Pohakuloa—a sacred and ecologically vital area —has been subjected to contamination
and destruction from military activity. These impacts extend far beyond the immediate training grounds.
What happens on our land directly affects our island's water quality and quantity. The pollutants and
toxins from bombing and live fire seep into the soil, travel into our aquifers, and threaten the clean water
that sustains our families, farms, and fisheries.
The Board of Land and Natural Resources recognized this danger when they denied the U.S. Army's Final
Environmental Impact Statement in May 2025—its second failure to meet the requirements of our laws.
The Army's recent, partial clean-up efforts are not acts of goodwill; they are strategic moves to secure
more land and reframe their public image. True stewardship means consistent respect for cultural sites
and environmental health —not compliance only when more land is at stake.
Pohakuloa is culturally sacred. It is also centrally located at high elevation and greatly impacts our
island's ecological health. We cannot allow further poisoning of our land, air, and water under the guise
of national defense. We do not want contamination of our aquifer, such as what has been done by the
military at Red Hill, Schofield Barracks and Kaho'olawe. Protecting this area is protecting our people, our
culture, and our future.
Please protect air, water and sacred lands. Please end the live fire and bombing at Pohakuloa. Please
protect the public trust. No Lease. No land swap. No land sale.
I urge you to adopt Resolution 234-25 without delay.
Mahalo,
Julie Stowell
Hamakua
Comm.
Ref. To: 25
Ref. Date VWUN
Please review these articles:
The Cost of the U.S. Military in Hawai'i:
https://hawaiifirst.blog/2025/08/27/the-cost-of-hosting-the-u-s-military-in-hawa i%CA%BBi/
The Army is Not Our Neighbor:
https://ethanmckown.substack.com/p/the-army-is-not-our-
neigh bo r?r=3bxyhg&tri ad Red i rect=true&utm_medium=ios
But since this article has been removed from the internet, here is an excerpt...
".... At Kaho`olawe, the U.S. Navy bombed the island so thoroughly and for so long that its
water table was permanently damaged; it tools a Hawaiian -led occupation to force their
hand, and even then the cleanup remains incomplete. At Schofield Barracks, the Army sits
atop a Superfund site, having leached solvents and heavy metals into the very aquifer that
supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands. At Red Hill, fuel leaked into O`ahu's
water supply over years —poisoning civilians and servicemembers alike —and only after
catastrophe did the military begin to act, spinning the response as if it were accountability
instead of neglect. At Makua, Hawaiian families were forcibly removed to make way for
live -fire training in WWII, and the Army dragged its feet for years resisting environmental
review, cultural access, and demilitarization. And at Pohakuloa, in August 2022, the Leilani
Fire, sparked by Army live -fire exercises, burned approximately 17,700 acres of dryland
forest and destroyed habitat for endangered species...."
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