Thursday September 21
Funds Low for Hawaii Island Cleanup
By BEN DiPIETRO, Associated Press Writer
HONOLULU (AP) - Kahoolawe is a sacred island to native Hawaiians, home to
their gods and the ancient place where their navigators learned to travel the
seas by starlight.
Today it is a scarred island, a place where decades of bombing and target
practice have left tons of military debris cratering its surface and buried
within its soil.
The future of the island, where Hawaiian elders were trained to pass on their
ancient Polynesian culture, is not much brighter.
With a December 2003 deadline to clear the island of as much unexploded
ordnance as possible, the U.S. Navy now says it doesn't have enough time or
money to meet its original bomb removal goals.
The head of the commission acting as caretaker of the island says he will
consider legal action if the cleanup isn't as extensive as first promised.
Kahoolawe, the smallest of the eight major Hawaiian islands, is 11 miles long
and 7 miles wide, and roughly 28,800 acres. It lies six miles southwest of
Maui.
The island was inhabited by several hundred Hawaiians for more than 1,000
years before the population gradually left. The Navy took control during
World War II and began using it as a target site.
Following protests in the mid-1970s that spawned the current Hawaiian
sovereignty movement, a presidential order was issued in 1990 halting the
bombing and ordering the island restored and returned to Hawaii.
Congress agreed in 1993 to spend up to $400 million to clear ordnance from
the 45-square-mile, mostly barren island that is home to the last two
remaining kanaloa plants on the planet.
The original cleanup plan called for removal of 100 percent of surface
ordnance and up to 30 percent of ordnance buried within four feet of the
surface. Work began in 1997.
The Navy in its most recent assessment this summer admitted it won't reach
the original target goals and asked the Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission
to revise its cleanup priorities.
``With 31/2 years to go before the deadline we are taking a look and, based
on production, we may not get there,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Paul Borkowski, head of
the Navy's cleanup operation.
``It's important to realize that a cleanup of this magnitude, to my
knowledge, has not been attempted anywhere,'' Borkowski said. ``It's an
uninhabited island with no infrastructure, no fresh water, with 50 years of
unexploded ordnance.''
The Navy comments are upsetting to Keoni Fairbanks, chairman of the
commission that is responsible for setting policy and making long-term plans
to turn the island into a native Hawaiian cultural reserve.
``They told us they're not going to finish. I feel very cheated and also very
frustrated,'' Fairbanks said. ``The question is whether they have a legal
obligation to finish. We are exploring our options.''
The Navy said in July that $179 million has been released for use by Congress
and that it has spent $109 million. It expects an additional $150 million to
be authorized before the 2003 deadline.
But Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said it wasn't reasonable to expect
Congress to provide more time or money for the cleanup.
``The amount of money authorized is a huge amount. I think most people would
say it's an admirable amount,'' Inouye said. ``The plan never did indicate a
total 100 percent cleanup of that island.''
Now workers are concentrating on a 200-meter-wide band around the island's
perimeter, since shoreline areas are expected to be most used when Hawaiian
cultural activities are allowed.
News that the project is running out of cash comes just months after a claims
tribunal said the federal government should pay $341 million to compensate
the survivors and descendants of more than 100 people relocated from their
homes on Enewetak Atoll, a Marshall Island atoll pummeled by 43 nuclear
blasts.
And last week, the Association of Pacific Island Legislatures called on the
U.S. and Japanese governments to remove unexploded ordnance that have been on
their islands since World War II.