The Hawaii County Board of Appeals is upholding a claim by the Department of Public Works that a North Kona property owner illegally grubbed his land after the man brought in a 33-ton excavator equipped with a mower blade, damaging historical sites in the process.
The Hawaii County Board of Appeals is upholding a claim by the Department of Public Works that a North Kona property owner illegally grubbed his land after the man brought in a 33-ton excavator equipped with a mower blade, damaging historical sites in the process.
The state Board of Land and Natural Resources, meanwhile, has yet to decide whether to slap the owner, Richard Stewart, with $9,000 in fines for the damage, which occurred last February.
“The integrity of the site has been severely compromised by this activity,” said Michael Vitousek, an archeologist with the State Historical Preservation Division.
The steel-tracked machine breached stone walls, tore up a possibly pre-contact agricultural mound, and damaged a terrace — all likely a part of the Kona Field System, Vitousek told the board. The work impacted eight structures, he said.
Upset neighbors brought the activity to the county’s attention.
Stewart, who wants to eventually subdivide the four-acre property off of Ihumoe Street, said he wasn’t aware that the sites existed. He said he had the vegetation cut down for a firebreak, to discourage trespassing and to allow an archaeologist better access as Stewart prepares to seek approval for six agricultural lots.
Stewart continually stressed that county law doesn’t clearly define mowing, and because the contractor didn’t remove the roots of the vegetation, the work didn’t fall under the definition of grubbing.
“The material wasn’t removed. It doesn’t fit the county’s definition,” he said. “I had called the county asking if they needed a permit for mowing and they said no. I tried to do the right thing…The law should be rewritten so people don’t make this kind of mistake.”
Public Works Director Warren Lee said the site should have regenerated more vegetation over an 11-month period if it had merely been mowed.
At least one board member agreed the law may not be clear, but the four concurred that the heavy machinery took the work beyond the scope of mowing.
“It looks to me like you just cleared the whole lot,” said board member Henry Kaaihue. “That’s not mowing. That’s what my gut tells me… Maybe we should change the law and make it clearer what you can and cannot do, because it’s going to keep coming up.”
“You need a lowboy to move this thing. It’s like a bulldozer.”
Bob Cowell, owner of West Hawaii Excavating, said the machine, equipped with a mower head, had been hired to grind trees.
“We were not grubbing or grading. We grind the tree from the top down,” Cowell said. “The machine is not designed to remove root material…It’s one of the only ways landowners can reclaim ground. If you had asked me to go and hand-clear this with a chipper, you’d have gone broke.”
County code defines grubbing as any act by which vegetation is removed, dislodged, uprooted or cleared from the surface. How mowing fits into that definition is unclear.
During four hours of often heated testimony, a half dozen neighbors who opposed the work sat waiting to see what the board would decide.
“When we were younger, we played in there,” said Jamie Funakoshi, who has been a neighbor of the property since she was a toddler. “There were walls built by ancient Hawaiians. There was the base of an old hale, and we always respected that.”
Email Bret Yager at byager@westhawaiitoday.com.