The regulators
Got gripe? I’m plenty huhu about how our state and county governments talk so much about agricultural sustainability, yet contradict themselves by penalizing the very folk who are engaged in ag activity.
I’m a landowner who has dedicated my property for ag usage for decades, from my grandparents’ days. So it gets kind of tiresome when nonfarmers and nonranchers get to dictate the “rules” that govern what I gotta do.
Here’s my monku: Apparently, there are these officials who are determining regulations they claim should be legally enforced. Yet, these very same individuals do not possess much of any real-life agricultural experience, nor are they themselves currently engaged in such affairs.
Ask these regulators: Do they farm? Raise livestock?
I have never heard their subordinates mention to me: “Feel free to call my boss, to inquire further, and here’s his/her name and phone number.”
We farmers and ranchers are doing what’s necessary to derive a livelihood based on agriculture. Yet, these administrators have conjured up measures that obstruct current practices.
Example: Chickens and hogs are defined by them as “caged animals,” so therefore such critters should be confined in coops and pens. That’s animal cruelty! Current methodology is to allow for open-range grazing, not caged in tiny enclosures.
Auwe! Don’t you think our county government should listen to ag practioners who are actually doing the work?
My plea: Don’t put us ag people our of business. We’re the ones that sustain local agriculture, not the guys who come up with the “rules.” What say?
Lloyd Fukuki
Waimea
Shoreline creep
The Department of Land and Natural Resources has a policy that prevents private owners of shoreline properties from erecting structures like sea walls and boulders in order to prevent shoreline erosion.
Erosion results in the inevitable loss of private property, which sometimes includes homes. The effect of the policy is effectively the taking of private property in order to protect the public’s land by the resulting shoreline creep inland.
The DLNR argues that erosion-control structures result in the destruction of beach areas, which the public has the right of access and use. Rather than adopting an approach that may serve both the public and private landowners’ rights, the state is effectively taking private land to benefit the public.
Private landowners suffer all of the loss. The unfairness of the regulations is also found when the erosion is affecting public highways and roads. In such cases, the state allows what they do not allow private landowners to do.
Over time, the loss of an oceanside residential lot causes the street fronting the other side of the lot to become the shoreline road. That same road is the only road that also provides access to the residential lot mauka. It’s inevitable that the state or county will harden the makai road to prevent further erosion — a right they first deny the present landowner.
There exists a legal standard applicable to land development regulations.
“If a regulation only partially deprives a landowner of economically beneficial use, then the court must examine the character of the governmental regulation and its economic effect on the landowner, and in particular whether the law frustrates the distinct or reasonable investment-backed expectations of the regulated landowner.”
It clearly is time that the state brings a fair balance to its land use administrative rules.
Ken Church
Hakalau