HART Rail Ignores Signed Programmatic Agreement - Destroys Oahu Cultural Sites
By John Bond Kanehili Cultural Hui
Kanehili Cultural Hui has been warning for years about the destruction of the Ewa Plain Karst water system and Traditional Cultural Properties. These have been ignored in the HART PA.
Kanehili Testimony at HART Quarterly Board Meeting Dec. 18, 2014
Kapolei Hale City Hall, Kapolei
John Bond's testimony to HART Board of Directors. We
especially want the Ewa Plain 1825 Malden Trails on the HART
agenda as one of the required mitigations for rail and the
Honouliuli TOD stations.
Kanehili Hui is also a recognized HART
Programmatic Agreement consulting party
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Aloha and Good Morning board members
The HART Programmatic Agreement should be followed, but it's not.
The PA is a formal agreement document with the community that requires the federally funded project to mitigate impacts on important cultural and historic sites, but this isn’t being done.
I have heard from some top authorities in the US that what HART is doing is wrong.
The HART entity hasn't been honoring the PA for years and this is well documented in the PA meeting minutes- for years. There was another PA meeting on Tuesday where this was again brought up.
Meeting after meeting, the PA minutes over the years show clearly that HART isn't honestly and forthrightly dealing with the very real concerns of consulting parties and signatories of the PA.
For us out here in West Oahu that live on this 25 square mile ancient coral reef, HART has clearly NOT mitigated our identified important Hawaiian cultural sites where Oahu’s largest Hawaiian Traditional Cultural Place existed for approximately 1000 years.
This West Oahu Ewa Plain area known as the ahupua’a of Honouliuli in the moku of Ewa has been identified as the “Leina a ka ‘uhane” an especially sacred place where thousands of souls wandered, iwi was buried in thousands of coral caves and sinkholes, and where souls made
the journey back to the ancient Polynesian homeland.
Estimates up to at least one million native Hawaiian burials from this 1000 year old agricultural
civilization are under the rail line and stations you are currently building.
One of the most famous and documented features of this ancient civilization of the Ewa Plain are the 1825 Malden Trails which HART has continuously ignored, even though a City Council Resolution in 2012, unanimously adopted, asked for the full recognition, identification and mapping of this hugely important ancient trail system.
This very important trail network that you are building over connected sacred heiaus, Konohiki managed waterways, vast agricultural fields, connected ancient leeward communities, Puu o Kapolei, Honouliuli Village, One’ula and Kualaka’I fishing and limu gathering areas on the Ewa Plain shores.
FTA Ted Matley said in a PA meeting that “FTA takes this process very seriously and is committed to making sure that what has been agreed upon in the PA is executed.
I believe that HART is greatly risking the financial support of the US Congress which could withhold further payments to HART until they honor the Programmatic Agreement which HART signed.
I don't understand how the HART board can proclaim everything is just great and on track when you must surely know it isn't, and the trust with the community is being broken by reneging on the purpose and intent of the PA.
John Bond, Kanehili Hui
Aloha and Thank YouA Tomb Stone To A 1000 Year Old Native Hawaiian Traditional Cultural Place
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FTA and HART Failed To Recognize
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