OEQC Maps Out Environmental Documents Online

The Office of Environmental Quality Control's (OEQC) Online Library is now on Google Maps.

You can now search for environmental documents by clicking the location of a proposed project on a map.  In its recent edition of The Environmental Notice, OEQC says that as time permits, previously filed environmental assessments and environmental impact statements will be added.

Very cool, thank you OEQC.

Agricultural Urbanism?

Good Magazine recently published an article entitled, Agriculture is the New Golf: Rethinking Suburban Communities.  According to the story,

In cities, agriculture might be able to take the place of vacant lots. And in suburbia? Well, in 2008, the New Urbanism evangelist Andrés Duany, of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ), architects and town planners, proclaimed that “agriculture is the new golf,” a prescient and deliberately provocative claim that is helping frame the conversation about suburbia’s future. “Only 17 percent of people living in golf-course communities play golf more than once a year. Why not grow food?”

Agricultural Urbanism might be a solution to Hawaii's development challenge: preserving agriculture and green space, while providing homes for Hawaii's residents.  But, as the story observes,

[W]ill lenders, builders, and developers see the big picture? “I think developers w[i]ll understand that things need to change—that when the economy comes back it will be different,” says [Galina Tachieva of of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company ]. “The majority of leaders, politicians, and planners know that things will be different. It’s not possible to do the same from a financial point of view.”

Can Hawaii's leaders work with landowners and developers to bring about practicable change?  We shall see.

For stories related to planning see Planning.

Hawaii Supreme Court Declines Further Appeal of Wal-Mart Case Involving Native Hawaiian Burials

Today the Hawaii Supreme Court ("HSCT") rejected Plaintiffs' Writ of Certiorari in Hui Malama v. Wal-Mart.

As discussed in, Hawaii Appellate Court Holds that Native Hawaiian Burials Uncovered by Developer was "Inadvertent", the Plaintiffs brought action against the Department of Planning and Permitting ("DPP") of the City and County of Honolulu alleging DPP failed to comply with HRS § 6E-42.  Plaintiffs argued that DPP did not seek review and comment from the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) before issuing grading and building permit applications.  Forty-two human skeletal remains were subsequently uncovered at the project site.

On appeal, the Intermediate Court of Appeals ("ICA") agreed with the Circuit Court that

. . . HRS § 6E-42 was inapplicable to the Wal-Mart Project because at the time DPP issued the grading and building permits, there was no factual basis to know or reasonably believe that the Wal-Mart Project “may affect” a burial site. Furthermore, even if this court agreed with Plaintiffs' argument that City Defendants should have conducted “a much more rigorous, searching and independent analysis of the project's effect[,]” Plaintiffs have provided no evidence that such a review would have uncovered the burial site's existence.

DPP’s determination that the development would have “no effect” on historic properties, was based on the information presented in DPP records and the knowledge that the project site was extensively developed over the years.

For more on historic preservation and burial law issues, see Historic Preservation.