The Hawaii County Council is urging county and state administrations to take steps to preserve the easternmost edge of the Big Island in the face of increasing visitors.
Kumukahi in lower Puna is a significant cultural site for Native Hawaiians and cultural practitioners. It also is an increasingly popular tourist destination. However, the tension between these two groups has led community members to request that the county take a more active hand in managing and protecting the area.
Puna Councilwoman Ashley Kierkiewicz has introduced a resolution asking that county agencies, as well as the state Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, to take “immediate and long-term measures” to limit the exposure of the area’s cultural features.
At Tuesday’s meeting of the council’s Committee on Government Operations and External Affairs, several Hawaiian community members and other Puna residents bemoaned the thoughtless behavior of visitors to the area.
“In 1999, three tourists unearthed and removed our kupuna from one of our cemeteries (in Kumukahi),” said resident Keone Kalawe. “This case remains unresolved for 24 years. Kumukahi holds the same sacredness as Kilauea. … Kumukahi virtually requires a management and implementation plan to preserve and to protect our cultural sites and environment.”
Puna resident Ann Kobsa said there are not only significant cultural resources in the area — including graves, ahu and heiau — but it’s also home to many native flora and fauna species.
“As I see it, the main threat to the area is vehicles,” Kobsa said. “I don’t understand why, but people like to drive around offroad and seem to only see the land as something to drive over to get to where they want.”
Kobsa said she has seen rare and endangered plants run over, car parts left on ahu, leaking buckets of paint left about, and more. She went on to say that she has seen as many as 30 vehicles driving on the Kumukahi shore at once.
Makoa Freitas said that Kumukahi is significant for being the first point on Hawaii to be touched by the sun each day, and is considered in Hawaiian sprituality to be a leina a ka ‘uhane, which he described as a place “where spirits would migrate through on the way to the afterlife.”
He added that such places are often overlooked and miscategorized by “Western conceptions of land use.”
Kierkiewicz thanked community members and practitioners for seeking better management of the area, saying that the interruptions to Kumukahi traffic caused by the 2018 Kilauea eruption and the COVID-19 pandemic have helped people realize how they would prefer to see visitation to the area handled.
“If we’re going to open up, let’s please do it right,” Kierkiewicz said. “Let’s make sure we have a stewardship and a management plan in place.”
County Recovery Officer Douglas Le spoke at the meeting, noting that a federally funded plan to restore roads and rebuild waterlines in the area would reopen about 900 feet of Kumukahi-Lighthouse Road, which was partially covered by lava in 2018. During the project’s public outreach process, he said, several community members were concerned that rebuilding that road would increase traffic to the area and accelerate its degradation.
Le said the county is investigating — at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is footing most of the project’s bill — the possibility of adjusting the project schedule to reopen Kumukahi-Lighthouse Road during the project’s last phase instead of its earliest.
He explained that that additional time could give the county a chance to develop a stewardship plan for the area before opening the floodgates to even more visitors.
However, Le said that while the Department of Public Works has investigated such a shift, the ball is once again in FEMA’s court, as the federal agency still needs to release its final environmental assessment for the project.
The committee voted unanimously — three absent members notwithstanding — to forward the resolution to the full County Council with a favorable recommendation.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.