East Maui Appeals: On January 9, the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi filed a notice of appeal to the Environmental Circuit Court of the state Board of Land and Natural Resources’ December 13, 2024, decisions to grant a revocable permit to Alexander & Baldwin, Inc., and East Maui Irrigation Co., Ltd., for the continued diversion of East Maui streams, and to deny the group’s request for a contested case hearing on that permit.
About a month later, on February 7, the Sierra Club filed an application with the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari regarding similar permits the Land Board issued for the companies’ stream diversions in 2021 and 2022.
Last December, the Intermediate Court of Appeals issued a summary disposition order finding that the Environmental Court had erred when it ruled that none of the exceptions to the mootness doctrine applied to the Sierra Club’s appeal regarding the permits for those years.
Even so, the ICA denied the group’s request that the court address the appeal’s merits rather than remand this case to the Environmental Court.
The Sierra Club now asks the state Supreme Court to consider whether the ICA erred in declining to address the merits and reverse the Land Board’s decision.
Attorneys for the Land Board and for A&B/EMI argue that the ICA properly remanded the case to the Environmental Court and ask the high court to reject the Sierra Club’s application.
ʻAina Leʻa Loss: The years-long, multi-party litigation over ownership of more than 1,100 acres of West Hawaiʻi land is winding down. In late December, 3rd Circuit Judge Wendy DeWeese approved the credit sale of the land to Bridge ʻAina Leʻa, the same company that sold the land to ʻAina Leʻa’s predecessor company, DW ʻAina Le’a, in a series of transactions commencing around 2007.
ʻAina Leʻa, burdened with debt and unable to continue building the townhouses it had started to put up in 2010, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2018, but only thanks to an exit loan from a lender of last resort.
The company was unable to pay off any of its creditors under the agreement it had reached with them under the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court.
Consequently, creditors began legal action to foreclose on the company’s property.
At a September auction of the two parcels that form the 1,100 acres at the heart of the development, Bridge ʻAina Leʻa submitted a credit bid of $30,356,000. It also will pay $871,686 to Hawaiʻi County, satisfying the principal and accrued interest on the property tax bill, unpaid for years.
In addition to losing the land, ʻAina Leʻa is on the hook to repay the tax bill and also to cover the $431,000 in attorney fees and $24,811 in legal costs that Bridge incurred in the foreclosure litigation.
There remain outstanding claims by junior creditors.
Romspen Investment Corporation, the creditor that took possession last year of the 38-acre site where ʻAina Leʻa began construction of townhouses some 15 years ago, has already sold it off. The purchaser, Loa Lani, LLC, a Virginia company, paid $14.35 million for the property in January 2024.
Jeff Darrow, planning director for Hawaiʻi County, said his office had received “calls from different people regarding the overall project in relation to the sale back to Bridge.”
As far as the property with the townhouses is concerned, Darrow said he had heard nothing.
A ‘New Day’ for Wespac: The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council has welcomed the change in the White House, stating that the new administration “provides a chance to make U.S. fisheries in the Pacific great again.”
A press release issued by the council December 18 states, “With a change in administration, the council plans to take the opportunity to write to the incoming administration and outline the issues with existing federal and international conservation and management measures. [Wespac executive director Kitty] Simonds said that decisions from the federal government have continued to negatively impact the U.S. Pacific Island fishing communities.”
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