The Hawaii Community Development Authority is going ahead with plans for a solar facility to be built in Kalaeloa, which may disrupt nearby Hawaiian cultural sites.

HCDA’s board for the Kalaeloa Community Development District — the state agency charged with managing the land — approved the developer’s request to negotiate a lease for 44 acres with the agency’s executive director. Aloha Solar Energy Fund II, a subsidiary of Burlingame, Calif.-based ECC Energy Solutions, wants to build a 5-megawatt solar farm on roughly 24 acres of the land. The remaining 20 acres would become archaeological preserves.

The board members said the approval was dependent on the company completing mitigation obligations. Some of the obligations listed in the project’s 2012 report include completing an archaeological inventory, building a fence to prevent unauthorized entry onto the land, and sending HCDA written reports every 30 days.

Richard Fryer, energy program manager for ECC, said the company will work with HCDA to resolve remaining matters and begin lease negotiations. Fryer said the company is expecting to begin design of the facility in the fall and start construction in early 2018.

ECC has yet to finalize an agreement with Hawaiian Electric Co.

The additional solar energy on the grid has the capacity to power 820 homes, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

A primary focus of the meeting was the impact on cultural sites. The parcel contains 23 cultural sites, and two of the sites would potentially be disrupted by the construction.

John Bond, president of the nonprofit Kanehili Cultural Hui, said the site is one of the “most culturally and historically rich sites” the group has seen. “By just walking a few yards in any direction off the bulldozed roads was massive evidence of an ancient Hawaiian cultural habitation of all kinds, including trails, heiaus (temples), burial sites.”

ECC’s fieldwork showed 23 sites, containing 146 features, within the 44-acre site, according to Kawika McKeague, consultant for ECC Energy Solutions.

“The intention moving forward is, of those 44 acres, about 20 acres or so will remain in what we intend to be an archaeological preserve and the remaining 20 acres will be for the project,” McKeague said.

McKeague said two cultural sites would potentially be removed to make way for the solar farm. One of the sites is a traditional agricultural mound. The other site is a bulldozed pile containing pohaku, or sacred stones. The pile was created during the construction of the nearby Kalaeloa Airport runway, McKeague said.

McKeague said the company is considering moving the stones by hand instead of mechanically.