An ancient sinkhole that might hold archaeological evidence to Hawaii’s earliest Polynesian past is a topic of concern for the city-run Oahu Historic Preservation Commission.
On Tuesday the commission briefly discussed Ordy Pond at Kalaeloa — formerly Barbers Point Naval Air Station — and how the panel might “research the constraints” and “provide recommendations for the long-term care and best use of the site.”
But who will actually provide the stated care for the old pond, which sits on Navy lands, remains uncertain.
Originally, the property was planned to be handed off to the state. However, in early June the Hawaii Community Development Authority ruled against accepting 213 acres of Navy lands, which included Ordy Pond near Tripoli Road, due to cost concerns for conservation and environmental cleanup of the property.
The pond itself is a place where the Navy reportedly disposed of ordnance-related scrap for decades, which led to it being named Ordy Pond.
At Tuesday’s public meeting, Commissioner Thomas S. Dye said since that time other parties — which he believed included a private individual as well as the nonprofit Trust for Public Land — expressed interest in the Ordy Pond property.
But after the meeting, Lea Hong, associate vice president and state director of the Trust for Public Land, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that her group had no knowledge of Ordy Pond.
“We’re not involved at all,” she said. “Maybe someone has the intent to reach out to us, but I’m not aware of anything.”
Hong said her group “does not get involved in land that’s already publicly owned,” and “only works with private sellers to purchase land for public benefit.”
Although the city commission is investigating the pond site’s future, the Mayor’s Office also has stated it has no plans to own it.
“To our knowledge, Ordy Pond is on the property that the Navy (Base Realignment and Closure program) offered to HCDA, and they declined to take it,” Scott Humber, the mayor’s communications director, previously told the Star-Advertiser. “No offer has been made to the city, and at the present time we have no interest in the property.”
Under a separate action in June, the city did take ownership of about 400 acres of former Navy-owned land at Kalaeloa that would supposedly go toward public recreation use, the city said.
That land acquisition, consisting of six parcels, was in the making since the city, along with the Navy and the National Park Service, first applied for the land in 1999. The transfer of the Navy land to the city did not cost the city anything.
Still, Dye said as the commission “began to discuss Ordy Pond, we were already trying to figure out how we could make a difference.”
“And I did send an email privately to the bureaucrat who is overseeing the Base Realignment and Closure process” related to the pond property, he said. “I didn’t hear back — I didn’t expect to — but I wanted to give them a heads up that we were talking about that (property).”
“But as far as I know, that’s the only communication we’ve had,” he said. “The commission has not contacted the federal government directly.”
A Honolulu-based archaeologist, Dye recently published a white paper on the scientific significance of Ordy Pond.
In his July 6 document titled “The Significance of Ordy Pond,” Dye described the sinkhole as a unique formation that can trace some of the earliest Polynesian settlements on the island.
“Sediment cores from Ordy Pond have yielded a wide range of materials used for historical studies; two of these — charcoal and pollen — have been particularly influential in determining the timing and environmental effect of Polynesian discovery and settlement,” Dye wrote. “Charcoal is absent in sediments below 6.4 (meters), indicating that natural fires were unknown on Oahu in the early Holocene. Above this, microscopic charcoal flecks identified in the sediment are interpreted as wind-borne particles from the smoke of cooking fires lit by the early Polynesian settlers. The age/depth model yields an estimate of A.D. 884-1121 for the charcoal at 6.4 (meters).”
“The estimate from Ordy Pond supports the current consensus archaeological estimate of Polynesian discovery in A.D. 940-1130 that also considers age determinations for plants and animals introduced by Polynesians,” he wrote. “Further study of Ordy Pond using modern techniques might add considerable detail to historical inferences about the events surrounding Polynesian discovery of Hawaii. Ordy Pond is significant for the information on Hawaiian history it has yielded and is likely to yield.”
Meanwhile, Commission Chair Kehaunani Abad said her panel “has gone on record to say (Ordy Pond) is a historic property that we are very concerned about, and would like to see appropriate preservation be engaged for any future activity there.”
