William Aila was a longtime harbor master at Waianae Small Boat Harbor and activist on Hawaiian cultural and environmental issues, best known for the conflict over military training in Makua Valley.
He knew taking the top job at the state Department of Land and Natural Resources would mean spending days in the hot seat. But when things got really hot in recent weeks over the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ ordnance removal, he stood up to mount a full-throated defense.
In the end, he said, his responsibility is to the resource, and difficult circumstances made the governor’s declaration of emergency the only practical way of clearing unexploded military munitions from state lands.
Yes, he added, it should have been made public much earlier, but he’s satisfied that the bottom-line welfare of the resources is being served.
At 53, Aila said his core beliefs are unchanged, but the job has forced him to rethink what solutions are realistic.
For instance, he said, he initially sided with those who thought archaeological studies on the whole route of the Honolulu rail project should be done first. But other officials convinced him that digging up parcels of land the city could not yet afford to buy along a 20-mile route was a nonstarter.
Finally, the accord that came out of discussions will compel the city to move pillars whenever that’s possible to avoid disturbing Hawaiian burials or historic sites, he said, and that measure of protection was worthwhile.
There’s so much work to do on so many fronts — watershed protection, parks upgrades, pulling back boulders from ridge precipices — that he’s got little time for recreation. So he tries to work a little into the job, most recently at the Ahu O Laka sandbar in Kaneohe Bay, where DLNR increased its oversight.
"Because the Division of Boating and Recreation hasn’t trained up enough people for its dive team, Saturdays and Sundays, if there’s work to be done on the dive team — replace buoys and stuff — I still go and help them out," he said. "I get a little work-slash-recreation."
QUESTION: Why did DLNR decide not to carry out the process to issue "right of entry" permits for ordnance removal, instead of the emergency declaration?
ANSWER: The attorney general’s opinion is (that) an EA (environmental assessment) is required to issue a right of entry. So, we’re faced with, at that time, a looming deadline. … If we don’t have those things in place, all that money’s going to lapse. It’s about $100 million
total for over five years. …
(The right of entry process) no longer exists, because the attorneys said (so). … So we go down two paths. We go down a path of (either) go seek an exemption from the Office of Environmental Quality Control, or begin to discuss this path of declaring an emergency and using that proclamation to move these rights of entry forward. Because, of course, we don’t want to lose the money and, of course, we don’t want to lose the ability to clean these areas and to increase public safety.
Fast forward to today, we’ve got Hapuna Beach being cleaned up right now. We’re still allowing people to use the beach. … As of today, two pieces of dangerous ordnance have been destroyed and the park made safer because of the action we took.
Q: What happened at OEQC?
A: The office … still doesn’t have an administrator; it takes a while for the governor to vet people. … We apply; the new members and the old members (of the OEQC’s Environmental Council) aren’t really quite sure, so we go through a couple of meetings before they grasp what we need to do; by then it’s too late.
So the emergency proclamation is the only avenue available to us in order to effect the rights of entry, in order to get the federal government to encumber this money. And this was the governor’s policy all along, right? We’re coming out of a recession, we’re trying to protect all the federal funds that can come into the state to help us with this recession, and that’s why the decision was made.
Now here’s where the administration made a mistake. The governor in his office is starting to staff up, and we don’t have all the personnel in place. So this happens. It kind of sits there for awhile. Around the second week of August I become aware, hey, this thing isn’t up on the website yet. So I make a call: Let’s put this up on the website. … So it gets put it on the website. (Environmental radio host) Carroll Cox picks it up, and automatically there’s this "conspiracy."
Q: But for a civil emergency, why wasn’t there a public announcement, something more than putting it up on a website?
A: When I look back at that situation, I think we had just moved on to the next crisis and just started going. … While this is going on, at Hapuna, for example, the effect of the exemption of the law has had absolutely no impact in terms of what’s happening on the ground. We still have the public using the place, we still go through a review if any ordnance is found near a historic property or endangered plant, there is this informal consultation that we do. … The federal government still has to follow all the federal requirements. … They’ve done a federal EA (environmental assessment) for all of this. So the net effect is that nothing has really changed.
Q: Did the people using the beach at Hapuna, for example, know what was going on?
A: Well, when we started this process, of course we put out press releases … and the Army Corps held public meetings prior to going with this. There’s no intent to keep the public uninformed. That’s my point.
Q: But you at least acknowledge it’s irregular to declare an emergency and it not be announced as such?
A: It should have been put up on the website, that’s for sure.
Q: Or more than that?
A: Then we should have done a press release. … It seems that there’s this continuing assertion that the governor is doing something sneaky. … The slant is, here’s the governor again, doing secretive things, when in fact there was no intent to do anything secretive. Just the circumstances at that time created the condition whereby we dropped the ball, we didn’t put it up on the website.
In hindsight, we should have made an announcement. The practical implication, though, is today, we’re notifying people when we go into an area.
Q: Do you have any concern at all about oversight and protection of cultural resources?
A: Of course it’s important. What’s also important is we have the money and we have the expertise to make these lands safer for the public going forward. If we don’t have the money, the federal government doesn’t do this, we aren’t fulfilling our public responsibility, our fiduciary duty to make these lands safer for the public. It’s a balancing act, right?
Q: The lifting of environmental laws was necessary for that?
A: The Army Corps was very concerned they were not going to be able to encumber that money, and that money would be lost.
We have to remember that, at that time, you had the changeover: The Republicans had the (U.S.) House, they were looking for all of the funds, there was concern about any funds not encumbered, the Republicans grabbing that back for deficit reduction.
Q: The governor has said DLNR could be reorganized. Any progress made on that?
A: Not as of this moment. We continue to look for efficiencies, and we’re looking at former plans to reorganize. There are preliminary discussions … but we haven’t moved forward on it. …
I think the governor’s early intent was not just within the DLNR but within state government as a whole; we need to be less in our silos and more working across jurisdictional lines. A good example of that is the current rockfall situation we have up in Aina Haina. We are working with Civil Defense, we are working with the county of Honolulu, (the) police department, emergency services. … Here we are, implementing what the governor wanted to do.
Q: Can you talk about your transition into the position as DLNR head? Have you changed any of your perceptions as a result of your being in this job?
A: So I came into this position with the reputation of being an activist. … Certainly I can’t be an advocate for my personal feelings or beliefs any more. I’m not an individual; I sit in that chair and I represent a department. Along with that department comes all the constraints of having to follow laws, or having a very good reason to ask for an exemption from following those laws. In the meantime we have to balance all of the different expectations from different constituencies throughout the state. … I also have to, when I decision-make, (consider) "What is the governor’s plan? How does this fit into the governor’s plan? How does this comply with law? How does this comply with the differing opinions of the various constituencies?" And then ultimately, "What is the right thing to do for the resource?"
Ultimately, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. … My outlook on what I have to consider in totality has certainly broadened my decision-making process.
Q: Has your individual perspective changed — on the conflict with the Army over Makua, for instance?
A: I don’t think so. … I’ve always been objective and tried to put myself in the other person’s shoes, depending on what the issue was. So with the Army, we’ve always been objective, we’ve always made it about the facts of the case, and never about personalities.
Looking at the law, I was with a group that was able to actually use the law to get the Army to change things. … There’s a law in place and, as an advocate, you seek to have that law implemented in a way that’s most favorable to you. …
I don’t think I’ve changed at all; it’s just that now I have a greater responsibility to a larger group. That’s the only difference.
