The Army has suffered another setback in efforts to renew leases on state lands in Hawaii, even as service leaders say they want to drastically scale back their land holdings on Oahu.
The state Board of Land and Natural Resources to reject the Army’s final environmental impact statement on potential renewal of leases on state land on Oahu. The action came after the board voted 5-1 in May to reject the Army’s FEIS on plans to retain land at the Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii island.
The Army’s Oahu leased lands currently include 1, 150 acres at Kahuku Training Area, 4, 390 acres at Kawailoa-Poamoho Training Area and 782 acres at Makua Military Reservation. The Army obtained all those lands, along with a leased state parcel of 22, 750 acres at Pohakuloa, for a mere $1 in 1964.
The leases expire in 2029.
The BLNR previously rejected the draft impact statements for Oahu and PTA, and the Army has been working since to bring them to a standard that would get their approval.
“They went back and did a revised draft to address the comments that the department had, and that took about two years, ” BLNR Chair Dawn Chang said. “So if you work backwards, if they were to revise this EIS to address the comments that were made, you add another two years to 2025. You’re looking at easily 2027, if not closer to 2028, and then you have to comply with, in the cases of use of conservation lands, getting a conservation district use permit.”
Chang said “it’s not impossible, but I think it will be very difficult to meet the time schedule and trying to get a lease before the current leases expire.”
In the Oahu FEIS, the Army stated in the document’s preferred-alternatives section that the service would prefer to lease only 450 acres at Kahuku and not pursue renewing leases on any state land at the other two sites—a roughly 93 % reduction.
But Lauren Yasaka, a Land Division planner at the Department of Land and Natural Resources, testified to the board that the proposed action in the FEIS is for the retention of all the lands. “We cannot separate (the preferred alternative from the others included ), ” she said. “They would have to do a new document with only focus on that particular alternative that they preferred.”
Ultimately, staff across the DLNR division that reviewed the document concluded the FEIS had significant data gaps. Public testimony before Friday’s vote was also overwhelmingly opposed to approving the document.
Among the criticisms expressed were charges the study used outdated environmental data and information on traditional burial grounds, and that the Army did not properly consult the Hawaii State Aha Moku Advisory Committee, which was formed to protect, conserve and manage Hawaii’s natural, cultural and historic resources.
Those concerns echoed complaints about the earlier Pohakuloa report.
Yasaka also commented that the Army’s FEIS “is not what we are used to seeing, at least from a (Hawaii Environmental Policy Act ) standpoint.”
“I’m going to be very honest : Normally, when we are talking about a particular project with a particular area, we see updated biological surveys done by a biologist purposefully done for the project, as well as at least an archaeological literature review and field survey, ” she said.
Army officials defended their efforts, citing a long list of prominent community members consulted and studies conducted, noting they are currently working on other studies as well.
“This is a first step in this process, but it’s not going to stop the process, ” Alice Roberts, the Army’s Pacific land retention program manager, told the board. “So I think that it’s very important that we are going to be able to work with the board going forward and having meaningful dialogue about what this is going to look like, and that does remain a concern.”
Chang pointed out that even if the Army reduced its footprint, “it is still state land that’s going to come back to us. So we still have to do an analysis to review what are the conditions of those lands that are coming back to us, whether they use them or whether they return them.”
Several critics took aim at what they said was a lack of specifics on plans to clean up and restore lands the Army said it plans to vacate. Wayne Tanaka, director of the Sierra Club of Hawai ‘i, told the BLNR that “refusal to provide detailed plans … really shows no commitment to return any lands that will be ready for beneficial reuse in a timely manner.”
Roberts said she wanted to reassure the board and the community that the Army “is committed to doing what is proper in terms of the cleanup of the state-owned land in particular. And again, this is why over nine months ago that we started looking at what that might entail so that we can begin working on the schedule and cost estimates that we could then bring to the board.”
The land at Kahuku that the Army wants to retain would be used to support jungle warfare training. Army Col. Rachel Sullivan told BLNR members that the jungle environment on Oahu is “of critical importance ” and can be found nowhere else in the U.S.
She said the Army recently reestablished its jungle training school and “is reestablishing relationships with other allies and partners across the world that also train and live and work in jungle environments as a way of furthering our understanding of how difficult it is to train and survive in this type of an environment.”
Chang told Sullivan and Roberts she is optimistic that there will be further discussions about how to work together and support each other, “because you have been a good partner with us.”
Speaking to reporters after Friday’s board vote, Chang said : “I think that there is acknowledgement that Hawaii is a critical location for training, especially PTA, and I think they’ve identified that that is their most critical site. But I think the message also included that the community’s concerns matter, legal concerns matter, regulatory concerns matter, and … we do have an obligation.”
All options remain on the table, she said, including potential land swaps between the military and the state or land purchases before the leases expire.
In a statement released after the vote, Office of Hawaiian Affairs Board of Trustees Chair Kai Kahele said, “This decision affirms the concerns raised by Native Hawaiians, environmental experts, and cultural practitioners throughout the public process. The FEIS failed to adequately disclose the cultural and environmental impacts of the Army’s continued use and retention of lands that are not merely ‘state lands, ’ but part of the Crown and Government Lands of the Hawaiian Kingdom—taken without consent after the illegal overthrow and now held in trust by the State and OHA for the benefit of Native Hawaiians and the public.”
© 2025 The Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Visit www.staradvertiser.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
