Part of the Luluku site. - Photo: Courtesy of Hālawa-Luluku Interpretive Development

Healing the hurt

Plans for H3 mitigation include an education center

By Lisa Asato / OHA Public Information Specialist

An effort to heal the lands and cultural sites affected by O'ahu's H3 corridor is a step closer to becoming a reality now that a mitigation plan has been unveiled for public comment.

Affected areas described in the Hālawa-Luluku Interpretive Development Plan by a 14-member community working group are North Hālawa Valley, Luluku agricultural terraces, Ha'ikū Valley and Kukui o Kāne heiau, the largest known heiau in the Ko'olaupoko district.

“We're all about mitigation,” said Kahikina Akana, project coordinator for Hālawa-Luluku Interpretive Development, which is facilitating the process. The proposed plan describes various impacts the freeway has on the surrounding area, including increased noise and carbon monoxide emissions, modified stream courses, damaged portions of ahupua'a walls, access reduction, and destruction of cultural and worship sites.

Proposed actions range from constructing a learning center to accommodate up to 50 people in a classroom environment using hālau-type structures in Hālawa Valley to restoring lo'i, lo'i walls and 'auwai at Luluku agricultural terraces, the parcel of land within the loop of the Likelike off ramp. “If you clear the land in the loop you would see there is a very awesome, still existing terracing,” Akana said, adding that the terracing dates back to the early 1900s. “We want to restore that and put it back into agricultural production,” with predominantly taro, sweet potato or other crops.

Working Group members and others on a site visit to Luluku, foreground from left, Donna Bullard, Sharon Lum Ho and Mahealani Cypher. - Photo: Courtesy of Hālawa-Luluku Interpretive Development

Besides healing the land, the effort also helps to mend once contentious emotions over the freeway's construction, which was completed in 1997 at a cost of $1.3 billion. “It's a healing process basically for Native Hawaiians in the sense that to some extent something is being done,” Akana said, noting that people were arrested years ago during protests against the freeway.

Members of the working group were chosen from among those who had opposed the freeway, he said, because they cared about the area. Working group members are: Donna Bullard, Wali Camvel, Mahealani Cypher, Lela Hubbard, John Talkington, Laulani Teale, Donna Camvel, Marion Kelly, Clara “Sweet” Matthews, Robert “Boot” Matthews, Havana McLafferty, Vienna Nahinu, Jodi Nahinu and Ella Paguyo.

H3 is the biggest construction and the largest public works project ever undertaken by the state. Funding for the plan comes from HLID's budget, which has $8 million remaining of its original $11 million allocation in 2000. Akana said the total cost of the plan is “much closer to $30 million, but this $8 million will get them started. They will have to continue the search for funding.”

Before design and construction can occur, the plan has to be approved by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the state Department of Transportation, state Historic Preservation Division and the Federal Highways Administration. The interpretive development plan is required by a 1987 memorandum of agreement signed by Federal Highways, the State Historic Preservation Officer and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, with concurrence by OHA and the state DOT. For more information, visit www.hlid.org, call 587-4391 or write to: 677 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 811, Honolulu, HI 96813.