Major Ancient Hawaiian Trail Site Destroyed, Sacred Sites Bulldozed For HCDA PV Farm

by John Bond

The video shows another example of very poor HCDA documentation of important Kanehili sacred sites which the Federal HART EIS has identified as the "Leina a ka Uhane" - a spiritual leaping off point of souls back to the Tahitian homeland. This ancient Kanehili area is documented in the Hawaiian chants of Hi'iaka going back nearly 1000 years. Near this area is the very ancient Hawaiian spring of Hoakalei. The area of Kanehili contains large numbers of sinkholes, caves, heiaus and burial sites.

Without archaeological surveys or supervision, huge wide roads were bulldozed through these Hawaiian sites causing massive, irreparable damage to the ancient Kualaka'i trail that is many hundreds if not one thousand years old.

Also the massive number of well defined Hawaiian habitation sites, numbering in hundreds if not thousands, clearly shows how poor the Navy BRAC surveys were in identifying Hawaiian cultural sites in ancient Kanehili-Kalaeloa now under the administration of HCDA. The original population living in this area was far greater than anything previously recorded or documented in past Navy BRAC surveys.

HCDA is using the extremely thin and poorly done 20-25 year old BRAC archaeological surveys to allow rampant use of large bulldozers, such as in the case of Ordy Pond, completely overruling recommendations for Archaeological Inventory Surveys. In this case, the destruction was huge and without any supervision.

Kapolei Hawn Civic Club files letter with DLNR: 4/20/2012 Kapolei Hawn Civic Club ltr to HCDA re Site 5119 has been destroyed