Thursday, April 8, 2010

Burials: Honolulu Weekly and KKCR

Hawaiian burials are the topic of both my radio show on KKCR today and the cover story I did for this week's Honolulu Weekly.

As you'll see in the article, the Brescia case has statewide implications. It also provides some answers to a comment left by a reader on a previous post about Brescia's house:

what was burial council / SHPD suppose to do in your understanding of the law? require monitoring, require data recovery, require reinternment? if your options for resolution are outside of the law, suggest changing the law.

--- can you bring more solutions to the table instead of just pointing out the glaring problems? IMO - no one here offers any solutions only anger, regret, loss, overall sense of doom and gloom or possibly the ever popular 'poor me' syndrome.


We'll be discussing some of those points on the radio today, and I'll touch on some of them in tomorrow's blog. The KKCR show airs from 4 until 5:30 or 6 p.m. on 90.9, 91.9 or 92.7 FM, or streaming live at kkcr.org. Call in with your questions and comments at 826-7771.

4 comments:

Mauibrad said...

Just read the Honolulu Weekly article. Good article. Will try to listen to the radio today. People can listen on the internet at:
www.kkcr.org

For Whom the Bell Tolls said...

Mahalo, Joan am putting your article up on my blog, and facebook, and twittering encouraging people to listen and call in. It was a fantastic srticle. Thank goodness for social networking!!

YAY!!

Anonymous said...

"Aiu defended her decision, saying that since SHPD is “not allowed to do a taking” of private property, the agency had “very little wiggle room” in attempting to site the house Brescia wanted on a relatively small lot widely dispersed with numerous iwi."

Can't believe the gov't fell for JB threats of a lawsuit for a "taking". There is no taking. When the land was bought, it was then and still is subject to state law on burials. The State does not take away any property just by enforcing existing burial law. I'm guessing that the combined total legal fees spent on this case to date, including court staff salary, JB's lawyers, county lawyers, State lawyers, NHLC lawyers, airfare, judge salary etc. far exceeds the value of the land by any measure.
From a purely economic standpoint, the gov't should have used its eminent domain power and done a real taking - and just bought the damn property already. But sensible economics and problem solving was ignored, as happens far too often on kauai, and instead us taxpayers and JB himself just fund a stupid war over egos and power.

Anonymous said...

removal of all allowable use the of the property I believe would be considered a takings - a fishing hut, a picnic table is allowable, in other places a viewing platform could be considered a reasonable/allowable use...