By Naka Nathaniel
How dramatically did the results of the presidential election affect the ongoing negotiations over the expiring leases between the State of Hawaiʻi and the military?
Without a doubt, the answer is: significantly.
When the negotiations began, the president and the governor were in the same party. Now, the situation has been upended.
There are still three likely outcomes. 1) The State of Hawaiʻi and the military negotiate a new agreement (which the parties have been working on); 2) The State of Hawaiʻi takes the land back à la Kahoʻolawe; 3) The military decides to just seize the land.
The third option, which could be made possible by a directive from the president to just take the land, was the dreaded outcome for most people paying attention to negotiations. Now, it might be the most likely outcome.
“Our biggest concern is if [the incoming Trump administration] suddenly decides that they don’t want to work as partners and act unilaterally, that would be disappointing for everyone,” said Gov. Josh Green in a phone interview.
What’s at Stake?
For the past six decades, the State of Hawaiʻi has “made” a little more than a penny-and-a-half every year for letting the United State military use more than 230,000 acres of state lands in four tracts for their unrestricted purposes.
The leases are set to expire on Aug. 16, 2029.
The Army wants to hold on to the Pōhakuloa Training Area on Hawaiʻi Island and the Mākua Military Reservation and the Kahuku and Kawailoa-Poamoho Training Areas on Oʻahu. The lands have been used for live fire exercises involving depleted uranium for decades. No amount of conventional cleanup will make the lands habitable.
Unlike other situations, the State of Hawaiʻi has a real say about what happens next. The location of the property gives the State of Hawaiʻi a considerable hand to play at the negotiating table.
This opportunity might be surprising to many people here in Hawaiʻi. This usually doesn’t happen.
The last time the State of Hawaiʻi and the military sat across from each other in 1964, the state rolled over. Jim P. Ferry, the chairman of the Board of Land and Natural Resources signed a collection of 65-year leases on behalf of the State of Hawaiʻi, and Eugene H. Merrill, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army, signed on behalf of the U.S. government. A dollar was paid. Not a dollar a year. Just a dollar.
This time, Hawaiʻi isn’t a newbie state, and the military hasn’t been good stewards of the land and oceans. Since the military desperately wants to hold onto the lands, the ask in return should be limited only by the State of Hawaiʻi’s imagination.
The person at the focal point for the state is Dawn Chang, who now occupies Ferry’s post. She has said another lease like the one signed in 1964 is out of the question.
“What’s the community benefit package?” asked Chang. “Clearly the dollar, and it’s not even a dollar a year, it’s one dollar for the 65-year lease. That’s not going to happen. I think it’s very clear to United States Department of Defense that’s not going to happen.”
The question mark was, what was the State of Hawaiʻi going to counter in the negotiations after the military made what is supposed to be a fair-market offer? Was there going to be a dollar amount? Or something else, perhaps a land exchange? Or perhaps something more novel like the Department of Defense funding the bulk of the State of Hawaiʻi’s education budget.
However, the election has changed the landscape of the negotiations. The possibilities of the past have slammed into a new reality and Chang said she isn’t naive to the new situation.
“The State of Hawaiʻi is very cognizant of the recent elections, but we need to continue to move forward in reviewing all of the regulatory compliance for whatever [the Department of Defense] submits to us,” she said in a telephone interview the day after incoming president Donald Trump nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, to head the Department of Defense.
Hegseth was one of many controversial nominations made by Trump. Hegseth’s qualifications are being questioned and sexual assault allegations may upend his nomination, but the person who nominated him will still be in charge of the military for the next four years.
Chang said there was a possibility that the negotiators could have followed the path of the innovative and aloha-driven solution like the settlement in the Navahine case against the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, where the adversarial parties ended up on the same side of the negotiating table.
“I would urge others to look at [the Navahine] model,” she said. The youth plaintiffs “got a seat at the table, so I tell the community to participate. No grumble. Participate.”
Download Military Lease Map – PDF Format
Past Possibilities vs. New Reality
Exactly a week before the election, I traveled to the Pōhakuloa Training Area in between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. It’s the largest military installation in the islands. It’s very secluded and used for exercises like long-range B-2 bombing missions, paratrooper jumps and artillery training.
The Army was hosting a listening session for Native Hawaiians to share their thoughts and concerns with the military. I wanted to hear what Native Hawaiians would say about the situation and the negotiations when they sat down at the table with representatives of the military. After all, several calls had gone out about the future of the leases at the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement (CNHA) convention held just downwind from Pōhakuloa at Waikoloa the month before.
As I was passed through the guard station just off the Saddle Road, I had the sinking feeling that I might be the only attendee. I was right.
As I climbed out of my car, I was greeted by the leader of the garrison, Lt. Col. Tim Alvarado. Alvardo had been a key character in a New York Times story published the day before about the military’s preparations to fight China. The story included Alvarado witnessing a gruesome parachuting accident at Pōhakuloa.
I grew up on a military base and covered Iraq and Afghanistan as a reporter so being inside the garrision wasn’t exotic or intimidating. But what surprised me was when I was told there was no agenda for the meeting and that the purpose of the meeting was for military to listen to Native Hawaiians. And as a Native Hawaiian, if I didn’t say anything, it would be a very short and quiet gathering in a standard-fare conference room.
The Army’s minutes of the meeting said we had a very “lively discussion.” The minutes said we focused on how to build trust and build bridges between communities. I cited the Navahine settlement “as an excellent example of two disparate groups working together to produce creative solutions to reach to an agreement.”
Long Description – To Cede or to Seed
The minutes left out the plot synopsis I gave of the recent and ridiculous Michael Critchon/James Patterson book Eruption that – spoiler alert – has the head of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory flying in an F-15 that fires a missile at a lava flow from Mauna Loa to prevent radioactive herbicide stored in caves under Pōhakuloa from being released into the atmosphere and ending life on the planet.
Kyle Kajihiro, a founding member of Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice, had initially sent me an e-mail about the meeting. When I wrote him to say I was the only attendee and pointed out the “lively discussion,” he wrote back: “Hahaha, yes, I saw that in the minutes. The listening sessions are so frustrating because they don’t answer any questions or take input.”
Chang said that the military needs to figure out how to better engage the community in genuine ways.
“They don’t want to call too much attention to themselves,” she said. “I feel like they’re walking on eggshells and they don’t want to offend anybody.”
And that approach, she said, leaves too many question marks about what the military is doing and what their intentions are in Hawaiʻi. The people, the land and the oceans have been incredibly harmed by the military’s actions here in the islands. The level of mistrust after Red Hill was certain to have affected some elements of the lease negotiations.
Now What?
When I went to the meeting at Pōhakuloa, the optimist in me was looking for a pair of hopeful elements: Could the lessons of successful efforts on Mauna Kea and Kahoʻolawe be brought forward to the lease negotiations? And was there the possibility of a Navahine-like non-monetary settlement?
Chang cited Navahine as an inspiring peaceful path to a resolution. But the incoming administration now walking down the path with Chang’s team doesn’t have a reputation for conciliatory gestures or aloha-driven tactics.
“The realities are – and I don’t think any of us are being naive about this – is that it is likely that there will be litigation,” she said. “So, four years is not a lot of time and while everything will have to come to some crossroads in the year 2029, from now until then, they should be moving in the direction of ensuring that they are complying with all of the regulatory requirements to retain these lands.”
In the end, she said, the burden is on Department of Defense to ensure that they’re complying with all the applicable regulations. The military clearly wants the certainty of new leases sooner rather than later.
Since the leases expire after the next presidential election, could the State of Hawaiʻi just wait for those results? Green said no.
“I think people will panic if we get that close,” Green said.
He said that the idea of shrinking the footprint of Pōhakuloa, decommissioning Mākua Valley, and returning those lands to the State of Hawaiʻi and trading for federal lands would have been acceptable in the negotiations. Now, Green continues to emphasize that he will continue in “good faith” to negotiate with a Trump-led military.
At the CNHA convention, Camille Kalama, a legal advocate for Hawaiʻi Unity and Liberation Institute, said the military would bury the community in paperwork. Perhaps the community could slow down the negotiations with red tape? The people that hope for a Kahoʻolawe-like resolution should be prepared to take the path already taken and fight in the courts.
What were potentially favorable conditions for the State of Hawaiʻi in the negotiations are now fraught and perilous.
The likelihood of the state getting less than a dollar is strong possibility. After all, Hawaiʻi was the state that stepped up first to oppose Trump’s Muslim ban at the beginning of his first term. He’s not likely to forget that when he continues his path of personal retribution.
At the CNHA convention in September, when I first spoke to Green about the leases, it was at a time when Vice President Kamala Harris was at the peak of her popularity. He said he was stunned at the swing between the possibilities of then and the reality of now.
So, can the State of Hawaiʻi do anything if the Trump administration decides to take the land?
“There’s nothing that could be done to block a president if they decided to act unilaterally,” said Green. “It would be unfortunate because it’s important that the states be allowed to work as partners with the federal government, but that is up to a president – how they carry themselves and what they decide to do. I’m going to continue to work in good faith to try to do something that makes sense for Hawaiʻi.”
No one knows about the next four years, but there’s no reason to think it’s not going to be chaotic.
Who knows? The last time the incoming president was in the White House he reportedly offered to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland. Maybe Hawaiʻi will be included in a package to sweeten the deal and then the question of Pōhakuloa and the Oʻahu sites will be Denmark’s problem.
And the since Danes are some of the happiest people on the planet just imagine how wonderful it could all be. Weirder things have happened this century.
