A top U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official and consultant will be visiting Kaua‘i from Nov. 10-13 to help Project Faith get off the ground. The Anahola Homesteaders Council, headed by Anahola businessman and community leader James Torio, has moved forward
A top U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official and consultant will be visiting Kaua‘i from Nov. 10-13 to help Project Faith get off the ground.
The Anahola Homesteaders Council, headed by Anahola businessman and community leader James Torio, has moved forward with Project Faith to enable Hawaiians to become economically self-sufficient one day.
Barry Hill, EPA’s director of Office of Environmental Justice, and Harold Mitchell, executive director of Re-Genesis from Spartan, S.C. are scheduled to meet with Torio and community residents at a meeting scheduled at 6: 30 p.m. on Nov. 12 at the Anahola Homesteaders Council headquarters in Anahola.
The site is located immediately north of Anahola town on the makai side of Kuhio Highway.
The visit comes more than two weeks after U.S. EPA Deputy Director Steve Johnson and EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Wayne Nastri visited Kaua‘i to award a $100,00 grant from the Environmental Protection Justice to Torio’s group to focus on the reuse of agricultural land in Anahola.
The EPA officials, who attended a ceremony in Anahola, also awarded $200,000 to Torio’s group to identify polluted spots within 20 acres in Anahola for Project Faith.
Torio’s group hopes to secure federal cleanup funds and to develop a cultural center, and businesses and housing for kupuna on the 20 acres some day.
The officials also awarded another $200,000 to Kaua‘i County to identify government and private parcels for cleanup so they can be redeveloped.
The separate $100,000 grant from EPA Justice program is intended to encourage residents to work together to address pollution in Anahola, EPA officials have said.
Hill administers an EPA program called “Collective Problem Solving,” and he is coming to Kaua‘i “to find out how he can expand or improve our (Project Faith) project,” Torio said.
Mitchell has been hired by the EPA as a community consultant to work with Hill on EPA projects aimed at improving the economic and social conditions in small communities in the nation.
“Mitchell goes into rural communities (like Anahola) to incite ways to empower people to take back the land to reuse it and to develop the land for the community,” Torio said.
Mitchell’s involvement with EPA had its roots in the early 1990s, while he lived in Spartan, S.C., Torio said.
He lived in a neighborhood that was located downwind from factory that spewed pollutants, Torio said.
“People had an accelerated rate of leukemia, and he (Mitchell) was on his deathbed,” Torio said. “Miraculously, he recovered.”
Mitchell began working with government agencies in his home state, traveled to Washington D.C. on his own to contact federal agencies, built “partnerships” with others, and founded Re-Genesis. Through his efforts and others, the pollution problems in Spartan have been corrected or have been greatly mitigated, and his town had prospered economically since then, Torio said.
While Mitchell is on Kaua‘i, Torio said he hopes to bring him to Kapa‘a High School to meet students who may follow careers in environmental protection.
Please contact Torio at 823-0927 for more information on the visit by the EPA leaders.
Lester Chang, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) and mailto:lchang@pulitzer.net
