LIHU‘E — With the long-awaited Important Agricultural Lands study now underway, the Kaua‘i County Council wants to know how it will be done and how it’s going. The council on Nov. 4 hosted Dr. Karl Kim of the University of
LIHU‘E — With the long-awaited Important Agricultural Lands study now underway, the Kaua‘i County Council wants to know how it will be done and how it’s going.
The council on Nov. 4 hosted Dr. Karl Kim of the University of Hawai‘i’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning. He presented a slideshow similar to the one shown at the IAL kickoff event on Sept. 30.
The study, mandated by state law and to be implemented by the individual counties, will use a host of criteria to determine which areas of the island should be preserved for ag use and which are not as critical. The final results are expected in 2011.
While the eight criteria to be considered were outlined in state Act 183 and the county’s results could be partially or completely ignored by the state Land Use Commission, how the criteria are weighed and how the results are used in future county planning is up to the individual counties themselves, council members said.
Councilman Tim Bynum said “counties control their destiny.”
But colleague Derek Kawakami worried that simply identifying land as important will not solve the problem of a lack of willing farmers in younger generations and that it is time to “think outside of the box” by providing scholarships and other incentives to make the field attractive.
“How do we protect farming without giving away the farm?” Kawakami asked, adding that the IAL study can be “a piece of the puzzle.”
Kim agreed that farming is “a very challenging industry” and that inducements or government subsidies could be necessary to making agriculture work. He said the IAL study could be “potentially much bigger than just a zoning project.”
County Planning Director Ian Costa said the IAL designation will not be included in the upcoming Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance Update, but could be included in the future.
Costa also said that the soft deadline for applicants for the IAL Stakeholder Technical Advisory Committee passed last month, and the county will likely narrow down the list from 30 to between 16 and 20 in coming weeks.
Among land already designed as Important Ag Land is Westside acreage owned by Alexander & Baldwin, currently in production by Kaua‘i Coffee Company. A 127-acre chunk of that Kalaheo land was picked by Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. as the future site of the island’s next landfill.
Gary Heu, administrative assistant to Carvalho, said last week that the administration plans to host a community meeting regarding the proposed site of the Kalaheo landfill before the end of this month.
