Tropical-fruit treatment facility on Ahukini Road might re-open

If state funds can be secured, the state’s tropical fruit disinfestation facility near Lihu’e Airport could be again treating fruit for export by this summer.

Of course, securing state funds makes the proposition a big “if.”

A bill now before the state House of Representatives would appropriate $100,000 to re-certify and refurbish the facility’s treatment chamber, and another $200,000 to establish and operate a community kitchen at the site.

Reopening the facility is contingent on securing state funds to do so, said Roy Oyama of the Kaua’i County Farm Bureau. He is spearheading efforts to reopen the facility, efforts which have support from island farmers, financiers, the state Department of Agriculture, state Agribusiness Development Corporation, state lawmakers, and representatives of both Kaua’i Community College and the University of Hawai’i.

A nonprofit legal entity has been established to run the facility, but has no money, said Oyama.

For months, Oyama had been saying that the entity would not propose to re-open the facility until farm production, mainly of papayas, reached levels that could sustain the facility. Farm production is approaching those levels now, he said.

Farmers would pay to have their fruits treated against fruit flies, to allow shipment to markets in California, Japan and beyond. Eventually, the facility would be financially self-sufficient, and possibly even profitable.

“It seems that the demand for export is opening up for the types of products that we can grow on Kaua’i,” Oyama said of papaya and other fruits.

And while at one time the Kaua’i Sunrise variety of papaya was seen as a rising star suitable for export, the fact remains that the soft-skinned Sunrise, with its sweet taste, doesn’t travel or handle well, and was being damaged on store shelves on the Mainland, Oyama said.

“We need some other varieties,” he said of possible red- or yellow-flesh Kaua’i papaya, with thicker skins suitable for the rigors of export.

State Sen. Gary Hooser, D-Kaua’i-Ni’ihau, said representatives of the Japanese government won’t allow genetically modified papaya into the country, like modified fruit produced on the Big Island designed to be resistant to the ring-spot virus that devastated that island’s industry.

Getting Kaua’i-grown papaya into the potentially lucrative Japan market would be a major boost for the local industry, Hooser commented.

Papaya grown on the island won’t be of the genetically modified variety, Oyama said.

State Rep. Ezra Kanoho, D-Wailua-Lihu’e-Koloa, said funds may be so tight that he’ll ask local farmers which project they’d rather have funded, either the $300,000 for the disinfestation facility and kitchen, or $200,000 for operation and maintenance of the east Kaua’i irrigation system formerly maintained by Amfac Sugar Kaua’i.

In its five years of existence, the disinfestation facility has been closed as much as open, after UH bought the land and the facility was constructed and first placed into operation in early 1998. It closed in May 2000, and has remained idle since.

At a meeting in mid-January of this year attended by various lawmakers, industry officials, representatives of UH, KCC and others, those in attendance concluded that the facility could be a viable operation; play a role in the island’s agricultural industry; provide jobs; with a community kitchen support an even broader range of agricultural, food processing and other value-added products; and that an advisory board should be formed.

A combination of $2,350,000 in federal and state funds was used to purchase the land and build the facility in 1998, said Jonathan Roberts, a licensing associate with the UH Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development.

The $1.4 million in federal Economic Development Administration funds comes with a stipulation that the facility be used to support agriculture, he said.

University representatives are interested in seeing the facility running again, he added. “We want to see it open, we want to see it used again,” Roberts said.

Mango, lychee, rambutan, longan and carambola are other fruits that may be able to be treated at the facility.

Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).