 to this live edition of Out and About, a forum where we discuss events, organizations, and people who influence things in our city, state, and world. And today we are delighted to have a group represented by the McCready family, although they are not the only folks who are interested in this. They are representing a group called SaveKanayohay.org. If you'd like to go online and look at the topic, SaveKanayohay.org, we're going to be talking about the proposed Hawaiian Memorial Park expansion and community opposition therein. So our guests today are Rich, Julianne, and Sean McCready. So welcome to you all, and thanks for being on the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. You know, we've been looking here that Hawaiian Memorial Park is petitioned to change 31 acres of Kanayohay land, which is near where you all live. It's classified now under the status conservation land in the Kava Watershed region. And they're looking at adding about 30,000 burial plots over there. And they bought this in 19—it's been in operation since 1958. They tried to do this 13 years ago. What happened 13 years ago, and why is this issue coming up again? Who wants to take it? Want me to take it? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, basically the developer owns the land. They bought it knowing it's conservation land, but they're trying to get reclassified as urban. And they came in with a much bigger project last time, but essentially not much has changed this time. The same factors of the environment are there. They did downsize the size of the project a bit. But beyond that, it's pretty much the same problems as before. Same problems as before, but they've come back and said something's different now, and let's take a look at it again. And a few things changed. So what changed for them that made this a more favorable project? Well— So they downsized it from 56 acres to 31 acres. And then they had the promise of the Kolaupoko—I mean, the cultural reserve for the Kolaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club. But the fact still remains that all the findings of fact from 10 years ago are as relevant today as they were back then. As environmental, historical, and scenic issues that are still there. Okay. And is that the findings of fact that you're talking about? That's from the land use commission that they found at that time. And is that link available on your website at SaveKanayoke.org? I believe so. I don't—no, I don't think so. Well, if it's not— Well, we can make it. Okay. Can you tell me then—let's look at the area so that people can understand what we're looking at. We have a few slides here. So if we could get the first slide up—although it's not a slide, we still say slide. I still say slides. This is the area in question, which is in Kaneo-e, near to Pohainani, and off of Kamehameha Highway. So let's see. You see that there. Now, I think that's showing up as our main slide. Is that—all right. So you can see there. You can see up on the top of your screen we've got, or maybe for the folks at home, the area in question. That's the mountain range right there. And is that the Oneava Hills? Is that what that is? Yes. Okay. And so this development here is where a lot of probably the opposition is to this. And the large building on the left was Pohainani. Then on the second slide that we've got, maybe we can see this is a blow-up of the site there and how that is very close to a residential neighborhood as well. And how about the third slide on there? I'm not seeing the slides. It's up in the top corner. It's up in the top. You may not be able to see it depending on what you're looking at. It's a diagram showing the expansion of the Memorial Park and how it would be laid out with the road and the green area that goes right close to the residential area. And then let's look at the final one now as well just while we've got this up. Okay. So that's the area in question there. And the purple area is filled up to 40 feet of dirt and the pink area there, what are we looking at there? Rich, can you tell us? Yes. That's kind of the after of grading when they actually take a lot of slope and bulldoze it down and fill in valleys. So, you know, that's quite a large project and anybody who reads the EIS and that is definitely available online through the land use commission site. It is just a massive project with one of the commissioners that the land use commission recently mentioned that it was going to be an excess of 3,800 dump tuck loads of dirt that they're going to have to haul away and haul somewhere. And one of the concerns is that it would be going to the PBT landfill and they're filling up. And so, you know, it's a massive project with a lot of grading and retaining wall construction, things like that. And then there's going to be excess dirt that has to be hauled away. When you say grading, what does that mean in the context of this? Because grading sounds pretty innocuous to me. What are we talking about here? Well, the hillside is very steep in places and they're going to take as much of 100 feet of hillside and cut it and then try to reorganize the ground to make it more level to be suitable for cemetery use. It's not a good site to make a cemetery. If you were flying around a helicopter in Oahu, you wouldn't choose this place to make a cemetery except for the fact that it has nice views. And it's near the other existing cemetery. You would think you would go someplace like the center of the island and old ag lands that are flat already and you just could develop that easily into a cemetery. This is going to take them by their estimates about $29 million worth of site work to make it into a cemetery. And so now, Sean, did you grow up in this area? Yeah, I did my entire life. And to add to that, it's a really important watershed region. So, you know, me and my family have grown up sort of in the bay and in the hills and honestly, it's really sad even these days to see the small amount of biodiversity even in the water and everything else. So the thought of some runoff or a project like this really affecting our watershed region and affecting the biodiversity of our islands even more is really heartbreaking for someone like me that grew up in such a beautiful place and wants to see that continued for future generations. So you're talking about basically it's behind all of your houses, the mountain being cut down. Well, the trees on the mountain being cut down and probably some of those are 60 feet high or 50 feet high, something like that. Cutting those down and then removing in places up to 100 feet, which is a 10 story building more or less of dirge and moving it around. Do you think that there's a chance that this whole area could be more prone to flooding or to erosion or what are some of the concerns that you're looking at besides the scenic destruction? Absolutely. Yeah, all the above and yeah, my dad can definitely go into more detail about that. But yeah, I mean, like I say before, it is a steep hillside. It already has some water runoff issues and the city's pipe at the end of O'Haha Place is only 24 inches big. That's what all the water that comes up that hillside eventually has to drain into. And so as they have unintended consequences by developing this hillside, it all eventually has to jump into the city's water system and that could be overwhelmed and full of red dirt that'll finally flow into Kaniwa Bay. So yes, flooding is a huge issue and if global warming comes about to be actually having more intense storms, it already is a problem. But if there's even a more intense storm, like a tropical storm, we're to park upon O'ahu for a couple of days and have extreme rainfall, it would definitely have a major problem with flooding. Yeah. Okay, I can see that because just the rain bombs that we had a couple years ago, whether they were on Kauai, how many inches did it rain a day? Fifty inches I think. Fifty inches. Yeah, every system would be overwhelmed, but if something is terraformed, it's going to be a lot more impact probably than the natural environment would be able to absorb. And even the natural environment would have trouble with that. We saw it on East O'ahu, same thing about that time and over in Kilo as well. So I can see a big concern for people right around there. So Julie, there's a HAL complex there. The developers have offered to make some special arrangements for that. Is that a good thing? We support the culture reserve for the Kauai Bay HAL, but not using it as leverage to destroy the adjacent hillside, the 30,000 burial pots. So if this whole petition does not go through, there's no promise of the cultural reserve. So they're using it as leverage. And don't folks have a legal right in Hawaii as cultural descendants to access that land right now anyway? They have, yes, they have as cultural practitioners, they have the right to go up there and use it anyway. Yes. As it is. And I would think that the... As it is. Responsibility to take care of that, the historical sites anyway, just whether they give it away to somebody else or not. So some people, they talk about whether or not this is... Burial is appropriate or not appropriate depending on religions and that sort of thing. And I don't know that that's really the focus here because some people will want to be buried and choose to be buried. And I can appreciate that. Do you know, did they really consider a lot of other sites on the island for other areas to expand in or to move in and maybe have a new cemetery or additional cemeteries in places that are not as ecological sensitive? Let me take that, Joey. Yeah. I mean, I did a lot of research on the capacity of existing cemeteries and the developers had a consultant, CBRE, do a study and they claim that there is future possible sites, but we found errors in that report. The very example is Mililani Memorial Park. They already have 19,000 new plots that have been developed that are available for sale in the proposal and the study of the CBRE analysis. They claim that was future and possible, but the testimony that was last week, they even claimed that, well, we don't know that that will ever come to pass, but they are available right now. So that right off the bat is 19,000 plots available at Mililani Cemetery. Valley of the Temples is a huge cemetery. They still have a lot of land they can expand into. Hawaii Memorial Park itself, that's the biggest misconception about this whole thing. Water Park says that they are running out of space, that when you really look at the numbers, they have a 79,000 total plot capacity. There's 41,000 people buried there now. So they're roughly 52% utilized, 48% unutilized. They keep saying they're out of space, but what they mean to say is they've sold plots. Those plots haven't been filled yet. If you look on Craigslist and other sites that have brokerage for cemetery plots, there's a lot of Hawaii Memorial Park sites available. So there's a lot of misconception about that. And we've tried to point all that out in our letters, and hopefully the Land Use Commission is reading all that and we'll take the time to understand the problem. Before the Land Use Commission now, what does that mean? Where is it going? Where is it at? What are the next steps that are being taken right now? Right. Well, the Land Use Commission is the body that the developer decided to run the EIS, the Environmental Impact Statement in front of, to ask for a boundary amendment. They're trying to get the land changed from conservation to urban. And so the Land Use Commission is the appropriate place for that discussion to occur. And so what the developer is hoping is that they'll get approval to be able to do this type of project from the Land Use Commission, and they still have to apply for permits and dig into more details. Like, right now, the plan is murky, and that has been brought up in the hearings that they haven't really spelled out exactly how they're going to do some of their mitigations and construction techniques. But it's a step in the process. They get the approval from the Land Use Commission that they can move on to try to get permits. Is it too late for the public to get involved in this? Or is there a way that people can make their voices known? Definitely people can still get involved. Before the hearings, they usually ask, is there any public testimony? Now, it has to be short testimony, two-minute testimony. If you want to do, it's a Zoom meeting. If you want to do a Zoom testimony, you can do that for two minutes. But you can still write letters. For sure, anyone can still write a letter and address that to the Land Use Commission. And the Hawaiian Morrill Park issue would be the issue that they're talking about. Because the Land Use Commission has a lot of issues. But the Hawaiian Morrill Park expansion issue, if they address that to the Land Use Commission with that title regarding that, then they could still have written public testimony. Some people will say, oh, this is just a nimby thing. Not in my backyard. I don't want it. Julie, is that the case here? I mean, obviously you probably don't want a cemetery in your backyard. But is it that this area is somehow special or unique or should be conserved in a way that maybe deserves extra consideration or merit? Well, like Sean said, it is in the Kava watershed region, which flows down to Kanioi Bay, which has been designated as a class AA water body, which should be highly protected under EPA. Like Richard said, too, the hillside is steep and undesirable. And what they need to do to mitigate it in order to make it into a cemetery is they have to, like I said, deforest severely grade and fill in 31 acres of conservation land in Kava watershed. They have to put in seven retaining walls, three detention-retention basins, sub drainage pipes to protect the damselfly, the Hawaiian black line damselfly. And then there has to be rock catchments, sediment catchments. It just goes on and on and on. Like my son, Sean, said, you know, we go to Kanioi Bay quite a bit. It goes sailing, my husband's into sailboats. And we just don't want to see all that sedimentation or chemicals being put into the bay. Yeah, that's fair enough. And it is an environmentally sensitive area of these. And aren't there maybe four streams that feed into this? Or it's at least a Kava watershed. So maybe there's ones that don't exist until it rains. But you mentioned the damselfly habitat there, the black line damselfly. Sean, have you seen that area of what that is? And can you tell us any about that? Yeah, so it's actually a stream sort of head right behind our house. And it's one of the only unique breeding grounds for damselflies on the island. So once again, going back to sort of the conversation about biodiversity in Hawaii and protecting native species that we have here, we should be trying to do our best to make sure that we're providing the right national resources for these organisms and different creatures to live. I mean, there's so many other problems we have on this island between housing problems, food problems, as far as being a sustainable and self-sufficient island. And to me, it just doesn't make any sense to prioritize profit for a Texas-based umbrella company that's not going to keep any of the funds and profits here in the islands itself in exchange for eliminating local species and destroying our environment. So besides the fact that it is a very special place and important for our biodiversity, the trade-off just doesn't really seem worth it. I think maybe even for younger people, the thought of the traditional burial is not as appealing as for older people. And I don't know if you're feeling like that or not, or if you've even thought about that. But as I've seen with the green burial alternatives, there's a lot of different ways that people can choose what they will do with their final remains. And I don't know if the plan addresses that or not, or if that's something that's really not in the scope of this. But you think that's got a lot of room for growth and maybe that should be a big consideration here? Honestly, that's kind of our main argument at this point. You know, as a company, the Hawaiian Memorial Park obviously needs to be concerned about how they can continue to grow their revenues. But especially with the fact that the majority, I think there's recently an article I came out in Forbes about how by 2040, nearly 80% of, I guess, the nation will be cremated, and that cremation is growing in popularity. So really the question is if, especially if burial sites and cemeteries need to be revising their plans, why are we even entertaining such a large-scale burial sort of setup when cremation truly is the future and is a lot more space efficient? I mean, even in our own family, we've cremated some of our past generations. And in Hawaiian spirit, we've had beautiful ceremonies out in the ocean or at least the ashes. And to me, that was really beautiful and really a nice way to connect with the land and kind of feel some sort of continuation of energy from past generations. And I don't know. I mean, I think definitely we should be respectful to how different people want to see their loved ones passed on, but these cemeteries really have to adapt to changing times and adapt to new desires of people my age and for future generations. And maybe- And baby boomers. Say it again, Julie. I said, and baby boomers, you know? And baby boomers. Which is my generation. Well, and these, this is not cheap either to get a plot there. I don't know how much is it to buy a nice plot with a forever view? Oh yeah, we've been doing research into that and the cemetery operators claim their prices range up to $30,000. But I have someone who presented us a quote that they had gone up there and inquired about prices and the cheapest option was $34,000 and it climbs up to $60,000 if you get a lot of amenities depending if you do a double internment and a fancy casket and a fancy ceremony. So, you know, and I went to value the temples the same story. A lot of the plots are $50,000 just to do two Ash internments. And if you want to have a whole big family with maybe eight, it could be $100,000. So no, the prices, the one thing about this industry that's a little frustrating for people is they don't disclose a lot of their prices on the internet. You have to go to a sales meeting where they give you the hard sell and then you've come to find out, wow, this is quite expensive. And the one exception to that that I can tell you about in case people really have a need to make use of their services is a Wahu Cemetery. They're a nonprofit. You can get someone cremated for $1,000 there. And so that is for me, the way a lot of local families are gonna wanna go considering the economic downturn from this COVID crisis. If you really had a choice, you're gonna spend $30,000 on a ceremony or $1,000 on a cremation and a simple ceremony of some sort, that is gonna be what drives the move towards cremation. That's a, it's an unfortunate thing. You could think of $50,000 bucks for a couple of plots or a few plots to have a forever view, I suppose, but at what cost to the folks that are still around? It's, I guess, bigger questions that we all need to ask and how, I guess, sustainable we wanna be in life and afterlife. It's a larger question here, but obviously this is a private company. They have a fiduciary responsibility to make a profit. That is, they will be sued by their shareholders if they don't make a profit. You mentioned a Wahu Cemetery is nonprofit. Is that typical and what you found or is a Wahu Cemetery an outlier and things like this? A Wahu Cemetery is the only one that I found that is a nonprofit. Okay, so there's a lot of complex issues here dealing with, you know, green burials, what we want sustainability, endangered species, the Hayao, massive terraforming. When would this project theoretically take place if it were approved? They claim in a newspaper letter to the editor that they're ready, they're shovel ready if they got approved. But I think it's gonna take at least another year because for one thing they said they did not wanna start knocking down trees when a Hori-Bat pumping season is. And so I think they couldn't, if I remember correctly, they wouldn't be able to start until September, October of whatever year they get approved. And so then you start running into the rainy season for doing your grading. You don't wanna be necessarily grading in January, February where the chance of heavy rain occurs. But you know, even in any time hurricane season is around there's chance of heavy rain too. So I don't know exactly what their plan is on all that but they claim they're ready to move forward quickly according to a letter to the editor from the CEO or one of the officers of SCI. SCI is the Service Corporation International, the Texas Corporation. And that's the largest provider of funeral and mortuary and the death services industry in the nation. Yes. Okay, so they have a lot of probably power and influence and it's right now in your backyard because we're looking at the cemetery expansion there. If people wanna follow along, they want more information they go to savekaneohe.org which is S-A-P-E-A-N-E-O-H-E.org and they can find out more information there get some links to testify maybe the link to the environmental impact statement will be there so they can read through and find out more about it and start thinking about also just this particular one but also how they want to be their own plans and start thinking about this and is this the wave of the future or is it more like Sean is saying where we're going to move in a more green burial mode and just let's look at the entire impacts of this before we move forward on something that is a really massive change from the current conservation land which is what they bought it under and what all the neighbors bought it under to having it be changed to a cemetery expansion. It's fair enough some really big issues here important issues and that probably set precedent as well if they were to get an approval. So we have a lot of, our space is very precious here and we need to guard that very carefully and I really applaud all of you for standing up and speaking and you have a bunch of people that have joined you they can sign a petition on your side I believe as well but nothing is as good as a good old fashioned written testimony and stating a heartfelt position of where you are and this is how we keep our state and our city and our nation great is by just local citizen activity so I really thank you for being on the show today and helping people to understand some of this issue and if they find some more we got the very last slide I think that we could pop up and show because it's kind of there it is. Relevant. You know it relevant. Yeah and we're really looking at now living on this planet and we're part of the planet. We've been dominating it for so long we need to figure out how to live with it better in life and in death. So thank you so much to my guests today Bridge, Julianne and Sean McCready of savekaneobe.org about the proposed Hawaii Park expansion. Please visit their website for more information and thank you folks for being here. We're gonna have to wrap it up today so we look forward to you some positive outcomes and anyway I hope everybody out there has a great week. Go to savekaneobe.org for more information and get involved. See you next time. Bye bye. Thanks Vincent. Thank you.