 Aloha, I'm your host Winston Welch and I'm delighted that you are joining us again today for the special edition of Out and About where we explore a variety of topics, organizations and events with the people who fuel them in our city, state, country and world. As a disclaimer, any views or opinions expressed by me are strictly my own and not connected with any organization. Joining me in the studio today, I am delighted to have Charlene Chun-Lam and Diane Fujimura save Alamoana Beach Park Hui. Welcome to the show today, ladies and gentlemen. It's an honor to have you here and stepping up to this very important, I guess, happening that's going on right now in our city and I think for the people that are out there that may or may not know about it. Can you tell us what's going on right now in Alamoana Park? Well, as you know, the planning for the park has been going on for several years, close to four, and each time the mayor has introduced something, it's kind of changed a little and we are concerned that the things that are now in the DEIS, the environmental impact statement, are things that really we don't need in the park and just add to the cost and will change the culture of the park. So we've been opposed to that and trying to have meetings and petitions and what happened. Okay, and so you started a Hui? Yes. Save Alamoana Beach Park Hui? Yes, we did. Okay, and how long has that been going on? Actually, officially only this year, but we've been at it in different forms for previous years. Yeah, we were a larger group, but we have focused on save Alamoana Beach Park Hui and we have very clear demands that we're thinking about in the park. You're working with other groups as well on this issue because it's larger than just us, but you're sharing a lot of the same common concerns. So some of the other players, you know, Outer Circle, Friends of Kuala, Malama Alamoana, and so there are various people who have taken up our cause or who believe in the cause as well, and we just happen to be the spokesperson for this five points especially. There are actually 21 opposed actions in the SDEIS and there were five that we took a stand on saying that we don't think should be in the park. Okay, so for the people that may not know, the SDEIS stands for? It's actually the secondary, the supplementary version of the draft environmental impact statement. And the draft environmental impact statement is required because? Any time that they're going to do something to an area that's of great concern, they need to usually run this, make it open to the public to comment on what they think about the plans. So it went through an EISPN, so preliminary notice, and it went through a draft EIS and then they had to come up with a secondary follow up to that. And you know, it's actually been more than 11 months since many of us commented to the first EIS and we still haven't gotten a comment back. And that's probably one of the main issues underlying all of this is a feeling of not being listened to, not being consulted or even addressed. I mean, is that fair to say that you feel like that? Yeah, because I think the public meeting started way back in 2015. So there's been a series of so-called public meetings. The comments have been the same. They've been consistently against certain proposed actions for the master plan for Alamoana Beach Park. And yeah, the bottom line is the mayor does not seem to be listening, nor his city administrators, which is Robert Cronig and Michelle Nakota. So. They're supposed to actually present alternatives after people ask comments. What are some alternatives? And because we haven't gotten any responses back, there are no alternatives. But we have offered up alternatives that lots of people have as to what should be done in the park. Okay, and so they've presented 21 things, which probably include pretty pedestrian things like upgrading the restrooms and repaving the roads and that sort of thing. But you're particularly taking Umbridge with five main points. And what are those points? And then we'll follow them up in detail. Sure. First thing is the Mackay shared use path. This is the area of Mackay near the beach where there's a grassy strip and then there's the cement. It's been there for years and people like to put their tents up on that grassy strip. The second one is the one about dog parks, adding dog parks. And that was, by the way, added in with a DEIS with no town hall meeting to explain why they added it in. Perpendicular parking on the Malca side is another because we think it's dangerous. The sand repunishment is new because that was introduced with the SDES and then of course the world class playground, which was alluded to very briefly in the ESPN one liners and in the DEIS, but then in the SDIS a little more description, but still not sufficient. And the process feels a bit rushed and chaotic and. And not fully transparent. You know the playground is a primary example that said build a playground. That's all it said from the first initial documents. Then like Shar said, all of a sudden there's a paragraph describing more fully what this world class children's playground is supposed to be with no public vetting. And I think that some of the council resolutions going back to 1998 actually lay out what can and cannot be put in these different types of parks, whether it's an active use park or passive park or multi-use regional parks, which is what Alamoana would fall under. Yes. Okay. And so folks that are interested in that, if you can go back to that resolution, which was 98-188 CD1, which is an interesting one that lays out what sort of structures and what the intent of all of these city parks are so that moving forward when we have issues, whether it's a dog park or whatever it is, a playground that has already been covered. We've already sort of laid out groundwork so that special deals don't get made, I guess would be a good way to say that. This is. Okay. So in these five ones here, we've got some really easy to follow slides. So if we can get the first slide up here, then we'll talk about the Makai shared use path. So this is a graphic that shows what Alamoana Beach Park currently looks like, which is beautiful as you can see the lawn is green. And the next slide is the area we were talking about, the Makai shared use path. There's actually an ordinance that prohibits removing the grassy strip or extending the cement, but still it's in the STEIS saying they want to do this Makai side shared use path. So the problem, of course, as you can see already, there are people that can't cross the street without being endangered and cakey. And so the shared use means not just pedestrian. Vehicles like the motorized scooter, bikes. Segways. Yeah. Segways. They're supposed to share the use of the path. So they were going to widen it and take out that little grassy area where people usually pitch tents on occasions like 4th of July. You know, it's just packed with local people. Setting up their tents to enjoy the firework and everything. So what about the poor bike riders? What are they supposed to do with the Segway riders? Well, there actually is a bike path in Alamon Beach Park. It's on the other side. It's by the tennis courts. There's, and I think in Magic Island, there's this sort of area where you can distinguish by painting on the bikes. And they probably can roller skate there as well or whatever it is. And it's clearly marked, but it's not this one right up against the ocean. Right. I've actually been there and have had people zooming by so fast on a bike that if I had stepped out just inadvertently or waved my arm, either I would have gotten injured at the bicyclist or both of us. And if I were a slower moving person or a senior, I could imagine that there's been some pretty bad collisions. There's a point about that, because initially they referred to that sidewalk area as a promenade. There was no mention of it being a shared use path. But then all of a sudden through the EIS process, it's been defined as a shared use path now. Interesting thing about that is it is because when it was called a promenade, our group and others protested about that use. And the city council actually put a hold prohibiting them to use any of the funds that were in the budget to build that promenade or take away Mackayside parking. So the city council has been listening to you? The previous Sydney Council. And now we hope this new one will too. And Tommy Waters did support this new resolution. So hopefully. So there may be some pressure left to bear that says we'll either hold the funds or prohibit certain things. The city council can do that. OK, the next one is no dog parks. So those of us that have dogs, of course, we're thinking, oh, where are we going to take our dogs? And I can understand like, oh, there was an area that was considered maybe a little unused as the entrance on the Eviside. But that's a relative term, isn't it? And maybe that's actually quite used. But people were saying, well, let's put this off as a little separate area for the dog park, which seems like a reasonable thing until you look at the plan for that's in resolution 98188 CD1, which has been in effect for 20 years now, that says we're not vulcanizing the parks with permanent structures anymore. So in this case, maybe there's another great location for it right down the street. Well, and you know, there was recently a study that was done. Carol Fukunaga worked with Michelle Nakota. And they did a study to figure out what were the specifications for a good dog park. One of the things they found was that it needs about half an acre at least. And it shouldn't be near a lot of traffic or people. So Almawana Beach Park is full of people and cars coming in and out, even if they're not staying, they're traversing through the park. Buses are traversing through the park. It's really not a good place to build it. Plus, you're right, there are people I know when they found out where that park was going to be. They said, that's where I picnic all the time. With my family. And so the biggest concern we have is that if dogs are taken to, because you can't keep them just in that park, you're there, you're at the beach. Oh, let's go down to the beach. Once they get down to the beach, and the dogs do wherever they do, there's actually studies that show that that dog do will cause worms to come out. They could infect people. And there are lots of people who have illnesses from what's in the sand from the dogs. It's interesting, because I did submit testimony on this. And I initially had said, yeah, I think that's OK. But then after this other stuff has come up and said, not only those issues of we need a bigger space, actually, in a non-traffic area, but also that the regulations for the parks say, if we do this, then we pretty much have to start allowing everything everywhere, and it's, well, we've got the dog park. Why can't we have this or that or the other? I think one example of this, which when I was reading 98, 188, it seems like the sand beach volleyball was sort of exempted because it is a special sand area. It's not volleyball. If it were volleyball, it would be different, but sand volleyball, it was sort of put in there, but without a lot of public discussion. But let's let that one slide for right now. And I can understand also, if you're playing on the beach, you probably want to have as pristine a beach as possible as well. And I can see other things where dogs might get advice on the beach and that sort of thing. You don't want to have your cakeies around that. So next slide we got is perpendicular parking. What's wrong with this? Well, to us, it's kind of a no-brainer. They've installed perpendicular parking stalls. You know, around the city already, Manoa Marketplace, converted from slanted stalls to perpendicular. It's very difficult for anybody to back out, especially into traffic, which is along Alamon Beach Park Drive. Your site is limited. You know, it's going to stall traffic. It's two-way traffic. So more so, people are unloading their beach gear, their surfboards, their bikes, whatever. And it's just not an appropriate parking structure to have in Alamon Beach Park. You know, the thing about doing perpendicular parking as well is they're going to have to remove grass from that area because you can't back out otherwise. So they're going to have to take out more grass and trees. And there is also some infrastructure built in there for lights and plumbing, et cetera. So that's going to all have to be taken out to do this. Now, when they take it out, they have to account for the fact that a lot of people who go to the beach have huge vehicles, trucks, or they carry coolers and other things. You try to open those doors in a parallel parking space or a perpendicular parking space like that. There's probably going to be a lot of dents on people's cars, from people trying to open their door to get to their things, because the spaces aren't going to be huge. They're trying to increase the parking by doing this. So it's an unsafe thing, first of all. And then secondly, it does remove some of the trees and put more cement, more global warming. And then it is dangerous not only for people, but for cars, by other people's cars. It's interesting I see you have here that we should use, well, I think the city just repaved the bit with the impervious asphalt rather than something that could absorb the water and go straight down, which I think should be a basic city policy, period, private, public development. That if you're paving a structure, you need to have something that can absorb the water. It just makes sense rather than run off, especially so close to the ocean. And the interesting thing is, you know, Mayor Fosse just, not first, Mayor Fosse, Caldwell, just said that they're going to do this road repaving. So we checked, does that mean they're going to do the perpendicular parking? And they said, no, they're not. But in the future, they might. So this is more of that they do that. It's like, you lay down that cement where that asphalt, and then, OK, you're going to dig it all up again to lay down the perpendicular parking. So it's just an efficient use of our textile. So we're going to have to take a break here, but I see that there's a lot of issues going on right now, whether it's this, whether it's Alawai watershed, top golf over at Alawai, of course, if it's Sherwood Forest, helicopters flying over the city, any number of issues that we've got here that are very serious issues, but our train being built in a very soon to be flood plain. We've got a lot of issues going on here. A few years ago, we had Kevala Basin issue, and we saw the community rising up and saying, no, we are not doing high rises over there. Is this a continuation of this? Or is this bigger? Is it was not a precursor to this? The really interesting thing about that process was it was a community-based process. They actually had people come, and they had several meetings, and they took votes on the different areas, and they knew it was going along all the way. And they had iterations of, OK, how about this? How about that? This process is very secretive. You send your comments in. We don't know who else sent comments in unless we ask them. Could you send us your comments? And otherwise, we don't know what other alternatives people are suggesting. Many of them have really great suggestions, but we don't get to see it. And we have to trust that the city is going to send us a complete picture of what everybody sent and complete answers that address those questions, because the first EISPN, what we sent questions in, not all of our questions were answered. They had standardized letters. And the letter of this is close enough to yours. OK, we're going to send you that. And that doesn't answer the question we may have asked. And I think in this era, especially when we've had some issues of trust, and it doesn't matter where it is, but certainly at our most local level of government, we want to have transparent, open, good communication back and forth so that we're the people, and we're the ones that need to be served as best as we can. And of course, our civil servants are hardworking. We have to think that they have our best interests at heart. But we want our concerns to be listened to. So we've got a couple more important points. And then we'll get to those topics as well, as far as that after our break. But right now, we are going to take a little break. I'm Winston Welch. This is out and about on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series. We're with Charlene Chun-Lam, Chun, no, sorry, Chun-Lam, unlike Chun. OK, Chun-Lam and Diane Fujimura of Save Alamata Beach Park Week. We'll be back in a minute, so stay tuned for more of the story. Aloha, I'm Mellie James, host of Let's Mana Up. Tuesdays, every other Tuesday, from 11 to 11.30. This show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they're growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. I'm so thrilled to have our show kicked off. And so please join us on Tuesdays at 11 o'clock as we talk to local entrepreneurs and hear their stories. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of ThinkTech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. My program airs every other Monday at 1 o'clock on ThinkTech Hawaii. Most of my programs deal with my own life and law experience. Recently, I interviewed Alex Gempel, who I have known for over 30 years, about his voyage across the sea as a lawyer from Tokyo to Hawaii. Those are the type of stories that I like to bring and like to talk about. Human stories about law and life. Aloha. Should come down to testify. It's actually August 7th. OK, well, we are back and we're live. Because sometimes on live TV, you're still talking to your guests when the TV comes on. And I have some wonderful guests here. I'm Winston Welch. This is out and about on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series talking with Charlene Chan-Lum and Diane Fujimura of Save Alamoana Beach Park, Huey. This is one Huey of many that has come here of Malama, Moana, and Outdoor Circle, and Kevallos, friends of Kevallos, and friends of Kevallos, and other community groups. Your neighborhood board is interested as well. You've had Tommy Waters and probably as well. It's very support from Ann Kobayashi. And Ann Kobayashi probably made me be careful because I was waiting on it. So we were just going over the five main actions that you proposed. We looked at the Makai shared use path, the dog park at Kevallos entrance, perpendicular parking, and then the next one was sand replenishment, which was a newer one that's been fairly new thrown on there. Or was that? They discussed doing it back in the DEIS, but then the SD EIS introduces a new site. And the site they're introducing is right outside of Kevallos. I mean, right outside of these very popular surspots, maybe Halehiva concessions and so courts. And the reason, actually, that's the next slide, I guess. So I think it's the next slide. Oh, yeah, if we have the next slide, that's. Yes, so the sand nourishment may have indirect impacts on the ecosystem because what they're talking about is, number one, getting the sand from outside. And there are, there's no guarantee that once they disturb those spots, they won't actually affect the way the surf runs. But the other thing, and the next slide, take a look at that, they talk about using the sand to go over and cover the rubble on the beach because I think they kind of want it to be looked like eponymum or something like that. But today, just today, I was out there and there's this young boy fishing in the, quote, rubble because that's where the fish are. There's a lot of baby fish plus other fish that live there. So it's not rubble. It's natural and it's the ecosystem where the fish can be there growing before they go out and see the big fish out past the reef. Yeah, I think a lot of people complain because it's rocky, but they don't understand that there are fish habitats that are involved in that rocky area. And the thing about the sand replenishment is that they haven't tested the source of what, where the sand is going to come to replenish what they want to do. And where is that? Is that our next slide? So if you, there's a couple slides, I think. Yeah. So this is actually showing the king tides and sea level rise. By the way, according to sea engineering, they would put the sand all the way up to where the wall is to the top of the, where the wall is. So our question is, well, when there's sea level rise or king tides, that's going to push all that sand onto the, right onto this road. The promenade and the road gets it. Yes, and then there has been discussion about the last time that happened with a big storm, there were trucks that came in, took the sand off the road and took it somewhere else. So that's a lot of money to be spending to put sand on that area that's going to be taken away. And from this slide, you can see the sea level rise is estimated, they started with three feet, 3.2, but then they said maybe they estimated wrongs as more like six feet. So all of Alamoana will be underwater, unfortunately. And that's one of those questions that Tommy Waters brought up about, you know, why are you doing all these big improvements to the park when you're not, yeah, it might be underwater and what are you doing to take care of that problem? So obviously that wall needs to be taller if they're going to put the sand right up to it or something's got to go on there. Okay, and the source of the sand is coming from the next slide, which I think is also very concerning given that they're dredging all the way canal right now and that it's one of the most polluted waterways in the world, or is it to use the country anyway? At a meeting and they said, oh, that's not polluted. I'm like, oh, I don't know which universe you're from Anyway, so when they do, they said these models from the University for what you have shown that there's this turbidity plume that comes out of the alawai and flows into the area where the proposed sand donor site is. And the question is, as it drops those pollutants from alawai into the sand and they pick up the sand from that area, they may be bringing pollutants to the beach and the turbidity on the beach once. And they've said, actually, I heard Sean Dakota say, yes, there'll be turbidity in the water, but it's kind of like washing rice. Eventually it'll get clear. It'll take a long time before it'll get clear because you're not washing rice down the sink. You're talking about the same area that you have to deal with that the water's coming in and out of. You can see that, you know, I have to, when they're dredging the canal right now and they have to take it to an EPA super fund. That's not a super fund, it's a dump site 10 miles off shore or 10 kilometers off shore and dump there. Is that what it is? It's not far enough. Yeah, but pumping that up on the beach seems kind of... You know, sea engineering, which the city hired to do the study for the environmental impact statement process, we had a meeting with them earlier this year in June and they did state that the sand has not been tested for contaminants, but they also said it can easily be done. And you know, that's one of the things why there at least has to be a third draft environmental impact statement. Okay, so you're, and that's what was one thing I wanted to get to there, you're focusing now if there's a city council resolution, is it city council or is it a... The city council resolution. City council on August 7th. August 7th, it'll be heard by the full council. By the full council in Kapolei. Yes, in Kapolei. So you got to drive out there or submit your comments online. Right. By going to Honolulu.gov and following the instructions there. There's one other big, so all of these things that people should weigh and they should be informed one way or another, you know. And it's wonderful that we do have a say, but we wanna know what, what are you saying? What are these other great ideas that other people may or may not have? Last one we got here is the one acre world-class playground. What's the problem with the world-class playground? The problem, okay, from the preparation notice of the EIS, it was build a playground. That's all it said. Yeah. From the draft environmental impact statement to the second draft environmental impact statement, it still had build a playground, but then this paragraph describing this rendering that you're seeing appeared in the second draft EIS. It's supposed to be some private donations from Paani Kakol. It's interesting if you look behind Paani Kakol, who's a member of that. The POSED 501C3 organization, it's not yet registered with the IRS as a 501C3. It is registered with the state as a charitable organization, but they only organized in this January, 2019, when they were talking about being an IRS 501C3 way back in 2017, I believe, and before that. So when Mayor Caldwell first mentioned this world-class children's playground, they had already been meeting together. And so to us, this so-called world-class children's playground exemplifies everything that's wrong with the mayor, the city administration, and how he's driving this playground to become a reality. So it's maybe a lack of transparency, accountability, public input is the main thing there, but I think no one's against the idea of having wonderful playgrounds for children actually throughout the entire islands, just not in this location, because this park has a special history and a requirement that it preserve open spaces in a precious urban area. Right, as you know that Almona Park got a historic registration, was recognized in 1988, and they talk about these open green spaces. And then you mentioned Resolution 98188 CD1, which says you need to preserve these green open spaces or these open spaces for larger groups and larger organizations. But this playground, this one-acre playground, is basically gonna take up a huge portion of the open green space. And remove some trees in the process. And remove some trees. And a lot of unanswered questions. They will cause, it's interesting, because when they did put it into the SDIS, they only put it in the front introduction. They said nothing more about how this is gonna impact sewers, how it's gonna impact climate change, how it's gonna impact anything else. That's all the same as it was in the DEIS. So it's kind of a band-aid put together the SDIS just to add this playground and the sand replenishment and to address OHA's lack of cultural impact. And OHA said there's a lack of cultural impacts. The first study was not a cultural impact assessment. It was just that this is some cultural things about it. And so they were supposed to go and talk to all the people who, and they really only talked to the people who submitted testimony versus everybody who's other practitioners who know what the park has been used for. But when they got that study, it's hidden in the SDIS towards, it's hidden in the appendices. And it doesn't really reflect it because they got it. Okay, they checked off the box, but they haven't made any changes based on what they got. So that's an issue we have about a lot of these studies are just insufficient. The one with the sand was like, or the one about saying there's no fish was a one day study during the day. And it's like, fish are seasoned, all fish are come out at night. And they said they saw nothing because water was, you know, cloudy. So it could be said, so for the world-class playground, for example, there's, if it's for 250 to 500 kids, lots of, and especially for special needs, kids that got to have a lot more handicap parking spaces available in a park that's already pretty tight. We have other alternatives that you guys have voiced and that is even in the plans, like put it in Kakako next to Children's Discovery Center, also a wonderful place for a nice big dog park over there. Plenty of parking, activating that space, reclaiming it to the city. There's a lot of different things, as you mentioned, turbidity. So there's a lot of turbidity right now. We're looking for some answers, some transparencies from clarity, some accountability to all of us. And so I think that your group is part of the answer, save Alamon Beach Park. If people want to know more information, where can they go? They can actually write to save Alamon Beach Park Hui. We have, I think, this graphic up there shows you where you can send your email to or they can text that phone number, which happens to be mine, but you can text that phone number and we will get back to you and provide you information. But we have been trying to encourage more people to voice their opinion because really the government or people, we just got involved, we're average citizens. We're not, you know, but we decided at some point that we need to speak up because otherwise just being run over are, like you said, with the rail, with all these other things, things are happening and initially when we started, people said, oh, you know, it's really good that you're doing this, but you know, you can't stop City Hall or you can't do this, it's a done deal. But we've actually made some inroads and we think the more people stand up and say, we're not taking this. And really for the other, there's other people, other council members who have other districts where the playgrounds are terrible. I mean, the parks are terrible. They're not open, the bathrooms are. So let's focus on some of these other issues. And you know, it's, I applaud you both for stepping up to this cause, specifically for voicing your concerns, for sharing this with other people and for being role models for a lot of the other issues that we have in our society. It's, we live in complicated times. We need people just like you and unfortunately we are out of time today. So as I said, the time will go very fast. Can you come back again and give us an update and some other things? I would love that. And we'll hear, maybe we'll get some more resolution out of this in a way that's favorable to your all requests. So unfortunately we are out of time. We've had some excellent examples of democracy and action of civic leaders who've stepped up to the plate. I'm Winston Welch. This is out and about on the Think Tech Streaming Live Network series. We've been talking with Charlene Chan Lum and Diane Fujimura of the same Alamuana Beach Park Hui. Get involved and call the city if you care. Go out to Kapolei Hall on August 7th or submit written testimony. Thanks for tuning in and we welcome your feedback. Thanks for a broadcast engineer, Robert McLean, our floor manager, usually Eric Calander, but today it was Mark Ito and to Jay Fidale, our executive producer and also Miss Ikeida who is helping Robert in the studio. We'll see you every other Monday here at 3 p.m. on Think Tech, out and about. Aloha everyone.