Is The Military In For A Wake-Up Call As Hawaiʻi Leases Near End?

Longtime Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte beamed with pride last week while watching throngs of people tear into the U.S. Army’s latest bid to retain use of a large swath of the Big Island known as the Pōhakuloa Training Area.

Ritte led protests against the U.S. Navy’s use of Kahoʻolawe as a bombing range in the 1970s by attempting to occupy the small island west of Maui. But he was impressed with the new generation of activists who showed up to the May 9 meeting armed with legal information and environmental reports that reinforced the land board’s rejection of an environmental study essential for continued use of the lands.

“It’s a wake-up call for the military,” Ritte said. They were not going to “sneak this one through.”

Pōhakuloa is one of the few sites in the Pacific where the military can conduct long-range artillery exercises. The rough terrain on those training grounds and the others on Oʻahu mimic conditions found across the Pacific and are important preparation for the military’s warfighting capabilities in potential conflicts with China.

But rejection of the Pōhakuloa environmental report after hours of testimony during which community leaders and land board members picked apart the report’s flaws portends a difficult period for the military in Hawaiʻi and the Army in particular — one where negotiations to retain land for training purposes could hit roadblocks every step of the way.

“More people are more informed and more educated and more versed in the process,” said E. Kalani Flores, a Big Island educator and activist. “And this is just the beginning of it all.”

The U.S. Army could appeal the decision to a separate state environment council, or it could revise the study and resubmit it to the land board. So far, it hasn’t signaled what course of action it will take beyond a written commitment to working with Hawaiʻi and with the community.

“Due to the ongoing nature of this process, we are unable to provide further details on the negotiation mechanics or specific timelines at this time,” the Army’s statement said.

The decision by the Board of Land and Natural Resources to reject the environmental impact statement does not end the Army’s use of Pōhakuloa as a live-fire training area either. But it does deal an embarrassing blow to the federal government as it starts the process of renewing a series of land leases for the first time in more than six decades.

The Army is poised to make a decision on Sunday for how much state land it will seek to retain once its 23,000-acre Pōhakuloa lease ends in 2029, according to the Federal Register.

Environmental impact surveys for three Oʻahu sites will likely come before the resources board next month. On Oʻahu, the Army leases 6,300 acres of state land in Mākua Valley in Waiʻanae; on Poamoho Ridge near Wahiawā; and in the Kahuku Training Area on the North Shore. Those leases also end in 2029.

The loss of state lands would not entirely stop military training in those areas. With the exception of Oʻahu’s Kawailoa-Poamoho Training Area, the military could switch to federally owned land instead. In the long term, the Army has floated several other options to retain its training grounds:

• It could renegotiate its leases with the state, in what could be a drawn out administrative process.
• It could buy the land from the state, which would require approval from a two-thirds majority in the 76-member Legislature.
• It could propose a land swap with the state, turning over federal lands.

Some of those options, and others, could escalate far above decisions under the purview of the resources board.

Gov. Josh Green and Hawaiʻi’s congressional delegation were among officials who sent out a flurry of press releases commenting on the decision last Friday. Green told Hawaii News Now that he would like to see the Army’s training footprint shrink, with land to coming back to the state for use to build housing and renewable energy.

But President Donald Trump also looms large over the discussion of military leases. Many worry that if the military doesn’t get its way, the president could seize the state lands by executive order.

Such an action reminds some of the events that led to Hawaiʻi becoming a state, when Honolulu businessmen with the help of U.S. Marines overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 — a moment in history seared into the cultural consciousness of many Native Hawaiians. Hawaiian activist and former land board Chair William Aila called it kaumaha, emotional weight.

“We have this terrible kaumaha, this terrible historical taste in our mouth,” Aila said. “I’m really concerned about what kind of unlawful course they may take in order to just bypass all of these processes.”

Congresswoman Jill Tokuda has expressed her concerns about the current administration’s approach to security in the Indo-Pacific in light of the federal government’s virtual cancellation of foreign assistance. But Tokuda says she will not entertain the idea of the “nuclear option” of a federal declaration of eminent domain.

Instead, Tokuda said it is important for the state to negotiate the best deal possible for Hawaiʻi related to the lands in question, one that could address housing, job opportunities, infrastructure and environmental concerns.

“Eminent domain is not a possibility. That is not an option. We have to stay at the table,” Tokuda said. “We have to push for what’s best for Hawaiʻi and see what they provide us with.”

A History Of Resisting

Historically, Hawaiʻi has received very little in exchange for the military’s use of its lands. The Army paid just $1 for the 65-year lease of lands in Pōhakuloa, for instance. The same goes for the training areas on Oʻahu.

Many also link the struggle against the military’s lease of lands to protests over the naval bombardment of Kahoʻolawe in the 1970s.

The military took unilateral control of Kahoʻolawe during World War II. The federal government returned the heavily damaged land to the state in 1994. Congress allocated $300 million for its cleanup, but unexploded ordnance still dots what remains mostly a wasteland.

More recently, protests on Hawaiʻi island have focused on Mauna Kea, where activists halted the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope at the mountain’s summit six years ago.

It was a watershed moment for Hawaiian activists who have long felt like their voices weren’t heard. Since then, the Hawaiian community’s influence has grown in government and business.

The way activists push back against projects has also changed. As a result, Flores doesn’t expect an occupation of Pōhakuloa like was seen on Mauna Kea — at least not yet.

For one, the Pōhakuloa site is enormous. That differs from Mauna Kea, where protests could focus on one chokepoint and prevent construction vehicles from traveling through.

And the lease renewals could still be years off. So Flores said it makes more sense to work gradually at the political level by lobbying the governor, or testifying at the Legislature or at the land board.

Decisions on the military’s leases in Hawaiʻi will likely land in one of those three offices.

The Public Is Pushing Back

The public got a preview of that approach in action at the land board last Friday.

Over six hours, an overwhelming number of those who testified shared their opposition to the Army’s place on Pōhakuloa, urging the board to protect the flora, fauna and cultural resources of the central Big Island area.

The Pōhakuloa Training Area sits on the saddle of the Big Island between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Both mountains are considered sacred to Hawaiians. They also are home to the endangered Hawaiian yellow-faced bee and Blackburn’s sphinx moth.

Though the decision focused on the acceptability of the Army’s final environmental assessment, many took the chance to share their complaints about its continued tenancy, citing years of unmitigated degradation. The board received 1,300 pieces of written testimony, mostly against.

any also cited Land Division staff’s report and recommendations, which noted the Army’s failure to include a full inventory of archaeological sites and cultural resources that could be impacted. The Army’s biological survey — which includes a full accounting of native species — was more than a decade old.

State legislators and officials, Native Hawaiian advocacy groups and students raised additional concerns about the military’s behavior statewide, including in Pōhakuloa, with a particular focus on unexploded ordnance disposal.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs joined the many testifying against accepting the final EIS, stating that the U.S. Army has not disclosed or examined its own compliance with clean-up requirements on the land.

As was seen on Kahoʻolawe and in Mākua Valley, the military “appears unable to demonstrate a willingness to clear land contaminated by ordnance,” ethnic studies professor Davianna Pōmaikaʻi McGregor, also a member of the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana, told the board.

Following a failed motion to accept the Army’s statement, the board rejected it with some recommendations.

That included better assessing impacts to traditional Native Hawaiian rights, along with what board member Aimee Barnes called a more “fulsome and serious consideration” of retaining the Army’s lease in a limited manner.

There are eight scenarios in the Army’s statement, which spans three volumes and more than 3,000 pages.

Barnes suggested the Army consider a scenario in which it would retain its access to infrastructure on the state land and be able to fire artillery from that land, but relinquish other forms of training. That would be a major shift from the status quo — a 54% reduction in the Army’s “unrestricted maneuver area,” where the Army has free rein in its exercises.

The military favored two other alternatives: Maintaining the status quo or reducing its lease footprint by about 4,000 acres, to 19,000 acres.

Board chair Dawn Chang wouldn’t speculate what might happen after May 18 but, she said, “the ball is somewhat is the Army’s court.”

‘ʻĀina Is ʻĀina’

The Army considered the Pōhakuloa Training Area an important asset to national security, especially in light of diplomatic concerns over growing Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called a “region of consequence” during a March visit to Hawaiʻi.

“Reestablishing deterrents is part of what President Trump has commanded me, compelled me, to do, in addition to restoring the warrior ethos,” Hegseth said.

Col. Rachel Sullivan, the Hawaiʻi Garrison Commander, reiterated that message to the board on Friday. Pōhakuloa is the only area in the region that allows live fire training.

“We have a responsibility to train our soldiers, our nation’s youth, who have volunteered to be warriors,” she said.

Over on Oʻahu, live-fire training in Mākua Valley ended nearly 20 years ago and relations between the community and the military have greatly improved over the years.

Lynette Cruz, president of the Waiʻanae Moku Kupuna Council, said she and other community leaders are still in regular contact with lower-level Pentagon officials who have stuck around after the transition in presidential administrations. And community members have regular access to cultural sites in the valley.

The Army’s draft EIS still contemplates retaining all of the land on Oʻahu that it currently leases from the state, including in Mākua Valley, which today are predominantly used for ground troop exercises and aviation training.

There’s been talk among Hawaiian affairs groups that the military could offer to reduce or relinquish its use of some lands across the state, including on Oʻahu, in exchange for keeping Pōhakuloa.

Cruz said such an arrangement would be untenable.

“ʻĀina is ʻāina,” Cruz said. To her, there’s no difference if the land being used by the military is on Oʻahu or another island.

“You’re telling me you’re not going to beat my grandma anymore. Instead, you’ll beat someone else’s grandma?” she said. “That’s not something we can support.”