Maui County issues violation for debris, warning for unpermitted tree-clearing that began as fire prevention

Just two months after the Aug. 8 deadly blazes on Maui, the Fire Department received a complaint about overgrown trees and brush on an undeveloped 7.2-acre parcel of land in a residential area of Kīhei.

But the work being done now by the landowners to address the potential fire hazard has led to more complaints from neighbors and a conservation group that say the cutting of trees and vegetation removal has gone far past fire mitigation.

The complainants said workers without the required permits for a property located in the state’s Special Management Area are running roughshod over the land with chainsaws and bulldozers, destroying precious wetlands and habitat for the Hawaiian hoary bat, a state and federally listed endangered species.

“To just have what apparently looks like lawless action destroy a 7.2-acre wetland when we have so few wetlands left, it’s just devastating,” said Robin Knox, the lead scientist for Save The Wetlands Hui.

On Tuesday, the Maui County Planning Department took action and issued a notice of warning to the owners of the parcel at 68-148 E. Waipuilani Road for large scale vegetation removal and soil disturbance without an assessment or determination required for property in the Special Management Area.

The parcel belongs to five different limited liability companies, with Honolulu real estate agent Michael Babineck listed as the only member of them, according to public tax records.

Babineck declined a phone interview, but texted a statement: “On orders of the Maui Fire Department and at the request of multiple neighbors, we are reducing fire risk and removing deadwood and trash. All work is being done in accordance with applicable laws.”

Maui Fire Department public information officer Chris Stankis said that in mid-June, the department issued a notice of warning to the property owner to cut a firebreak of at least 30 feet around the perimeter of the land.

On June 17, the property owners also were given a notice of violation by an inspector with the Department of Public Works – Highway Administration after neighbor complaints about excessive debris left strewn about from cut trees.

Later in June, a Fire Department inspector met with the landowner, who is actively working to become compliant with the brush codes by cutting down kiawe and other trees, Stankis said.

“At the time of the inspection, there was no sign of land grubbing … and the land owner had completed cutting a 50-foot fuel break around the parcel and is in the process of mulching those trees and removing the debris,” Stankis said. “The inspector did remind him of the county permit requirements regarding grubbing and clearing and then the inspector is going to go out there early next month and have a look at it again.”

Grubbing is the removal of the roots that remain in the soil after clearing. It also means removing logs, brush and debris.

More complaints were filed with the county on July 18, July 20 and Aug. 20 about un-permitted grubbing and tree removal in the middle of the land.

In an email to HJI on Thursday, the Planning Department said: “MFD’s order for a firebreak is not a permit or an exemption from any review or approval process.”

Failure to comply with a notice of warning may result in a notice of violation, from which fines could be assessed based on a variety of factors, including the nature of the work done, approvals required, environmental harm caused, level of cooperation and issues beyond the party’s control, the Planning Department said.

On Friday, workers were cutting down trees in the middle of the property, an area that did not appear to be part of a firebreak. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the day after the notice of warning by the county was issued, workers were continuing to clear brush and trees in the middle of the property by backhoe and pickup trucks.

Charlene Schulenburg, project manager for Save The Wetlands Hui, said she cried when seeing the destruction of the wetlands the organization has been trying to protect.

Knox said Save The Wetlands Hui has mapped all the wetlands in Kīhei and tries to monitor them with the nonprofit’s limited staff. But this land, which the organization called Waipuilani mauka, was not a high priority for monitoring because “we didn’t perceive that it was as threatened as some of the others where there were actual development permits going on.”

Knox said in June she noticed some cutting of trees around the edges of the property.

“Any kind of clearing or cutting, I always have to wonder if there’s a development coming,” she said. “But it seemed limited to just around the fence line and not a lot. … It was something that I told myself to keep an eye on.”

On July 19, Knox said she got a call from a member of the hui whose house borders the land and was upset about the heavy clearing of trees. The member had witnessed a lot of wildlife using the land, including deer and pueo, which are short-eared owls endemic to Hawai’i.

The member was “alarmed that just the destruction of the trees was really disturbing the wildlife,” Knox said.

Knox said she thinks the work also may be illegal under the countyʻs wetland restoration and protection ordinance that was adopted by the County Council in October 2022.

“They were wondering is this permitted, is this protected, now what’s going on? It’s really destructive,” Knox said. “So, I went out, took some pictures, there was some work way in the center of the wetland, some active work going on.

“At that time it wasn’t posted and we walked in there along a path — we couldn’t even get to the center, but we could hear the machines ripping the trees down.”

The hui filed a request for service with the county “to check and make sure that this was allowable within the law,” Knox said.

The activity stopped after that July 19 filing and “we didn’t see any activity after that until August 19. So, a month later I get more of a panicked call from the same hui member who was now saying that there was multiple pieces of machinery on site and that they were rapidly taking the forest down.” 

Knox is extremely concerned about the massive clearing of the property.

“We’ve got some aerial photography and there are very few trees left at this point,” she said Tuesday. “It’s just devastating because we’re a community group, we’re a grassroots community group. We over three years have invested heavily of our time and got grants from the county so that we could do this mapping, so that we could gather this information, so that these resources could be managed properly.”

Knox said that the kiawe trees, while they are an invasive species, also are habitat for the Hawaiian hoary bat for nesting.

“You’re not supposed to cut trees between June and September because their nesting during that time, so that’s the first wildlife concern,” she said.

Scott Fretz, the Maui branch manager of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife, said he is not familiar with the property. But in general, he said the Hawaiian hoary bats “have pups that are not able to fly during June through September and so if they are pupping in a tree and the tree is cut down you could kill the bats.”

And if bats are killed in this manner, it would be unlawful under both the state and federal endangered species laws, Fretz said.

Knox added that on a recent visit she also discovered tree tobacco, which is not a native plant and can be considered a weed or nuisance or invasive, but is habitat for the federally endangered Blackburn’s sphinx moth.

“If you were going to do any kind of development or whatever you would need to do some work to determine how to mitigate any damage to that endangered species,” she said. 

Editor’s Note: This headline has been updated to clarify that the county issued a notice of violation in June for debris that posed a fire hazard and a notice of warning in August for large scale vegetation removal.