Haʻikū Fire Station project stalls as Maui County Council panel wrestles with land title dispute

After more than 17 years of planning, the proposed Haʻikū Fire Station has hit a legal stumbling block significant enough for council members to seek legal advice in a closed executive session and delay further consideration for two weeks.

The Maui County Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee has already met twice–July 29 and Monday–to take up three land-use measures that would pave the way for the 6.1-acre project to break ground and eventually reduce firefighters’ response times to hard-to-reach areas of East Maui.

Last month, the committee heard lengthy public testimony that challenged the county’s right to develop the property because of contested ownership. And, on Monday, the panel wrestled with ongoing legal disputes about the county’s title on the project site.

After coming out of the executive session before 2:30 p.m. Monday, the committee recessed until 9 a.m. Aug. 24, instead of taking any vote on the land use bills.

At issue are three companion measures — Bills 89, 90 and 91 (2026) — that would reclassify roughly 6.1 acres of a 27.9-acre, county-owned parcel in Hāmākualoa. The legislation would move the property from state agricultural district to state rural district; amend the Pāʻia-Haʻikū Community Plan land use map from agriculture to public/quasi-public; and change county zoning from agricultural to public/quasi-public.

The Maui Planning Commission recommended approval at its Jan. 27 meeting. Its recommendation included in the record a Ka Paʻakai analysis, which, according to the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., is a legal framework that government agencies must follow when considering proposals that may impact the exercise of Native Hawaiian traditional and customary rights.

Land use planner Mark Roy of planning consultant Munekiyo Hiraga told committee members last month that the fire station project has been more than 17 years in the making and has included site selection evaluations, extensive agency reviews, modifications to the project scope and outreach with the Haʻikū Community Association.

Ha’ikū Fire Station; a “standard of cover”

Maui County Fire Chief Brad Ventura said the Department of Fire and Public Safety conducted a “standard of cover” study recently and found that a new station in Haʻikū, as well as Olowalu, Central Maui and Kīhei “came up as prominent needed locations.”

“All too often, stations and districts are being left unoccupied because of the calls that we’re on,” he said.

The new fire station would reduce response times and help save lives and property in Haʻikū, but it also can help with the Pāʻia Fire Station, he said.

When Pāʻia firefighters respond to a call from the vicinity of the Garden of Eden, for example, toward Keʻanae in East Maui, “they’re two hours at that point away from the Pāʻia community,” Ventura said. “And so a lot of times people just think that when you call 911, you’re going to have a fire truck sitting in a station ready to come. That’s not the case. Our call volume has increased enormously over the last several decades.”

In the Haʻikū area, there are a lot of old structures, Ventura said, “but there’s a lot of new development as well that’s growing and demanding our time out there. (Also,) the rescues along the highway are increasing; just this week we had multiple calls along on the highway due to Hurricane Fausto.”

Public pushback

At its July 29 meeting, the Housing and Land Use Committee heard public testimony in opposition to the project.

Kanani Higbee, a kuleana landowner in the ahupuaʻa of East Kuiaha in Haʻikū, noted that the Pāʻia Fire Station sits on only a half acre, while the planned Haʻikū station would be on 6 acres. “Since the districts of Hāmākualoa, Koʻolau and Hāna are so wet, a fire station is unnecessary for Haʻikū,” Higbee said.

Laura “Lala” Johnson, a kanaka maoli with family roots in Hāmākualoa, submitted written testimony asking council members to give careful consideration to a pending state Office of Information Practices appeal concerning the Maui Planning Commission’s Jan. 27 recommendation for approval of the fire station’s proposed land use measures.

The final Ka Paʻakai analysis, completed in 2025 by Keala Pono Archaeological Consulting, was not available to the public before testimony was taken before the commission, Johnson said.

During the meeting, a Sunshine Law issue was raised, and–following an executive session–the analysis was uploaded, “and the Planning Commission then proceeded to vote without reviewing that final analysis,” Johnson said.

An Office of Information Practices opinion is pending on that Sunshine Law complaint.

Addressing the council’s Housing and Land Use Committee, Johnson said: “My request is not that this committee determine the outcome of that appeal, but that it recognize the importance of transparency, meaningful public participation, and public confidence whenever decisions affect our traditional and customary practices and culturally significant lands.”

She also said the heirs of Nalopi and the kuleana families of Kuiaha should have a meaningful voice in decisions affecting their ancestral lands.

Terrill James Kane Alii Williams, who returned Monday for extended comments and questioning as a project resource person, testified in opposition as well last month, previewing objections to the county’s title and the site’s archaeological review.

A project already scaled back

Monday’s hearing confirmed the project has already shed several features from earlier plans. A 2011 environmental assessment for the station—then estimated at $11.2 million—included two off-site wind turbines and a helicopter landing pad as part of a push for green building certification.

Roy told committee members Monday that both the helipad and turbines have been dropped from the current design, along with an originally larger water corridor that would have crossed additional parcels Kuiaha-area families have disputed.

The changes followed public comments raised during the environmental review process, as well as cost and schedule considerations, he said. The waterline is now limited to roughly 300 feet along East Kuiaha Road plus an on-site connection.

The current design calls for a 10,360-square-foot administrative building—offices, sleeping and crew quarters, training and exercise space, dining facilities—plus a 1,600-square-foot apparatus bay addition, a parking lot, a 40,000-gallon water storage tank, a septic system and a new driveway off Hāna Highway.

The county acquired the property in December 2007, according to the Munekiyo Hiraga presentation. The department has said the station is needed because the closest existing stations—Pāʻia and Makawao—are 6 and 8 miles away, respectively, in an area whose population grew 23% between 2000 and 2020.

Archaeology and burial questions

County archaeologist Janet Six told the committee an archaeological inventory survey completed by Scientific Consultant Services was accepted by the State Historic Preservation Division in 2010 and covers the current, smaller project footprint.

The survey found one historic feature—a rock wall likely dating to around the 1940s. An additional, non-mandatory cultural analysis was completed by Keala Pono Archaeological Consulting in April 2025. Eleven test trenches found no subsurface cultural features within the project site footprint itself.

Because the waterline route was only pedestrian-surveyed, not trenched, the county plans to conduct what Six called a “100% AIS”—full archaeological monitoring—during waterline construction rather than treating any discovery as “inadvertent.” Six and AECOM civil engineer Diane Kodama confirmed that if human remains or cultural features are found, the waterline can be redesigned around them, citing a prior county project where that was done.

Six said the site has survey limitations because ground penetrating radar works best–like a lawnmower–when it’s flat against the ground. The Haʻikū property has sloping and rolling terrain, with heavy grass overgrowth, perhaps making it a poor candidate for radar penetration, although she did not rule it out.

Williams maintains the archaeological inventory survey is inadequate because it excludes marked burials he says are known to exist up-ridge from the project footprint—though Six said those are outside the area the project would disturb—and because, in Williams’ view, identifying exact burial locations and buffer zones is the State Historic Preservation Division’s responsibility, not something the county’s archaeological inventory survey addressed.

The title challenge

Much of Monday’s open session meeting—more than an hour, from 10:17 to 11:30 a.m.—was devoted to Williams walking the committee through a detailed genealogical and title argument, as well as other issues.

In summary, Williams asserts he is a native tenant descendant of Nalopi, holder of Land Commission Award 3336, and traces a chain of 1840-’50s-era Great Māhele documents—Royal Patent 383 to Richard Armstrong and Land Commission Award 9971 to W.P. Leleiohoku among them. Williams maintains these land transfer documents predate and supersede the instrument the county’s own title search relies on: a 1916 land patent to Florence Wood. 

During the earlier July 29 committee meeting, Deputy Corporation Counsel Nāhulu Nunokawa addressed the county’s position that it has clear title to the property.

The county has a title insurance policy that identified the county’s interest being derived from Grant 6553 to Florence Wood by the Territory of Hawaiʻi, and it identified that as the original instrument that granted title.

“In the insurance policy, it didn’t list any exceptions for any other interests that might be in the land,” he said. “We own the complete interest in that parcel.”

On Monday, Williams argued that Wood was not a recognized native tenant of Kuiaha and had no native tenant rights to convey, and that the county’s title company has been unable to trace ownership further back than 1916—which he interprets as an effective concession that the county cannot establish clear title.

Williams separately argues that under the 1898 Newlands Resolution, only government, crown and public lands transferred to the United States—and that East Kuiaha was private property by 1850, so it was never subject to that land transfer.

For background, Congress passed and President William McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution in July 1898. The resolution annexed the Hawaiian Islands to the United States. Because a formal annexation treaty failed to win the two-thirds Senate vote required, Congress used a joint resolution instead. The end run has been seen by Native Hawaiian sovereignty advocates and legal scholars as giving the United States no legal authority to transfer land under international law.

The resolution’s text ceded to the US only “public, Government, or Crown lands” and related public property, not privately held land.

This supports Williams’ contention that–because East Kuiaha had already passed into private hands through the 1850 Land Commission Award process decades before the Newlands Resolution–the land was never subject to the 1898 land transfer.

Nunokawa said the title company found no evidence that Royal Patent 383 applied to this specific parcel, not that no prior interest existed at all.

“They determined that our interest was back to that land patent, and that they didn’t identify any previous interests from 383 on that specific parcel,” he said.

Williams said he wants his attorneys present for further discussions of the Haʻikū site. “You cannot extinguish my native tenant rights,” he said. “Whatever decisions you make, I still have my rights.”

Zoning, a legislative function

When asked to comment on Williams’ assertions over the land title, Department of Planning Deputy Director Ana Lillis cited the Maui County Charter and Hawaiʻi Revised Statutes Section 46-4 as specifically noting that zoning is a legislative function regardless of land ownership.

Williams told the committee he is currently in active litigation over separate parcels in the contested property area. He said the litigation began the same month the Ka Paʻakai analysis was completed and the county declined to act on his recommendations.

Alternative “Site D,” and restarting from scratch

Williams proposed relocating the station further east to “Site D”—property located outside Kuiaha and on land he said the state supports developing. And, he asserted there would be no pushback from native tenants at the alternative site.

Roy confirmed a feasibility study evaluated Site D during the environmental review process but found it less advantageous: it’s state- rather than county-owned, presents water tank siting challenges, and didn’t offer enough benefit to outweigh restarting the process.

Moving the project to Site D, near Holokai Road, now would require new pre-design and site planning, a new Maui Island Plan amendment, new district boundary amendment, community plan amendment and change of zoning applications and a new environmental assessment. 

“It would essentially involve starting the entire process from scratch,” Roy said.

A ‘false dichotomy”

Council Member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, participating remotely, said that sometimes when government invests public dollars into projects and feels obligated to complete it, even after legitimate concerns are raised, that “often we’re put into this false dichotomy of either having a fire station, a project, or not.”

She called a project on Molokaʻi in which the county wanted to build on undeveloped land, but it was rejected by the community.

“And, what we ended up doing was just finding a predisturbed lot,” she said. “That is another option.”

Committee chair change from “hyper-abundance of caution”

The committee proceedings have also involved a temporary leadership change. Partway through the July 29 meeting, Chair Nohelani Uʻu-Hodgins recessed the session and stepped aside “out of a hyper-abundance of caution,” citing a possible conflict of interest. Her husband is a Maui County firefighter, although Uʻu-Hodgins said she doesn’t believe she has a conflict of interest.

The committee then voted 7-0, with Uʻu-Hodgins and Vice Chair Kaunoe Batangan abstaining, to install Council Member Tamara Paltin as temporary chair under Council Rule 70. Paltin presided over the remainder of the July 29 meeting and all of Monday’s session, including the recess into executive session.

A Board of Ethics ruling on the matter is pending.