Residents, landowners discussing Waipio Valley future

HILO — In the face of uncertainty regarding the future of Waipio Valley, residents are committed to working with the valley’s primary landowners as new stewardship plans are created.

One of the largest holders of Waipio acreage, the Bishop Museum, announced in January that it intended to sell its lands. The museum owns 547 acres, or more than 50 percent of the valley, which was gifted more than a century ago, and today contains a majority of Waipio’s taro farms.

The museum also announced that it will seek a buyer for the 15-acre Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Captain Cook. Together, both holdings a few years ago were valued at $10 million.

Since the announcement, museum officials have met with members of the Waipio Valley Stakeholders Alliance, a group comprised of elected members of the Waipio Taro Farmers Association, Waipio Community Circle and Ha Ola O Waipio Valley, to discuss the next steps.

The stakeholders alliance has also worked with state legislators to create a joint concurrent resolution regarding stewardship plans.

The House resolution requests that the alliance coordinate with parties such as the Bishop Museum and Kamehameha Schools, another major landowner in the valley, as well as state and county agencies and submit a report of the stewardship meetings before the start of next year’s legislative session.

“What we wanted to do was really make sure that the legislature knew this was a community issue that we’d be working on,” said Jim Cain, a member of the stakeholders alliance whose family has farmed in the valley for more than 30 years.

State Rep. Mark Nakashima, D-Hamakua, introduced the resolution, which was co-signed by five other Hawaii Island representatives.

Nakashima said that after talking with the stakeholders, it seemed a natural fit for that group to lead the way.

“I felt that instead of trying to push the issue onto an outside entity, that the resident of the valley and the stakeholders of the valley should really take it upon themselves to kind of drive the discussion and develop the plan,” he said.

“I think there are some legitimate concerns about what’s the (valley) ownership — how much that would change the lifestyle that the residents want to preserve,” Nakashima said.

There are currently about 40 working farms in the valley that lease taro land, but cultivation of Waipio’s rich soil dates to ancient Hawaiian times.

Maintaining the connection to the valley’s past is something the Bishop Museum intends to work toward as well, museum CEO Blair Collis said Thursday.

“It comes down to making sure the land is kept the way it has historically been kept,” Collis said. “We hope that even better stewards would provide the opportunity to take care of the valley and its biology.”

He said an ideal future for Waipio would address removing invasive species, continued work on the stream that feeds the taro fields, and restoration of the valley’s heiau.

But the museum does not have the resources for those initiatives, Collis said, nor is its location on Oahu ideal for carrying out agricultural stewardship.

“None of those statements are anything in regards to the value of the land,” he said. “We love it. I personally want to make sure that this land is taken care of in the right way … stewardship requires you to understand what you’re not good at, not just what you’re good at,” he said.

The talk story sessions with the stakeholders alliance were a way to keep the conversation going, Collis said. There is still no buyer in mind, nor a fixed timetable for when a sale could happen.

Some in the stakeholders alliance have proposed helping the museum remain solvent so it wouldn’t have to sell the lands in the first place.

“There’s a reason they’re doing this, so we want to ensure that they remain viable,” Cain said.

Nakashima said another possible outcome could be forming a hui of state agencies to purchase the land, with management going to a different entity.

“The title would rest with the DLNR, but then day to day operations would fall to someone else,” he said.

“The best case scenario is that Waipio Valley continues to be Waipio Valley,” Cain said.

Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.