A North Kona man who cleared his property without a permit won’t face fines from Hawaii County, but fines from the state are still pending.
The county Board of Appeals on Friday unanimously approved a finding that Richard Stewart grubbed and graded his 4-acre site at the mauka end of Ihumoe Street, adjacent to Mamalahoa Highway, in early 2013. Stewart said the property is surrounded by the Kona Palisades development.
Because he stopped the work when notified by the county, he was not assessed a fine.
“The land clearing or altering activity on the subject property, with the use of the 33 ton excavator with mower head, is ‘grubbing’ as defined (in law),” the Board of Appeals report, approved by a 4-0 vote, states.
County code defines grubbing as any act by which vegetation is removed, dislodged, uprooted or cleared from the surface. Stewart, in defending his actions before the Board of Appeals, said county law doesn’t clearly define mowing, and because the contractor didn’t remove the roots of the vegetation, the work didn’t fall under the definition of grubbing.
Stewart still faces $9,400 in state fines for damaging archaeological structures, according to a December 2013 report from Michael Vitousek, an archaeologist with the State Historical Preservation Division. The state Board of Land and Natural Resources must approve the fine before it is imposed.
The steel-tracked machine breached stone walls, tore up a possibly pre-contact agricultural mound, and damaged a terrace — all likely a part of the Kona Field System, Vitousek told the board in October. The work damaged eight historical structures, he said.
Stewart said he was clearing the brush to provide a firebreak and clear the area of trash and refuse.
He continues to claim that using a mower head isn’t considered grubbing because he merely ground up vegetation above the soil, rather than uprooting it. He disputes Vitousek’s findings that possible pre-contact structures are on the site.
Stewart said he has two letters from the Rev. Kahua Norman Akahai Keanaaina moi, alii nui, stating that the rock walls and other structures were built by his grandparents and parents. There are no burials on the property, which was owned for more than 117 years by the Hawaiian family before being sold to Stewart, the letters state.
In fact, the letters state, both Palisades developers and the state took rocks off the property for their own construction projects.
Stewart told West Hawaii Today on Friday that he won’t appeal the finding, because an appeal to 3rd Circuit Court could freeze the use of his property for two years and cost him thousands. He said he’s already spent $10,000 for an archaeological survey in addition to the almost $10,000 in fines he’s still facing. He plans to apply for a rezoning to develop the property into home lots.
“I’m not appealing anything. I’ll just bend down and pay,” Stewart said. “I just want to move ahead.”