The Ohana Kai Village affordable housing project in Maalaea is coming up against some environmental stumbling blocks. Apparently, the Maui Tomorrow Foundation and the Maalaea Community Association have declared via suit in the 2nd Circuit Court that the final environmental impact statement (EIS) is both inadequate and out of date.
The county Department of Housing and Human Concerns will be acting as the defendant and as the responsible agent for the project’s environmental review.
Jesse Spencer, the developer of Ohana Kai, feels that he has answered every concern placed before him by the county over the past three or four years. Despite his assertion and the fact that his land was designated a project district thirteen years ago, the former administration didn’t support including the Ohana Kai project in the revised county General Plan.
Concerns of the plaintiffs include the loss of prime agricultural land, the adverse impacts of a major new urban core, traffic issues, the possibility that drinking water will become saline and the fact that wastewater treatment and injection wells weren’t addressed in the EIS.
Spencer has an answer for all these concerns, on which you can get a more thorough report in this Maui News article.
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