The future of more than 8,100 acres of Kaua‘i land will be up for discussion next week as the U.S. Navy holds public hearings about extending its leases with the state.
The Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility uses 8,172 acres of land — 684 acres leased from the state and the remainder granted via easement — on the west side of Kaua‘i for the operation of "the world’s largest instrumented multi-environment range," according to Navy documents.
At the same time, NASA uses a comparatively paltry 23 acres to operate the Kōkeʻe Park Geophysical Observatory.
All leases involving these lands are set to expire between 2027 and 2030, and so both the Navy and NASA have begun the process of extending them for at least 25 years. A draft environmental impact statement for that process was published in June, initiating a public comment period that will end on Aug. 7. And as part of that comment period, three public meetings will be held on Kaua‘i to allow residents to learn more about the facilities and how they use the land, and voice their opinions about the proposal to extend the leases.
PMRF Commanding Officer Capt. Robert Prince said the PMRF and the controlled airspace above it allows the Navy a large area to conduct training exercises across a variety of environments, from underwater, to air, to outer space. At the same time, it can support the development and testing of Navy and Department of Defense hardware and weapons.
Despite this, most of the land used by the Navy is not used for training or weapons testing, but is largely used for environmental buffer zones or storage, said Kerry Ling, program manager for the environmental impact statement.
The lease renewal process comes hot on the heels of the state Board of Land and Natural Resources' rejection of two U.S. Army proposals to renew leases for their own Hawai‘i facilities. The BLNR voted in May to reject an environmental impact statement for the renewal of the 23,000-acre lease of lands at Pōhakuloa Training Area on Hawai‘i Island, and in June to reject another such plan for 6,300 acres across three Oʻahu facilities.
Ling said those rejections don't necessarily impact the future continued operations at PMRF. However, she added that the Navy has listened to the public testimony for those plans — which was almost universally negative — and have learned from them.
For instance, she said, the Navy will conduct additional environmental surveys and take further steps to carry out a Ka Pa‘akai analysis, a legal framework for determining whether a government proposal impacts Native Hawaiian traditional and customary rights. Both Army proposals were strongly criticized for not sufficiently addressing their long-term impacts on natural and cultural resources.
And, Ling said, the PMRF lease, if renewed, will be done so at fair market value, a far cry from the notorious $1 leases originally granted in the 1960s.
The public meetings will be held from 5-8 p.m. on July 17, 18 and 19. The first one will take place at Kaua‘i Veterans Center in Līhu‘e, the second at Kekaha Neighborhood Center in Kekaha and the third at the Sheraton Kaua‘i Coconut Beach Resort in Kapa‘a. People are invited to attend in person or remotely.
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