The Department of Land and Natural Resources announced Thursday that Alexander & Baldwin/Maho Pono has withdrawn East Maui Irrigation’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for a 30-year lease on East Maui water due to “production-related (printing) errors and typographical errors” during “finalization” of the document. THE DLNR said in a press release that EMI would refile the FEIS with the state once the “revisions” were completed.
I wasn’t the only one whose eyebrows lifted at this announcement, which came about a week after the 9,681-page document was released, and about a week before the Board of Land and Natural Resources’ August 13 meeting to vote on whether or not to accept it. That gave the public only 15 days to digest the massive document and file responses.
The announcement also came within days of a judicial order that severely curtails EMI’s current use of East Maui streamwater from the 45 million gallons a day (mgd) originally allowed under a temporary permit, to 25 mgd. The FEIS requests 92.32 mgd for its 30-year lease.
Could the two events be related? The FEIS release, the judicial order, and the withdrawal certainly popped up in close proximity. As far as identifying the typos and production errors, nobody I’ve contacted seems to know what they might involve, since no one seems to have gotten through the complete document. Well, except for EMI, which discovered the errors only after publishing the FEIS, which was almost two years in the making.
The bright side here is that the withdrawn FEIS, typos and all, remains viewable here, or at least it did when I wrote this update. That will give interested parties more time to digest its contents. The announcement gave no indication when the FEIS would be re-submitted.
