An Open Letter to HART Deputy Executive Director Brennon Morioka

By John Bond

HART Stockpiling Rail Project Dirt Containing Hawaiian Archaeological Remains

Aloha Brennon,

As a follow-up to Tuesday's Hoopili Station meeting during which the community were asking many important questions and refused to be fed the usual CANNED rail check box presentation, I would like to
provide this following information.

There were NO cultural monitors during the first two miles of the major rail rush job and the Dan Grabauskas letter proves that. To provide INSURANCE - all the two miles of West Oahu work was done AT NIGHT and workers told "you will see NOTHING there..."

The Tuesday the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART) Hoopili station presentation had up a slide during the entire one-hour community protest that said "Cultural Paving and Landscape." I doubt anyone from HART even noticed the great insult this message had—the community being told that all is being "mitigated" by "cultural concrete"—cartoons of the native plants, owls and ancient kalo fields that are all being destroyed for the rail
project and land development scheme.

Does HART really think our community is that stupid? We all know how crooked, deceptive and fraudulent this project has been- the fraudulent and faked Section 4f Farmland Policy Act- brought up by Kioni Dudley. FTA and HART has refused to acknowledge what a total fraud that is. And much more that has been lies and cover ups. The City Council votes are now all being investigated for graft and bribery.

Take a look at the debris trucked and dumped at this Kiewit site on Aloun farms property where the dust has been blowing onto the farmland and into Ewa Villages- and further downwind. There have been numerous complaints from people having respiratory problems.

Obviously Kiewit has been told it is fine to contaminate the area because it will all be bulldozed anyway. They also don't care if it is getting into the lungs of nearby farm workers.

Take a look at all of the large 30-40 foot high debris piles from HART bore holes that drilled and tore up subsurface archeological sites.

There are native tools and habitation materials as well as likely many iwi kupuna burials ground up in these piles treated like waste dirt.

Mike Lee and Kanehili Hui have seen many archaeological sites in the Honouliuli area and these piles clearly represent native archeological habitation sites, tool materials and very likely iwi burial sites that have been destroyed during the nighttime WOFH construction.

This is a result of Kiewit crews told to tear up everything and haul it away because there is "nothing there" and if you DO see something you better keep quiet. Or maybe get a bonus check for "seeing nothing."

Much of this rail work has been done at night anyway to insure that "nothing" could be seen or "inadvertently discovered" as they ground through this 1000-year-old ancient Hawaiian habitation and burial area.

This was the largest native Hawaiian Oahu community on Oahu and the reason most people don't know much about Honouliuli is because nearly 95 percent were all killed off in the early 1800's by introduced contagious diseases. This is why this mass death site has been given a FAKE NAME, "Hoopili"—to cover up its real cultural history.

The community all noticed how enormously SECRETIVE all the work was on this WOFH segment. Why work in a rural farmland area only at night? What were they hiding? Now we know.

HART pretends that there is "nothing there" in west Oahu to find, but many very credible AIS (archaeological inventory survey) documents and reports, including those done by HART contractors, show that the Hoopili area supported the largest pre-contact native Hawaiian population on Oahu.

Further, a public statement by a former HART contractor that there are "hundreds if not thousands" of burial sites in the area. Many archeological documents support this and the large native Hawaiian
community that was there farming the land.

That's because it was Hawaiian farmland known as Kalo'i, Honouliuli. Kalo'i means "kalo [taro] patch" and it was a major food crop growing area using channelized water from Kalo'i Gulch- the central waterway through that same area. A great deal of Kalo'i flows subsurface. Kanehili Hui has documented a lot of this and sent it to HART and FTA for years. Everything HART does is totally rigged, fraudulent and dismissive of the documented truth.

HART says they have NEVER encountered subsurface water in the area, but we have clearly seen the evidence where they have, especially by Kalo'i Gulch and Honouliuli Gulch where large numbers of Hawaiian farmers lived. A retired USGS scientist finds it laughable that HART could make such a "no groundwater" claim because it is "everywhere below the surface in that area."

HART and FTA treat the Rail Programmatic Agreement with total contempt and everyone up and down the line who has experienced these lying and cheating goons knows what a totally rigged and demeaning Programmatic Agreement process really is. Much like dealing with North Korea.

Rail has totally corrupted the City and State government and turned them all into crooks and liars. The public is now very suspicious and rail has greatly corroded the trust and goodwill the public once had for their government officials. This is why there was so much disgust and angry community questions at the Tuesday Hoopili Station meeting.

John Bond
Kanehili Cultural Hui

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