Makua Environmental Impact Statement 09/28/09

In October 2001, Earthjustice reached a settlement agreement with the U.S. Army that requires the Army to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) for its proposed resumption of live-fire training at Makua Military Reservation (MMR) on O‘ahu, a culturally and ecologically important area, with scores of Hawaiian cultural sites and nearly fifty endangered plants and animals threatened by training.

In March 2008, the Hawai‘i district court granted Earthjustice's motion to enforce the Army's settlement obligation to provide cultural access and established a schedule for the Army to identify additional cultural sites for unexploded ordnance (UXO) clearance, to increase opportunities for cultural access, and to report on progress in clearing UXO. On July 15, 2008, Earthjustice returned to court to challenge the Army' failure to involve the public in identifying high priority sites for UXO clearance and to focus its efforts on sites to which access could be restored promptly. On January 23, 2009, the district court ordered the Army to revise its high priority list based on public input and to focus on increasing access.

Earthjustice is currently back in court challenging the Army’s failure to comply with its settlement obligations to prepare key studies as part of the final EIS it released in June 2009: subsurface archaeological surveys to identify cultural sites that could be damaged or destroyed if mortar rounds, artillery shells, and other ordnance go astray during training exercises, as they have in the past; and studies to determine the potential for training activities to contaminate fish, shellfish, limu and other marine resources at Makua that Wai‘anae Coast residents gather for subsistence. Earthjustice is asking the court to prevent the Army from resuming live-fire training at Makua until it completes a revised EIS that contains the required studies.

Hawai‘i Clean Energy Planning Framework 09/28/09

Earthjustice is representing the Hawai‘i Solar Energy Association, the statewide solar industry association, in proceedings before the Hawai‘i Public Utilities Commission regarding the state electric utilities’ proposed framework for energy planning, which will direct state energy development and use for decades to come. Earthjustice is seeking to ensure that the final approved framework best serves the public interest in maximum growth and distribution of clean energy.

Critical Habitat for the Palila 04/27/09

The palila depends primarily on seeds from mamane trees for food.

Photo: USGS

The palila -- a bird endemic to Hawai'i -- depends on the native Hawaiian dry land forest, particularly mamane trees, for food, shelter, and breeding, and the destruction of mamane forests by sheep and goats and other browsing animals in the early twentieth century prompted a sharp decline in palila numbers and habitat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reacted by recognizing palila as endangered in 1967 and designating Palila critical habitat on the upper slopes of Mauna Kea.

Despite the known harm to native forests from browsing by sheep and goats, the State of Hawai`i continued to maintain feral goats and sheep for sport hunting within palila’s critical habitat and even stocked the forests with mouflon sheep, another destructive browser. In an historic opinion issued in 1979 and a second in 1987, the District Court for the District of Hawai`i held, in decisions upheld by the Ninth Circuit, that degradation of palila habitat constitutes unlawful harm to palila in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The court found the state was in violation of the ESA because the state maintained the destructive animals in the federally listed bird's last-remaining habitat, on which the palila depends for breeding, feeding, and sheltering, and ordered it to remove all sheep and goats completely and permanently. A third court order in 1998 affirmed the 1979 and 1987 orders and required the state to continue removing goats and sheep and to minimize the animals’ migration into the critical habitat, such as by constructing and maintaining a perimeter fence. 

Despite the three court orders, the state has failed to remove sheep and goats completely and permanently from the critical habitat and has yet to start construction on an adequate perimeter fence.  Earthjustice has returned to court seeking the state’s compliance with the court’s prior orders in order to protect this bird before it slides into extinction. 

Protecting Hawai'i's False Killer Whales 03/17/09

False killer whale on a longline.

Photo: NOAA

For years, the National Marine Fisheries Service has illegally ignored its own data, which show the Hawai‘i-based longline fleet currently is injuring and killing false killer whales at over twice the level the population can sustain. In 2004, under pressure from an Earthjustice lawsuit, the National Marine Fisheries Service finally re-classified the Hawai‘i-based longline fishery as "Category I" -- a designation for fisheries that annually kill and seriously harm marine mammals at unstainable rates -- due to its excessive incidental take of Hawai'i's false killer whales.  Pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, this recategorization should have triggered the prompt establishment of a take reduction team to devise a plan to bring the fishery's incidental take  "to insignificant levels approaching a zero mortality and serious injury rate."  NMFS has failed to do so, claiming inadequate funding. At the same time, NMFS has never applied the congressionally-mandated factors to allocate resources where insufficient funding is available for all required take reduction actions.

Hawai‘i’s marine mammals are paying with their lives for NMFS’s refusal to comply with the law.  Earthjustice is suing NMFS to compel it to heed Congress’s command to protect Hawai‘i’s false killer whales from needless death and injury. 

Central Maui Stream Restoration 03/17/08

Earthjustice petitioned the state water board to establish instream flow standards that would sustain beneficial instream uses, such as ecological protection, Native Hawaiian practices, recreation, and scenic values, for streams in Central Maui. The petition demanded that the water currently being hoarded and wasted by former plantation interests be returned to the streams of origin.

In March 2008, the Commission on Water Resource Management decided to take over management of four major streams in central Maui. The decision means that those diverting water or planning to divert water from these streams will have to apply for a permit.

Genetically Engineered Sugar Beets 03/10/07

The genetic engineering of our agricultural products has created serious environmental problems and numerous questions about health and safety. The great majority of genetically engineered ("GE") crops are engineered to be resistant to a specific weed killer, glyphosate (known commercially as "Roundup," owned and marketed by Monsanto). These crops, known as "Roundup Ready," allow farmers to apply large quantities of glyphosate to their fields without harming the crop, but this practice accelerates the evolution of herbicide-resistant "superweeds." Farmers then apply greater and greater quantities of Roundup to try to kill these weeds, and when this fails, they use even more toxic herbicides. Also, the GE crops themselves can cross-pollinate or become mixed with other related crops nearby, contaminating their conventional or organic counterparts.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, approved for commercial production genetically modified sugar beets without assessing the environmental, health, and economic impacts of these Roundup Ready beets, to the dismay of organic farmers, conservationists, and food-safety experts.

Earthjustice sued the USDA on behalf of organic seed producers and conservationists to get the deregulation of genetically-modified beets reversed until a full environmental impact statement is performed. In September 2009, the court agreed the USDA had violated the law and must prepare an EIS. Earthjustice is now seeking an injunction to stop further production of the sugar beets in the meantime.

Honolulu Irradiator 11/09/05

Earthjustice has been fighting to ensure adequate environmental review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of an application to build a Cobalt-60 irradiator to treat fruit and vegetables for fruit flies at a site located in a tsunami evacuation zone and near active runways at the Honolulu International Airport, residential neighborhoods and schools.

In August 2009, the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled the NRC Staff had illegally refused to consider the impacts from accidents that might occur while radioactive cobalt is transported to and from the irradiator and also failed to consider reasonable alternatives (non-nuclear technology and alternate sites) that could accomplish the project’s purpose with fewer threats to public health and safety and the environment.

Biopharm Algae 11/09/05

The State of Hawai'i's Board of Agriculture approved a permit to allow the importation of algae genetically engineered to produce drugs on the Kona coast of the Big Island. Earthjustice sued, and the Court has ordered that the Board’s approval without a review of potential environmental impacts of the project was invalid.

Shoreline Certification Rules 07/28/05

A state board's improper definition of shoreline is contributing to the loss of beaches throughout Hawai'i.

Albatross Listing Petition 10/05/04

The black-footed albatross, decimated long ago by hunters, is now being threatened by longline fisheries. Earthjustice filed a petition to get the species protected under the Endangered Species Act. In October 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that listing the albatross may be warranted, and is now deliberating whether to do so.

Iao, Waihe`e Aquifers Groundwater Management 10/23/03

Seeks to designate the `Iao and Waihe`e Aquifers on Maui as ground water management areas under the Hawai`i State Water Code, thereby turning over management of the aquifers to the State Commission on Water Resource Management.

Pila`a Coral Reef Protection 10/03/02

The developer of a luxury subdivision on Kaua`i neglected to put in erosion-control measures. The resulting runoff damaged a coral reef essential to wildlife, subsistence fishermen, swimmers, divers and others. Earthjustice filed suit to force the developer to fix the problem and is currently monitoring a settlement agreement requiring ecosystem restoration. The settlement also imposed the largest civil penalty ever assessed for violations of the Clean Water Act at a single site.

Waiahole Water Rights 10/03/02

Nearly a century ago, water vital to taro farmers, streams, and the estuary on O`ahu's east side was diverted to sugar plantations through the Waiahole Ditch system. The plantations are gone now, and Earthjustice represents farmers and Native Hawaiians in an effort to restore the water to the streams where it belongs. Earthjustice’s efforts yielded the first return of water to Hawai’i’s streams in history, and it continues to fight for more restoration, and is opposing further diversions of water from the system.