Why are homes allowed to be built in lava zones? Mauna Loa eruption has Hawaii residents wondering

• Hawaii County Mayor Mitch Roth said he has mixed feelings about the idea of restricting or blocking development on the lands that are most at risk from eruptions.
• There has been talks of banning development in the highest-risk lava zones in the past.
• Hawaii County Council member Ashley Kierkiewicz reached out to Roth's administration to put together a general plan to guide development in the county.

Lava from the Mauna Loa eruption was apparently headed away from homes in the volcano’s southwest rift zone Monday, offering at least a temporary reprieve to property owners in Hawaiian Ocean View Estates and other areas that are most at risk. But the new eruption reopens old questions about where development should be allowed, and under what conditions.

Hawaii County is still buying up properties after the last devastating eruption of Kilauea volcano, which destroyed more than 700 homes in the Leilani Estates and Kapoho areas in 2018.

Before that disaster, the Kilauea flows destroyed Kalapana in 1990, and before that was the loss of Kapoho village in 1960.

There has been talk of banning development in the highest-risk lava zones in the past, but that talk never translated into much action. People still buy and sell land in the riskiest areas, and landowners can still obtain county building permits to construct homes there.

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And the problem is largely of the county’s own making. State and county officials authorized subdivisions of many thousands of lots in many of those risky areas 50 or 60 years ago, and those subdivisions now offer some of the most affordable land and housing in the state.

Hawaii County Mayor Mitch Roth said Monday that he has mixed feelings about the idea of restricting or blocking development on the lands that are most at risk from eruptions.

“In this position, you have a duty to everybody in the county,” he said.

Of the large subdivisions, he said, “Hindsight is always 20-20. Should they have allowed what they allowed in Puna back when they did? No. But now people have property. They own stuff because the county has given them this opportunity. And so, there’s mixed feelings.

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“There’s some people that that’s their piece of the American dream, and so it’s difficult separating all these facts out. Do you want to be the person stealing someone’s American dream, what they’ve earned?” Roth added: “Like many things in this job, it’s not just a simple yes or no.”

But the county’s longstanding policy of allowing development in high-hazard zones – and even helping it along by rebuilding roads in high-risk areas after the roads have been destroyed by flows – has critics. Bobby Camara, who was born and raised on the Big Island and studied the history of local eruptions, is one.

“This is just plain stupid. We know what the hazards are. People should not be building down there, and as I have pointed out repeatedly in the past, every eruption and lava flow that happens incurs more and more costs to the citizenry, because there is more and more development,” he said.

“I understand it’s a really difficult problem, but there has to be a way to stop it – just an ‘enter at your own risk’ sort of thing. The eruptions are “not something that happens every 500 years.”

'Why do I need to pay for the stupid arrogance of others?'

Camara, an outspoken author and blogger, has approached a variety of county officials over the years to urge them to stop allowing development in the highest-risk areas classified as Zone 1. He has had no success, he said.

“As a taxpayer, my question is, why do I need to pay for the stupid arrogance of others? I shouldn’t have to pay for that. You should build a house wherever you want, understanding whatever hazards are in the neighborhood, and deal with it,” he said.

He also wants assurances that people who insist on staying in high-hazard zones understand that the government won’t bail them out later. That would apply, for example, to people who decline to sell their properties under the current county program that buys out the owners of homes and lands that were affected by the 2018 eruption.

That program is being financed with about $107 million in federal Department of Housing and Urban Development funds, and it is designed to prevent lands from again being hit by future eruptions. The lands the county is buying will be maintained as open space, according to the project website.

Under that program, the county pays up to $230,000 for homes affected by the 2018 eruption – including homes that were destroyed or isolated by lava – with the final prices based on the assessed values of the properties before the flow. The county will pay up to $22,000 for raw land that was affected by the eruption under the same program.

A total of 820 owners applied for the buyouts, and 85 properties have closed so far at a total cost of nearly $15.8 million. Roth said that process is creating a “checkerboard” of lands that the county holds as open space, intermixed with private lots that can still be developed for new housing.

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Hawaii County Council member Ashley Kierkiewicz, who is chair of the council’s planning committee, said some former residents are refusing the sell out to the county because they want to rebuild. Kierkiewicz represents Lower Puna, which includes Leilani Estates and a number of other areas at high risk for lava inundation.

“People lost everything, and this is a way to help them get back on their feet,” she said.

“We have to start taking a hard look at what’s our policy going to be, because we know this may happen again in our lifetimes, and so we have to start having that conversation,” she said. “We’ve got sea level rise, we’ve got climate change, we’ve got lava. We have to start thinking about these policies and programs within the county.

“People are still moving in, I see license plates from Vermont and Texas and all over the place. This is seen as the last affordable mecca, Hawaii island in particular.”

Kierkiewicz said she has reached out to the Roth administration to try to pull together a core group that will begin working on those issues as the County Council prepares to update the county general plan. The general plan is supposed to guide development in the county.

She suggested the county might relax the building code somewhat, or encourage use of modular housing that can be moved more easily.

“We have to explore everything,” she said.

But she does not believe the county can simply ban new construction or refuse to issue building permits in the highest-risk areas.

“Where are these folks going to go?” she said.

That idea was discussed during former Mayor Harry Kim’s administration, but “I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

This story was published in partnership with Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit newsroom doing investigative and watchdog journalism relating to the state of Hawaii.