Kali Watson’s Geothermal Plan Erases Environmental Review for the Entire Pae ʻĀina

The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, under Chair Kali Watson, is selling geothermal “exploration” rights on trust lands as a revenue source for beneficiaries. The pitch arrived with a statewide roadshow of “informational meetings.”

No one was fooled by the roadshow. The meetings were the distraction. The bill is the point.

The bill nobody was supposed to read

That bill was SB2901 / HB1983. Tucked within DHHL’s own legislative package, it did something this pae ʻāina has never seen attempted so openly: it ordered the Department of Land and Natural Resources and the University of Hawaiʻi to rewrite their exemption lists so that “geological subsurface characterization” — the exploratory drilling itself — is exempt from environmental review or requires only an exemption notice.

Read that again. The drilling gets a pass.

The bill also instructed that the first borehole be sunk on DHHL land and directs the Department of Health to carve out certain drilling waste from hazardous-waste rules. Then it declared, with a straight face, that boreholes drilled for “characterization” are somehow “distinct from geothermal or mineral exploration.”

It is a magic trick. Call the drilling something else, and the laws that protect ʻohana, ʻāina, and water no longer apply.

Why every family in Hawaiʻi should care

Here is what Watson is not saying out loud. The carve-out did not stop at Hawaiian Home Lands. It would have rewritten DLNR and UH’s statewide exemption lists, rules that govern projects on every island.

Once the state agrees that drilling can be relabeled to dodge review, that door stays open. For the next developer. For the next agency. For the next “characterization” anywhere across the pae ʻāina.

One set of rules for the connected. Another for the kūpuna and keiki who live downstream.

NO DRILLING & NO ERASING ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW ON ANY HAWAIIAN LANDS. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Kali Watsonʻs roadshow demonstrates that he will continue to push for these exemptions in bills under different designations. Watson claims this effort is important to generate funding for DHHL and to streamline the process.

The problem is that NO BENEFICIARY TRUSTS KALI WATSON or the DHHL Board. Watson continues to press his own agenda, stating beneficiaries and their families "lack understanding."

Watsonʻs actions speak louder than words. The DHHL needs new leadership.    

His priorities are not the priorities of the people.