Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 21, Number 9, 1 Kepakemapa 2004 — Lawsuit seeks to halt Stryker plans [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Lawsuit seeks to halt Stryker plans

By Sterling Kini Wong Three Native Hawaiian organizations have filed a federal lawsuit to stop the Army from creating a Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Hawai'i without first considering alternative sites. The Hawaiian organizations - 'īlio'ulaokalani Coalition, Nā 'Imi Pono and Kīpuka - are challenging the Army's environmental impact statement for the Stryker Brigade, whieh was released in May. The groups are requesting an injunction be placed on the project until the Army completes an EIS that fully examines other possible sites. The proposed project would transform the 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Light) at Schofield Barracks to a Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The brigade would be a fast-strike unit that would utilize the eight-wheeled, 19ton Stryker vehicle to transport soldiers to areas of conflict. According

to the EIS, the project would include training at five existing military loeations, and eall for the expansion of Schofield by 1,400 acres and Pōhakuloa Training Area on Hawai'i Island by 23,000 acres. On July 7, the Army released a "record of decision" to 20 for-

ward with the Stryker Brigade, whieh is expected to be operational by 2007. The lawsuit says that the Army did not consider alternative loeations despite the fact that their EIS acknowledges that creating the Stryker Brigade in Hawai'i would destroy Native Hawaiian cultural sites and endangered native ecosys-

tems, and prevent the exercise of traditional cultural practices "Native Hawaiians have a unique spiritual relationship to the 'āina, and as a result a kuleana to preserve and protect the natural and cultural resources of Hawai'i for future generations," 'īlio'ulaokalani's president Vicky Holt Takamine said in a written statement. "Transformation

will cut us off from these resources, these sacred sites, whieh are vital to the perpetuation of the Hawaiian culture." Attorney David Henkin of the environmental law group Earthjustice, whieh is representing the Hawaiian plaintiffs, said in a written statement that the alternative-location analysis is considered the heart of the EIS, "the key to informed deci-sion-making, the basic goal of the National Environmental Policy Act." "Whether you think Stryker is a good idea or not," he said, "you have to agree that, before the Army carries out a project like transformation - whieh it admits will be environmentally destructive - it should at least look at its options to be sure that Hawai'i is the best plaee to do it. That is what both eommon sense and the law require, and what the Army failed to do here." ■

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Several Stryker vehicles were displayed to the public during an Army demonstraton in July. Photo: steriing Kini wong