STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2047

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: S.B. No. 2067

S.D. 1

Honorable Ronald D. Kouchi

President of the Senate

Thirty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2022

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Hawaiian Affairs and Water and Land, to which was referred S.B. No. 2067 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO BURIAL SITES,"

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose and intent of this measure is to establish an inter-division program between the State Historic Preservation Division, county burial councils, Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs that addresses the location, movement, and restoration of Hawaiian burial sites, or ‘iwi, exposed or likely to be exposed by coastal erosion.

Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and one individual. Your Committees received testimony in opposition to this measure from one individual. Your Committees received comments on this measure from the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Your Committees find that rising sea levels and coastal erosion are endangering Native Hawaiian burial sites. These sites are of vital importance to Hawaiian culture as ancestral links to the past. This measure will create an inter-division program between the State Historic Preservation Division, the Burial Councils from each county, the Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to address the location of Hawaiian burial sites threatened to exposure due to coastal erosion as well as methods for safe movement and restoration of the remains.

Your Committees have amended this measure by adopting recommendations from the Department of Land and Natural Resources, including:

(1) Adding the Land Division as one of the collaborators of the inter-division program;

(2) Deleting language that would have required the inter-division program to identify iwi across the State that may be impacted by coastal erosion and examine the role of climate change on burial sites;

(3) Clarifying that the inter-division program shall take steps to relocate ‘iwi within the same moku;

(4) Expanding the scope of the appropriation by including the development of policies and procedures for the movement of restoration of ‘iwi; and

(5) Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Hawaiian Affairs and Water and Land that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2067, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2067, S.D. 1, and be referred to your Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Hawaiian Affairs and Water and Land,

________________________________ LORRAINE R. INOUYE, Chair

________________________________ MAILE S.L. SHIMABUKURO, Chair