Honolulu Rail Opponents Have No Case, Feds Say
WASHINGTON 鈥斅燜ederal officials are denying a slew of allegations put forth by a group of Oahu residents in a lawsuit designed to stop Honolulu’s $5.3 billion rail project.
Attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice filed a required response to the lawsuit on Friday, rebutting the suit filed against city, state and federal officials in April.
The claims that officials failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, and that the project violates both a section of the Department of Transportation Act and the National Historic Preservation Act. Lawyers for the city formally responded to the lawsuit last month, calling the allegations against the city “based on mischaracterizations of facts and/or law.”
Federal attorneys say the rail opponents behind the lawsuit made claims that are “moot” and in some cases unverifiable. But plaintiffs in Honolulu say the response is “telling,” even encouraging.
“There was always the possibility in responding to our complaint that they would introduce (new) information,” said plaintiff Randy Roth, a law professor at the University of Hawaii. “There was always that possibility that they had actually complied with the law and we just didn’t realize it. You read the complaint and they’re not even pretending to have done any more. It’s a pretty open-and-shut situation. We’re increasingly optimistic that we’re going to prevail.”
Roth said he is so hopeful that he and other plaintiffs are considering filing a request to halt the project until the lawsuit is resolved. Roth said he and other plaintiffs plan to discuss the situation with his lawyers on Monday, and hope to prevent the city from getting beyond “a point of no return” on the project. The city has not been cleared for building the guideway itself but it has been permitted to relocate utilities, acquire property and begin other rail-related construction.
“Basically what we’re talking about is ordering somebody to stop something so it is an injunction of sorts,” Roth told Civil Beat on Sunday. “We expect to prevail but we expect that the city would appeal.”
Other plaintiffs include former Hawaii Gov. Ben Cayetano, longtime rail critic Cliff Slater and former Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee Walter Heen.
In assessing the federal response, Roth pointed to a section that pertains to the analysis of alternative technologies in planning the rail system. The decision to build an elevated fixed guideway rail line has been one of the chief complaints among rail opponents, who say that alternative technologies were not fully explored. City rail planners have rejected that claim.
In their lawsuit, rail opponents list nearly a dozen “reasonable and prudent alternatives” to the current system. The federal government responded that it lacks “knowledge or information” about such alternatives, and therefore denies the claim that they are reasonable and prudent.
“The subject of (that portion of the lawsuit) is the existence of reasonable and prudent alternatives,” Roth wrote in an email. “The very thing the Defendants were legally required to know.”
But the federal government indicated that it remains comfortable with the city’s analysis of alternatives.
“The allegations … purport to characterize the 2006 Alternative Analysis documents, which speak for themselves and are the best evidence of their contents,” lawyers for the federal government wrote.
Such a response leaves the federal government “vulnerable” because it does not rely on any “previously-unidentified facts that could strengthen their position,” Roth said. Attorneys for the federal government could not be reached for comment over the weekend.
“I don’t think any of us contemplated that the city’s answer and the federal answer would fail to provide any sort of information or specific defense other than pro forma denials,” Roth said. “At this point in time we’re quite optimistic.”
