State Ag Agency On Track For Stricter Control Of Invasive Pests
The department has been going back and forth on new rules since at least February.
Kimeona Kane called the Department of Agriculture’s Plant Pest Control Branch as soon as he suspected a native plant he purchased was infested with little fire ants.
As soon as the DOA employee asked where Kane purchased the plant in Windward Oahu, “he immediately told me: ‘Oh yeah, you’ve got LFA’,” Kane said.
“That’s what got me really going,” he said. “One, that the Department of Ag knew and two, the place that sold it to me knew.”
Kane is chair of the Waimanalo Neighborhood Board and people in the community are worried about the . They are concerned LFA will overrun the community, upturn local farm production and alter the community’s relationship with the land.
Kane discovered that the state agricultural agency has little power to do anything about that nursery or several others in Hawaii that knowingly or unknowingly sell plant materials infested with invasive species.
The DOA was poised to implement tougher rules. But a key administrator who had drafted the rules resigned in June and the agency reconsidered after a conversation between Hawaii Floriculture and Nursery Association president Eric Tanouye, DOA chair Sharon Hurd and her then-interim deputy Carol Okada.
The rules that had been rewritten to give the DOA more teeth were modified to remove key elements regarding on-island restrictions, and provisions that would enable the department to hold offenders accountable.
But now DOA says those stronger controls will be implemented after all, after pressure from lawmakers and the public.
“I realize that was a mistake on our part,” Hurd told lawmakers at a Senate briefing on Wednesday.
Hurd says the department also has initiated legal action against “five bad actors” to stop them from knowingly selling infested plants.
The ‘Wild West’ For Nurseries
Helmuth Rogg, , is the former DOA official who wrote the new rules aimed at bringing Hawaii up to the same standards as the rest of the country.
鈥淚t’s the Wild West in Hawaii, for nurseries. They can do whatever they want and the department doesn’t do anything about it,” Rogg said. “That’s the problem.”
After Rogg left the state agency and the rules were altered, affected communities, agriculturalists and invasive species groups that had awaited their implementation raised concerns.
Not everyone agreed, however.
Tanouye, from the nursery association, said Rogg’s proposed changes governing the transport of plant material would leave nurseries “stuck in purgatory” because the quarantining procedures and duration was “hard to understand.”
Tanouye said bad actors should be held accountable, though the rule changes could “kill agriculture.”
“What I would like to see happen is I would like to tear up that 4-72,” Tanouye said. “I would like to allow our new chair and our new administrator to start all over.鈥
Okada, who has now replaced Rogg, previously headed up the plant quarantine branch for close to a decade. Tanouye said his association had a good working relationship with the department at that time.
鈥淚t’s the Wild West in Hawaii, for nurseries. They can do whatever they want.”
Former DOA Plant Industry Division Administrator Helmuth Rogg
But the idea that tighter regulation would spell the demise of nurseries across Hawaii was “total BS,” according to Rogg, rather it is “common-sense legislation.”
Hawaii Ant Lab research manager Michelle Montgomery said the rules drafted by Rogg are not perfect and may have some affect on the nursery industry, but were far superior to the modified version.
Removing the power to prevent the intraisland transportation of infested plants material was seen as the most egregious change to Rogg驶s version, according to Montgomery, as it would have stopped the DOA from being able to quickly quarantine new infestations.
While there are several cases of nurseries knowingly selling infested materials, many around the state work hard to control invasive species too.
鈥淚gnorance is not bliss in this case. Unintentional movement is just as big as intentional movement,鈥 Montgomery said.
Hurd said she intended to insert a clearer process covering the nursery industry, which was “was really not aware of the nuances of the rule.”
“We want to help ag, not hurt ag,” Hurd said.
But she also did not want the public to think DOA did not care about the impacts. “I’m making an attempt to put this right.”
Full Flip-Flop
The DOA’s move to jettison the tougher controls caught the attention of Rep. Scot Matayoshi and Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, who represent several Windward Oahu communities of LFA since 2019.
Keohokalole said his meetings and correspondence with DOA, including recently as last week, resulted in shallow responses and a “frustrating amount of smoke and mirrors.”
There was not much resistance to the tougher regulations, if any, Keohokalole said last week. “Why then pull it? Because these are unelected bureaucrats running amok.”
The following day Keohokalole, chair of the Senate Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee, to clarify the department’s position on the invasive species rules and procedures and its relationship with the nursery industry.
The department formally withdrew the weakened provisions from consideration at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Plants and Animals on Nov. 17. More than 60 people and organizations submitted testimony asking for the rules’ rejection.
At Wednesday’s Senate briefing, Hurd reaffirmed DOA’s decision to stick to the rules approved by the Board of Agriculture in February, as written by Rogg. She said an interim rule would be implemented as a stopgap measure by January.
The rules are expected to be sent to the governor on Monday for sign-off and will then go out for public input.
In the past week, with increased public scrutiny, it initiated court action against five nurseries — the only means it has to deal with the issue without rules in place.
“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.
