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Editor’s note: The Civil Beat Editorial Board and reporters recently spoke with Kauai County Mayor Derek Kawakami in Lihue. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Kawakami, who has two years remaining in his second and final term, began by talking about his official priorities.

The biggest priority is wrapping up all the projects that we’ve started, and I think we are projected to complete most of them. As far as top of mind, getting a landfill sited I think is more of a monumental task than most people can understand or appreciate. I didn’t even realize how challenging it is.

Where is Kekaha Landfill in terms of its capacity?

Kekaha’s capacity, if we get to expand vertically, is expected to give us another three years of capacity through to 2030. It’s not nearly enough time to save and build out any landfill. So we’re sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place. But I don’t think we’re the only county that’s going to be faced with this situation.

Oahu is in fact facing that exact situation.

Absolutely. A current state law makes it even more restrictive as far as siting a landfill.

What does that state law say?

I think it creates minimum distance requirements between neighborhood schools — there’s a whole slew of (requirements). But basically our solid waste team has sort of taken a look at the mapping of it all. And it limits the amount of locations we have. Whether or not people object to where the new landfill is going to be, if we find real estate that checks all of the marks, it’s going to go there.

Are there any possible sites that have been scouted?

The previous administration did a siting study, but a lot of those locations were taken off the table immediately. One was in the middle of our Kauai coffee fields — grade A agricultural land in production. I don’t think anybody thought that that was going to be a good idea. But the site study was just looking for contiguous parcels of land. I really think the location that we’ve sort of identified, which is still in Kekaha, it’s farther away from the Kekaha community, farther away from the ocean. It’s on the mauka side of the highway. It would be the ideal location.

Related to that — cesspools. There’s a sign outside about Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and the plan to convert to septic tanks. I think there are something like 14,000 — is that right?

Yeah.

How’s that conversion going?

It’s not going well. For most people it’s out of reach as far as affordability. And you folks probably saw the cesspool conversion project in Wainiha that unearthed some iwi kupuna (ancestral remains).

This is up on North Shore near Hanalei.

Absolutely. And those are what we would designate as high priority areas, right along the shoreline. And I got to assume anybody that was considering converting in that area is second guessing whether or not that’s the right thing to do, considering how many people are sort of upset about this landowner who followed everything that they were supposed to follow. But sometimes there needs to be a navigator to help navigate new people moving in that there’s a set of laws that we all follow.

There’s also getting the community involved. Even if you don’t think it’s their business, oh, it is their business — iwi kupuna. And it’s not impossible, because we ran into our own challenges with our Hanalei Base Yard project. We ran into burials, but we followed the letter of the law. But we also reached out to who we felt was closest to the issue in that community and told them, “How do we make this right? How do we complete this project and still respect these burials?”

And they came in and they said these burials should be kept right here in place, which at the time we said, “Well, that’s in the middle of our driveway and we have big machinery, big vehicles.” But it looks like a roundabout. And off to the side there’s two other sort of tombs, and they’re all within our property. They’re all protected because after hours it’s all gated, and we give them access when they want access.

The Senate president is from here, the new House speaker from here as well. Does that give you some hope that you’ll have more support from the state, or is this something that also requires a combination with federal aid? Where’s the money going to come from for cesspools?

We’re taking a look at what we would consider low-hanging fruit — communities and neighborhoods that could tie in easily. And most neighborhoods that need to be converted are not easily tied into our system. It’s either going to have to be funded by the property owner themselves, or if federal and state grants become available, that’ll make it easier. But I really think that if there is state funding, it needs to be flexible enough for the counties to be able to utilize it the best way.

We’ve always felt and believe that you cannot legislate your way out of a housing crisis.

Case in point: There’s a revolving loan fund that’s available by the state, but there’s a restriction on our ability to use it for design, planning and engineering. And that’s the very first step for getting a project done. How do we get it off the ground if we cannot even use the funds for design, planning and engineering? It’s very restrictive.

The county’s most recent budget is $448 million. It includes money for dealing with fire hazards and improving your disaster response. What lessons did you and your county take from what happened on Lahaina?

Many. Lahaina is difficult because it just seemed like all the elements for a big disaster just lined up. Most people were focused on the hurricane that was passing. And from what I understand, the Maui Fire Department was dealing with multiple fires that day with hurricane-force winds. I think what we learned is the importance of maintaining large parcels of property. It reemphasized the importance of having ag operations on ag land so that it’s well-managed. We didn’t really have these type of situations when we had the sugar industry — they actually utilized fire as part of the harvest.

But it also to me reemphasized that we need to instill in people their ability to fall back on their instincts and take action if they deem that there’s a dangerous situation. Even during Covid-19, I made some comments that, you know, we’re all born with a set of instincts — that sixth sense that sort of over time becomes dulled because perhaps we rely too much on the government to tell us when there’s a threat.

But the lessons learned were multiple. And we’re still learning lessons as we learn more about what happened in Lahaina. Communication — first responders have always talked about the importance of interoperability with their radio systems. I don’t know if they had challenges communicating that day. I know at times we have challenges being all on the same wavelength. If it’s multiple agencies, especially if it’s Coast Guard, state and county. And then we’re learning how to better utilize technology as well. The last fires we had in Hanapepe and Kaumakani, they were able to utilize some drone technology to be able to assess situations. But I think the biggest lesson is to treat every single incident as if it’s a disaster and don’t take things lightly.

There is an impression of Kauai getting so much rain, for example, the problems that you’ve seen with flooding on the North Shore and so forth. Are there areas that are vulnerable to fire, too, such as on the west side where it’s drier? Or would it be the whole southern coast?

If you look at the the Poipu area, you don’t have to look far to see a number of potential threats in regards to wildfire. And again, a lot of it deals with land management, maintaining land, which is easier said than done because we scramble every day to maintain our (road) shoulders. If it rains today and we just mowed, that buffalo grass and guinea grass will be up to your knee a week from now. And so we’re taking a look at a potential La Nina season where it’s going to be wet, and heading into the spring and summer that means we’re going to have a lot of fuel to deal with next summer. We’re already prepping our public works teams to make sure that they’re maintaining shoulders and making sure that if a fire should break out, some of our county roads are going to act like firebreaks.

Kauai’s police chief, Todd Raybuck, is retiring. How did that news strike you? Where do you see the department going?

It’s sort of a shift from past conversations that I’ve had with the chief because he was very committed to making Kauai his home. This is home for him. He fell in love with Kauai. It was evident he cares about this island. He cares about the people. He cares about the community.

I knew he was going through some rough times. That was obvious. But I never thought that it would trigger retirement. In a sense, I wasn’t surprised because he does have a family. He has a wife. He has two kids. And I don’t think most people realize that the spouses and the kids probably take it harder than the actual elected official, or leader, in his regard. And so I can only imagine that when somebody retires for family reasons, it was a family decision.

And taking a leadership role in any department, especially a police department, is no easy task. But to answer your question, I was a little surprised because it was a shift from him being committed. But there’s only so much a family can take.

Chief Raybuck, if I recall, initially dealt with the challenge of a racial joke. We seem to have got through that. There’s leaving a loaded gun in a bathroom. And the recent reports or allegations of retaliation against officers. Can you comment on that?

All unforced errors, all big mistakes, mistakes I guess in hindsight that could easily be avoided if you had do-overs. Unfortunately, in life you don’t have do-overs. In a sense, I think I have a better understanding of what he goes through living life under a microscope. Any misstep you make is going to be blown up, because we have an obligation to lead by example. He had it rough from day one. But it wasn’t big enough, I think, for me to write him off and say, “You’re not right for this island.” I mean, there are moments I’ll admit that I got frustrated, because any time somebody makes a mistake, it becomes my mistake as well, because I’ve got to deal with responding to it. I got to deal with a distraction.

But never was it to a point where I felt that he’s unfit to lead. And many things that were identified in the Gallup poll (in August ) were going to have to be big, monumental tasks. But there weren’t tasks that I felt that he could not achieve, because he has good people in the department.

I’m not hired to please people. I’m hired to make decisions for the greater good.

And you have to formulate and put those people in position to lead, and you have to have the confidence and give them the latitude to make these calls and make these changes. I knew he wasn’t going to be alone in tackling the task. He has great people in that department.

But no matter what, I wish the chief the best. We’re always going to have a relationship because we both came in around the same time we went through Covid at the same time. He came in as a police chief when it felt like the rest of the nation would have a negative sentiment towards our police department.

But here on Kauai, we love our police officers. We love our police department because a lot of them are coaches that coach our kids. They’re out there in the community. We know them. So I didn’t think that anything that was identified (in the poll) was not going to be able to be taken care of.

A lot of people say housing is one of the biggest issues because of the shortage. You’ve got two years left in office. What can you do in those two years to help alleviate the problem?

I think we’ve done quite a bit and we’re starting to see the fruits of our labors start to come to fruition. We totally walked away from affordable housing policy, right? Policy is a great tool for legislators to be able to introduce. And of course, if they’re eliminating red tape or creating efficiencies or creating more opportunity, those are all great things. But we’ve always felt and believe that you cannot legislate your way out of a housing crisis. What we’ve got to do is, one, create an environment where developers feel that they can actually profit off of affordable housing, because in the end, affordable housing for developers is so high risk with the current policies in place.

And so we decided that we’re going to have to come to the table with something to lower the cost of goods sold. And we felt we have a lot of real estate. We have access to infrastructure. We’re going to start identifying underutilized, public open space, sometimes parks, and repurpose those areas and those parcels of property for housing. We’re able to get a parcel of property right a stone’s throw away from here by the Water Department that previously was a state park under the Department of Land and Natural Resources. We got that transferred over to the county and we built our first Kealaula, which is sort of the equivalent of Duane Kurisu’s Kahauiki Village (housing for people formerly homeless on Oahu). And that’s been such a success that in our Lima Ola development, which is on West Kauai, the first portion of that development to open up was our Kealaula, which is for families without homes. And so we opened that up, I think, a month ago. People are moved in and our goal is to create of Kealaula in every district.

We also feel that housing should be inclusive, meaning it shouldn’t be segregated. So we build communities where we have Kealaulas right there with our workforce housing. We’re taking a look at piloting projects for your working professionals that don’t qualify for affordable housing but can’t afford what’s on the market. And we’re playing around with ideas and how we can sell long-term leasehold properties for families that are ready to purchase as well.

Any NIMBY pushback?

All the time. Yeah. Everywhere we go. I mean, this park by Puhi that we went to the community to say we’re going to be putting some housing there — not too many people love the idea. But I’m not here and I’m not hired to please people. I’m hired to make decisions for the greater good. And what we always got to remind ourselves is that they may not understand now, but one day they will. And a lot of the housing proposals that get pushed back, as soon as they’re built out and people start seeing local families moving in — even people that they know — we understand that the long game is, initially, people are just going to object to change. Even good change is just natural.

So we get a lot of NIMBY, but what we try to do is get the community involved early through the master planning process so that when we’re ready to go and start developing and building, we’ve already built a coalition of community members that have put in the time and effort to come out with something that they’re okay with. So when the opposition comes — a lot of times people are like, “wait, wait, wait” — where were you folks when we sacrificed dinners and soccer games to be a part of this process?

The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands is looking at buying that condo up in Kapaa. If they do, they can only rent or lease to anyone who’s over 50% Native Hawaiian. Most of the people that live there would not meet that requirement, which would mean that they need to move out. Are you worried about that?

Of course. Because those are going to be families that we’re going to have to find housing for as well. It addresses an issue but creates another issue as well. That’s why we’re blitzing on getting as much units as we can up and running and sort of pushing through the initial opposition, because we know how far behind we are. But that’s a big concern. But at the same time, if they’re addressing the housing needs of our Native Hawaiian population, they’re taking care of a problem that we struggle to solve as well.

What are the biggest societal problems on Kauai?

Gosh. Cost of living. I would say anywhere in Hawaii, anywhere you’re geographically isolated where most of your items got to get shipped in. And I come from the grocery business, so I know exactly. Any nail, a piece of lumber — exponentially the cost of goods is going to be higher. So tackling the cost of living is a huge challenge. It’s never been easy, convenient or cheap to live on an island. But the more that we can create economies that are self-sufficient here, I think the better it is to position ourselves to start changing the trajectory on that cost of living issue in Hawaii.

Having the necessary what I would call social infrastructure in place is also a huge challenge here on Kauai. When I talk to young families, especially moms, about some of the biggest challenges that you’re faced with to be able to maintain a job and keep a job, it’s of course housing. It’s going to be transportation and then child care — it’s so expensive. We don’t have enough early childhood education centers on Kauai. I think we’re the only island that doesn’t have an infant and toddler center in place. And so part of the reason why we’re renovating that old Big Save (store) space is to address the needs of our working families.

For child care and for early education as well. And that’s a former store from your family.

Yeah. And the funny thing is, is when we sold off our business, our old office that used to have my dad and the big bosses — not me, we were in the warehouse in Eleele — has been a preschool since we’ve closed up shop. And it was a conscious decision that my dad made at the time, because there were a number of offers coming in to lease that space. But when he saw a preschool, and knowing my mom is a lifelong educator, my wife is a school teacher, he said, “Well, you know, I think this side of the island doesn’t have enough preschool.” So he made it a priority. And so I see this project as just a continuation of what he saw this island needs versus what it wants.

Other end of the spectrum, Zuckerberg’s plans — what do know? (Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, owns land on Kauai.)

I don’t know much about his plans.

He has to come through the county for permits.

Yeah. His plans, I think, versus the old plans — the old plan was a subdivision, right? I think his plan is he’s more focused on creating an area for him and his family. I don’t usually pay too much attention to any individual’s plans and what they’re doing with their property. I’m more concerned about what people’s plans are on a bigger scope of things, bigger developments.

We have positioned ourselves to be able to weather most political storms, both at the state and federal level.

But I can say that any time Mark or Priscilla have reached out to me has been more along the lines, “Well, how can we help? We know you’re faced with this pandemic. Is there anything that you folks need as far as wildfire prevention?” They have reached out to say, “Hey, you know, what are you working on? And what are your immediate needs?” And they start trying to work to see if they can assist or even with the nonprofit world.

They’re kind of quiet about the amount of nonprofits they help. But I do know that there’s a significant amount of nonprofit organizations that have been supported by the Zuckerbergs. I don’t know the breadth of the net that he throws out. But I know that on Kauai it’s been positive.

He could build that child care center.

He could, but, you got to understand — and this is maybe where I’ve got to become better — people on Kauai are horrible at asking for help. We’re very independent. We’re very prideful of being able to take care of our own. We’re not ones that really know how to ask for help until somebody reaches out. And it’s something that I understand as mayor that I’ve had to learn how to do a better job of. But we’ve floated our idea on that property. Yeah. And then I know that Jeff Bezos has a passion for early childhood, too. We floated it out to their organization as well. But whether or not they support that particular initiative or not, we’re going to do it. We’ll find a way to do it.

What kind of impact do you anticipate that an incoming Trump administration is going to have on Kauai?

I don’t know, because I feel like as a state we have good protections in place for some of the things that he’s trying to unravel. But everybody has somebody in their family that is going to be impacted on the mainland, probably more so than what we’re going to feel here in Hawaii. Case in point, my daughter is a junior at UNLV, so she, of course, has some concerns.

Whatever reductions in funding is going to be felt by the state. And then we’re going to have the residual effect because most federal money gets passed on to us through the state. I want to say that we have positioned ourselves as a county to be able to weather most political storms, both at the state and federal level. And I think we made some very tough decisions as far as taking that general excise tax (surcharge) that was offered, or of being able to figure out a way to capture our (transient accommodations tax share) when the state took it away. And we’re actually bringing in more TAT through our own ability to collect it, and with the general excise tax, for roads, transportation, bridges.

And so I feel like we’ve been able to buffer ourselves from most political impacts, because I already could see the writing on the wall that the state was slowly going to be weaning the counties off (funding) and in fact taking from the counties. So very early on I said, “We’re going to have to make some tough decisions.” We raised property taxes on vacation rentals again to boost our affordable housing fund. Like I said before, that sense of independence and that sort of pride to be able to be as self-reliant as possible, I think has positioned Kauai to weather any potential negative impacts of any presidential term. But it’s hard to say, because some of his proposed appointees are unusual. So I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like for Kauai.

I can’t imagine Kauai weathering Covid again or another pandemic.

I’m a full-fledged Democrat, proud of it. But I was raised in the household that I pledge allegiance to this country and not to any elected official. But that being said, when the election is done, we accept either victory or defeat with grace. And we do whatever we can to move this nation forward. Whether or not we agree with what our leader is telling us or what they’re doing, we have a civic obligation, both as far as responsibilities and duties, to do our part. To move our communities forward. And I think collectively over time that’s been lost with just people who think, “Hey, I’m just a grocery store worker. What can I do?” We all have a tremendous responsibility to move our island forward and move our nation forward.

And I think we have to reestablish that with our young generation. I just I was reminded about this because recently I went to go speak to the Scouts. It’s pretty cool. I think there’s more girls in scouts than boys, and they all get along perfectly fine. I had to go speak to them about civic responsibility and civic duty. And all these kids are living it, because they’re the ones volunteering out in the community. Every Memorial Day, every Veterans Day, they’re out there decorating the headstones of our veterans out there at our cemetery.

So I am not so much concerned about what President Trump means for Kauai, because I’m very optimistic that we’re going to get our projects moving. We’re going to take care of the needs of our people, and we’re going to continue to just stay focused on infrastructure, housing and filling in the gaps for all of society’s needs.

We’ve been reporting on problems with the aging Kauai Community Correctional Center. This is also a statewide issue, and KCCC has other problems too. Is KCCC being dealt with properly?

I think they’re in a process of taking a look at relocating as well. The location for KCCC is horrendous because it’s in a tsunami zone. So anytime there’s a tsunami warning, you got to imagine the warden is trying to figure out like, “Okay, what do I do? Do we shelter in place? Do we relocate?” I know at times they’ve had to to relocate. And so just the location of where KCCC is — it shouldn’t be there. It needs to be moved.

And I think all all of our jails and prisons have aged. Government in general hasn’t really done the greatest job of keeping up with maintenance. I think that KCCC may be at the end of its usable lifespan. And they’ve done a great job as far as communicating with us and getting my thoughts on what the future policy should look like. I think they’re struggling to find out where it should be. But again, we don’t look at things as a state issue or a county issue, just as a community issue. They’ve been doing community outreach.

Invasive species — coqui frogs, coconut rhinoceros beetle, little fire ants and others. It’s a problem on the Big Island and Windward Oahu, for example, but we don’t hear as much talk about Kauai. I’m sure you have a problem with invasives.

Oh, yeah, we do. Coconut rhinoceros beetle is all over. We’ve got coqui, but I think coqui is well managed. I don’t think has gotten to a point where it’s like perhaps the point of no return, right?
But we have concerns because we see how fast they can establish a population. And you take a look at Kauai — it’d be like heaven for them, these coqui frogs. I think the importance is educating our homeowners. I know a lot of homeowners, if they have an invasive species, there’s this feeling of guilt and they’re afraid to report because they don’t want to be judged by their neighbors. But the best thing they can do is, an ounce of honesty upfront will save them a ton of heartache down the road. So we try to educate our property owners that, “Hey, please self-report.”

Are you going to go back as as the county mayor to the Legislature next year and say you need more help with invasives?

Yeah, we will. I still watch every committee meeting, and my office knows because they see me watching the Legislature, and I tell them, “Look, you got to know which way the wind is blowing with the Legislature because it shifts. And the best way that we can be effective is that we adjust our sails to which way they’re blowing so that we can get as much state support.” Because if we’re not aligned with what their priorities are, we’re going to get left behind real quick.

Collectively, we all play a role in it. You can’t just point fingers at one department. We’re all a part of this. I think we can actually probably create an economy out of this, because we do have people out there that could get the skills necessary.

An area of job growth?

Absolutely. To be able to tackle this problem. And that’s sometimes I think the best thing government can do is just be an incubator to create opportunities for the private sector to go into it, to be able to provide funding for nonprofit organizations that can focus the time and effort to do the eradication and identify where these sort of clusters are popping up and be able to get out there much more efficiently than government can do. We’re just not as fleet-footed and have the ability to pivot. And sometimes I feel that we should look at these opportunities as an opportunity to further diversify our economy and really support organizations that exist and new ones to be able to tackle some of the big challenges.

There’s been talk of a new mauka highway, or maybe greater use of the old cane haul roads. Any progress in that area? Traffic is a big problem here.

You know, I’m not going to say it’s impossible — mauka highway. But I’m going to say that it was something that we looked at and said we’re going to focus our efforts on other means of traffic alleviation rather than pursue cane haul roads and that.

What are those other focuses?

The best thing we can do is take a look at where we’re creating development. We had deregulated so much restrictions in this urban core with the hopes of getting property owners to start building housing right here in Lihue. And then we ran into a water transmission line debacle. That Hooluana subdivision, I believe, with 300 units ready to go — that’s being held up by a lawsuit because somebody had overstepped one of the environmental processes that should have taken place. So when we say it’s important to measure twice and cut once, we really mean it. Take the time to make sure you’re measuring twice and cutting once.

But we’re taking a look at the highway. State highways created a roundabout in the Kealia area that’s been fantastic for traffic flow. We’re taking a look at where we have four-way intersections and seeing if it’s feasible to get more roundabouts on this island to keep traffic flowing.

I don’t think the solution to traffic is necessarily building new highways and adding more lanes and building more roads. Because we’ve seen it time and time again where highways have been expanded, new roads have been built. And then as soon as they’re built, they’re clogged up with traffic again.

I really think it’s on how we move away from the old sort of subdivision philosophy of creating housing in one area. Schools are here, business districts are here. And just going back to more inclusive areas where people are living closer to where the work is. In-fill development. So once we start developing in this area, we’re going to see a lot more people living closer to where the work is. But that mauka highway will always be on the list of potential projects. But you take a look at what it costs to just resurface the road, and I think it’s out of reach as far as what we would consider low-hanging fruit.

I think you were a paper boy.

I was. The Garden Island newspaper.

Speaking of the Garden Island newspaper, it’s changed dramatically. One could argue that you’re becoming a news desert like in so many places, smaller communities in the U.S. How do you feel about that, particularly as a public service to your community?

Well, it’s sad because The Garden Island newspaper on a small island with not much to do is sort of like a pillar of our community. It is our one local newspaper. It’s hard for journalists to make a living (here). It doesn’t pay what it takes for somebody to be successful. And I think, now with the information highway being out on social media and people picking up what they feel is great news, people should check their sources.

It’s very troubling because there’s a lot of things happening here on Kauai and a lot of it is going to go unreported and has gone unreported because it’s been hard to maintain reporters that come to Kauai. They come and go. Sometimes I feel like this is like a prerequisite to moving on to bigger newspapers. But I can’t blame them because it’s expensive to live on Kauai. We have a lack of housing.

I’m thinking of your own future political future. What’s your thought looking ahead?

It’s so hard because we were raised that it’s arrogant to talk about your aspirations too soon. That’s just like a cultural thing, right? Just in my household, a nail that sticks up is the one that’s going to get hammered down. And the minute that you talk about what your dreams are, then it becomes, “He’s doing this because he wants to be the lieutenant governor.”

So it’s sort of awkward to talk about, but I think people deserve to know what I’m thinking about. And I would be lying if I didn’t say that I would love to one day be on that fifth floor (of the Hawaii State Capitol) and ultimately to give it a shot and see where I land.

I think the biggest fear that I have is it would be tragic if one day I’m old and my time has come and gone and I’m sitting there with a bag full of regrets because I didn’t give myself a shot or if things didn’t happen because I didn’t at least take a chance. I one day would like to see if I could lead this state the way that I feel that I could. And I’m not one to “take people out.” I’m more of a person that will bide my time and see where that window of opportunity opens.

I think I’ve got time on my side. I think the difficult part is going to be remaining relevant. But if things are meant to be, they’ll happen. I just don’t want anybody getting paranoid that I’m coming for their job — unless they do a horrible job, then I’m coming for it. But so far, I think this administration has done a good job. And so you don’t have to worry.

You are interested in the Ewa side of the fifth floor where the lieutenant governor is, or the Diamond Head side where the governor is?

I don’t know. That part is tricky, right? Honestly, I don’t mind working myself up. Every step of the way we’ve had to work ourselves up. Just because I came from a grocery store family doesn’t mean that I didn’t start at stocking shelves and chasing carts out in the parking lot. And that’s the best way for it to happen. But if something opens up, I’m one that’s going to jump on that opportunity and go full throttle and try to get it.