KEKAHA – Vowing to hand-deliver application forms to the island’s neighborhood centers if he has to, the new commanding officer of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility said beach access will be restored by this summer.
Capt. Don Wilson told a crowd of around 80 people at Kekaha Neighborhood Center late yesterday afternoon that a test access system allowing residents to enter the base from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends and federal holidays should quickly give way to restored seven-day-a-week access.
Once residents are issued picture base identification cards, they will be allowed to enter the base, where they will surrender their cards, probably at the main gate, enjoy the beaches, then retrieve their cards when they leave the base.
Those with ID cards will be allowed to drive down to the Major’s Bay parking lot, but for safety, security and liability reasons, beachgoers won’t be allowed to drive on the beach, Wilson said.
Slowly but surely, access to other surfing and fishing spots other than Major’s will be reopened, though initially it may take a walk from the Major’s parking lot to get to those locations, he said.
The base has been off-limits since the September 11 terrorist attacks on America to all but military and civilian populations with business at the base.
“We view ourselves as part of the community, and you as part of the PMRF family,” he told the gathering. If the weekend plan works well, seven-day-a-week access will be restored “within weeks,” he said.
One resident asked what would happen if he walked from beaches at Kekaha onto the base without the identification card.
“Try studiously to focus on the positive,” Wilson said, answering the question by indicating that person would be arrested for trespassing and prosecuted in the federal court system.
“In order to make it work, it must have teeth. This is a national asset we have to protect,” said Wilson.
The application forms for free picture identification cards allowing beach access should be available at every county neighborhood center by the end of next week, if not sooner, Wilson said.
The finishing touches are being put on the written forms by Navy attorneys now, he said.
The Kauai Police Department will conduct background checks for criminal records on all applicants, and convicted felons won’t be issued cards, he said.
The state’s congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., state and local elected officials and all those gathered at the Kekaha Neighborhood Center made the return of beach access possible, he said.
Local unrest had been building, and at a meeting here in early April when Navy officials announced there would at that time be no change in the no-access policy there were met by around 300 unhappy Kauaians.
Since that April meeting, Navy officials have been meeting with county elected officials. Rear Adm. R.T. Conway, Jr., commander of Navy region Hawai’i, proposed to county officials the limited-access plan that was massaged into what Wilson and Mayor Maryanne Kusaka announced Monday afternoon.
“Our departments have been making a tremendous effort to see how we can address the requirements of this plan,” said Kusaka.
Kaua’i County Council Chair Ron Kouchi said he seeks to continue working with the community and Navy officials, “to find a solution to our mutual problems of security and access to the beach.”
Wilson was emphatic that ensuring the security of the federal asset that is PMRF is job one. “We have to protect the base,” said Wilson, adding that no commander wants to levy requirements restricting access that has been traditional at Barking Sands, Major’s Bay and other shoreline areas at the base.
“We consider beach access a birthright,” he said. “But we can’t ignore the fact that we’re at war. We don’t know who the bad guys are,” said Wilson.
It will be his pleasure, he added, to be the commanding officer in charge when the base is given back to the community.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
