Members of the state Board of Land and Natural Resources have fined North Shore landowner and one-time car magnate James Pflueger $4 million for polluting Pila‘a Bay on the North Shore in November 2001. Board members said Pflueger’s contractors altered
Members of the state Board of Land and Natural Resources have fined North Shore landowner and one-time car magnate James Pflueger $4 million for polluting Pila‘a Bay on the North Shore in November 2001.
Board members said Pflueger’s contractors altered a drainage system on a plateau above the reef, resulting in mud flowing down the hillside into the water and under the home of Amy and Rick Marvin during a heavy rainstorm.
Last month, Pflueger received no jail time from a state judge, but was fined $500,000 for having committed 10 felony environmental crimes.
“The board took action Thursday. We are demanding that he pay that amount,” said Ron Agor, the BLNR representative of Kaua‘i Ni‘ihau.
“The fine reflected the DLNR’s concern to protect the valuable natural resources that were damaged,” Agor said yesterday.
Pflueger was not available for comment yesterday, but his attorney, William McCorriston, said state officials will have to wait a long time if they want their money.
“The decision of the board is unbelievable, arbitrary and capricious,” McCorriston said from his office in Honolulu Friday afternoon. “It is an unbelievable travesty of justice. And it will be reviewed and appealed to Circuit Court.”
Agor said a contested case on recommended fines to be imposed on Pflueger has been going on for a year, and that the board finally decided on the $4-million fine.
“We have been deliberating over this for a while, and the board unanimously agreed to it (the fine),” Agor said.
Agor said it was his recollection that state Department of Land and Natural Resources leaders recommend a fine of $5 million or so at one time, but the board didn’t act on it.
A hearing officer, Michael Gibbon, had recommended a $2-million fine, with credit given toward the cost of certain remedial work already done by Pflueger, McCorriston said.
Various work has already been done, and Pflueger has paid the tab, McCorriston said.
After a crackdown by Kaua‘i County government officials over un-permitted grading on his property located above the reef, Pflueger had agreed to remediation work estimated at a cost of about $7 million.
McCorriston said Gibson is a well-respected attorney and former president of the Hawaii Bar Association, and that state officials gave him the responsibility of determining a fine that Gibson deemed fair.
“After they chose him, they chose to ignore his recommendations regarding damages, “McCorriston said.
McCorriston said the fine is “so disproportionate to any fine in the history of Hawai‘i, or in the history of the United States, for a similar activity.”
State DLNR officials have said that the environmental damage is grave, and that a multimillion-dollar fine seemed fair.
McCorriston said that, while there was real and demonstrable damage to the reef in a lagoon on O‘ahu in a similar case, the damage done to Pila‘a Bay reef is not provable.
“It is mud (that was) washed away by natural resources,” McCorriston said.
Scientists who attended a Kaua‘i hearing of the board on the matter, and who represented Pflueger, said widespread erosion is a natural phenomenon along the coastline by Pila‘a Bay.
They said the runoff was not necessarily the result of unpermitted grubbing and grading on the plateau above the reef.
State DLNR officials said, however, that the excessive mud from Pflueger’s property, caused by unpermitted work, killed parts of the reef.
