LANAI CITY – While much of Wednesday night’s testimony on the draft Lanai Community Plan revision focused on the availability of water, former Maui County Council Member Sol Kaho’ohalahala spoke out against a Pulama Lana’i proposal for rural residential development and a destination resort hotel project in the vicinity of Halepalaoa Landing.

While the draft plan recognizes the importance of perpetuating Hawaiian culture and traditional practices, “I believe that this plan right now does not protect those rights,” he told council Planning Committee members at the Lanai Community Center.

The plan drafted by the Lanai Planning Commission calls for setting aside 20 acres for the “Halepalaoa Retreat Resort” on what had been the Club Lanai site on the eastern side of the island.

Earlier this month, in an introduction of the plan to council members, county Department of Planning senior planner Mary Jorgensen called the plan for a third resort on Lanai the “most controversial” proposal being forwarded to council members for consideration. If approved, the resort would be in addition to the Four Seasons Resort Lanai at Manele Bay and the Four Seasons Resort Lanai Lodge at Koele.

The up-to-100-room resort would include an adjacent 250-acre rural residential area and two parks. The draft plan includes a 260-acre conservation “buffer zone” to prevent urban expansion.

Kaho’ohalahala told council members that he was part of the citizens group that helped draft the first Lanai Community Plan in 1983. The group made a concession by agreeing to designate resort development in Manele, giving up traditional and cultural practices to fish in the area in exchange for a commitment that the eastern side of Lanai would be left untouched by resort development and open for subsistence fishing and Native Hawaiian cultural practices.

Allowing Pulama Lana’i’s proposed third resort to go forward would “infringe on traditional and customary Native Hawaiian rights,” he said.

He emphasized that the pristine area was for all residents to enjoy, not only Native Hawaiians.

The draft plan says that the hotel/resort would be small in scale and private, providing views of Maui and Molokai. Hotel units would be individual structures built in a Hawaiian village style, with an environmentally sensitive design. And, there would be a beach club.

The plan says development of the Halepalaoa area would “require development of a suitable road or coastal access (and) require site design, such as green infrastructure methods, that reduces sediment and other pollutant runoff into adjacent coastal waters.”

It also notes that the area “contains abundant cultural and archaeological resources that should be inventoried and protected” as required by state law.

Late Wednesday and through most of Thursday, Planning Committee members reviewed the 13-chapter plan, page by page. On Thursday evening, committee Chairman Don Couch said the panel had gotten through Chapter 7, which covers the island’s infrastructure and utilities. (The other chapters cover the plan’s introduction; vision and guiding principles; environment and natural resources; hazard mitigation; cultural, historic and scenic resources; and economic development.)

The committee decided to retain the Lana’i Water Advisory Committee or some other sanctioned community group to “keep track of water issues on Lanai,” Couch said.

The committee was originally formed to help draft the Lanai Island Water Use and Development Plan, he said. The group has not officially disbanded, and its status remains before the council’s Water Resources Committee, he said.

“Hopefully, soon we’ll figure out what to do with the LWAC,” Couch said.

A couple of testifiers Wednesday night expressed dismay with changes being brought to the island by wealthy outsiders. In 2012, billionaire Larry Ellison purchased 98 percent of the island from Castle & Cooke. Through his development company, Pulama Lana’i, Ellison set about to make sweeping changes to the island that included a planned desalination plant to produce fresh water from brackish water.

Now, the desalination project is on hold while Pulama Lana’i considers what to do in light of conditions placed on the project’s special use permit by the Lanai Planning Commission.

Lanai resident Melvin Catiel said that he enjoys living on the island with one of Hawaii’s last plantation towns because he feels happy and relaxed.

“I don’t see (the) rat race,” he said.

Those trying to exploit Lanai are “only here to make money; that’s it,” he said.

Resident Winifred Basques recalled how former Lanai owner David Murdock of Castle & Cooke took away the plantation town’s morning wake-up whistle for pineapple workers.

She said those who come to Lanai to make money aren’t there for the long term.

“When the pocket is full, they say, ‘Good-bye, thank you very much,’ ” she said.

In testimony Wednesday responding to comments on the extent of Pulama Lana’i’s development plans, Chief Operating Officer Kurt Matsumoto said that the company is not trying to change the character of Lanai or harm the island’s fresh water supply.

* Brian Perry can be reached at bperry@mauinews.com.