Hirono presses Army on Pōhakuloa lease, condemnation worries on Hawaii Island

Mazie Hirono used a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to put the Army’s plans for Pōhakuloa Training Area under a sharper spotlight, pressing Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll on whether the service was negotiating in good faith and whether condemnation was being considered to keep the Hawaii Island land under military control.

The exchange centered on a lease that expires on Aug. 16, 2029, and on a training area that the Army has long treated as essential to its operations in Hawaii. U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii says the federal government has leased about 23,000 acres of state-owned land at Pōhakuloa for nearly six decades. In project materials, the Army has proposed retaining up to about 22,750 acres, while Engage Hawaii materials say the Army has proposed retaining 19,700 acres of state-owned land at PTA on Hawaii Island.

The dispute has only grown more sensitive because Pōhakuloa is not just a military range. It sits at high elevation on Hawaii Island, and the lease renewal fight has drawn sustained public opposition over environmental and cultural concerns. The final environmental review record for the land-retention proposal flagged wildfire risk and potential impacts to Native Hawaiian cultural sites, including the possibility of inadvertent damage from routine training activities. State environmental review materials also identified the proposal as involving state land and conservation district land.

Hawaii officials have spent months building a public process around the talks. In September 2025, Gov. Josh Green’s office said the state launched EngageHawaii.gov to give residents a public voice in the lease negotiations. The governor’s office also said a 10-member Military Leased Lands Advisory Committee was created, with mostly Native Hawaiian leaders from the state and private sector, to help guide the process. Green’s office said the Army’s 65-year leases cover 22,971 acres at Pōhakuloa on the Big Island and 6,322 acres on Oahu.

The Army’s own project materials say it would seek to retain the state-owned land before the 2029 expiration to limit impacts on training, underscoring that the most consequential land-use fight is unfolding years before the deadline. With the second draft environmental impact statement filed in April 2024 and the final EIS filed in April 2025, the negotiations have already moved well beyond a routine lease extension and now sit at the intersection of military strategy, state land control and Hawaii Island’s cultural landscape.