The Hawaii State Land Use Commission, to its great credit, rejected, at least for now, the request by D. R. Horton to permit the Hoopili development on Oahu's Ewa plain agricultural lands.

This gives the city and community time to review the appropriateness of the Ewa Urban Growth Boundary, which includes some of the most valuable and productive agricultural lands remaining on Oahu.

When the Ewa Development Plan was written in 1997, a new planning tool —the urban growth boundary — was introduced and incorporated into the plan. An urban growth boundary is a pro-active growth-management tool designed to control urban sprawl by drawing a line beyond which development cannot extend. The Ewa urban growth boundary extends along the freeway from Waipahu to Kapolei down to the ocean, permitting urban growth on all the land below the freeway, including what is currently the highest producing farmland in the state.

Drawing an urban growth boundary was a good idea. It had been forming since the 1970s when it was first decided to build a "Second City" on the Ewa plain to take care of future growth. The problem is that a great deal of prime agricultural land was included within the boundary and opened up for conversion to urban development. This was a big mistake, as became apparent as sugar cane was phased out.

Kapolei, the so-called "Second City," was to be a place where families could both live and work. This vision, however, has thus far not materialized.While more and more homes are built, commercial sprawl along former agricultural lands offers only a limited number of jobs, so that the vast majority of residents have to commute to work in Honolulu. This has resulted in bumper-to-bumper morning and evening traffic. The current Ewa traffic morass is the direct result of poor planning.

D.H. Horton, the Hoopili developer, now plans to build 1,200 additional homes and commercial spaces on 1,500-plus acres of prime, actively farmed agricultural land. This development, on a parcel equal in size to Hawaii Kai or Mililani, would represent a loss of about 14 percent of our island's best agricultural land. This is land badly needed if we are to avoid complete dependency outside of Hawaii for our agricultural products. D.H. Horton wants us to believe that this massive Hoopili development would help fulfill the "work where you live" promise of the Second City, when in fact the majority of the jobs created there are low paying or part time, and hardly sufficient to support a family.

After many years of massive housing and retail projects, it is still necessary to drive to Honolulu in order to earn a decent income.

There is no doubt that D. H. Horton will soon be back before the Land Use Commission with a revised plan. But the current delay gives the City and County of Honolulu, the City Council, and Oahu citizens time to correct the serious mistake made when a large amount of productive agricultural land was included within the Ewa Urban Growth Boundary. Given the state Constitution's provision that prime agricultural land be preserved to provide locally grown food for our people, the Ewa urban growth boundary must be changed so that Ewa's prime agricultural land is protected.