The city’s effort to dismantle Haiku Stairs, an illegal hiking path that leads to a spectacular view of Oahu’s Windward side, is being challenged again by Friends of Haiku Stairs, which argued Friday for a preliminary injunction to stop demolition.

In a lawsuit filed in April, the group said the city as well as two state agencies failed to comply with historic preservation regulations. Environmental regulations were the focus of an initial lawsuit that the group filed last August, but that was rejected by a judge in January.

“This case presents completely different legal issues,” the group’s lawyer Tim Vandeveer said at a court hearing Friday morning.

The new lawsuit argues that the stairs’ existence is protected by a 1999 historic preservation covenant. To dismantle the stairs, the city needs concurrence from the State Historic Preservation Division within the Department of Land and Natural Resources.  

“We just think that their concurrence with the city’s plan was wrong, and we think it was misguided and based on incorrect information,” said Justin Scorza, vice president of Friends of Haiku Stairs.

Specifically, the group’s lawsuit contends that the city didn’t tell SHPD about the covenant and that preservation was not considered as an option. 

Defendants from the city, the DLNR and the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which owns the land around the stairs, argued that correct procedures were followed, and that the Friends of Haiku Stairs just disagrees with the outcome. 

“These are policy decisions,” DLNR attorney Miranda Steed said at the hearing.

Mayor Rick Blangiardi decided to dismantle the stairs, citing hiker rescues and complaints from nearby residents about trespassing.

The Friends of Haiku Stairs wants the stairs to remain standing in case Judge Lisa Cataldo rules in its favor.

Cataldo said that she would try to issue a decision by Monday. Until then, spokesperson Ian Scheuring said that the city agreed to not remove the stairs, but that preparatory work like loosening bolts or clearing vegetation can still occur. 

The fate of the stairs after dismantling remains an open question. The city hired The Nakoa Cos. , to dismantle the stairs, and their contract stipulates that Nakoa will own them. 

The Koolau Foundation said that Nakoa offered to donate some of them to further the foundation’s plan to turn a portion of Haiku Valley into a cultural preserve. 

“If we install some of the stairs it would help with access to parts of the valley that are slopey. So we figured we could incorporate it as part of our landscaping plan, because we are going to convert the valley to a native forest again,” Koolau Foundation board member Mahealani Cypher said.

Kualoa Ranch has also expressed interest in obtaining some of the stairs for a tourist attraction.

After the hearing, Scorza rallied a group of about 20 supporters of the Haiku Stairs outside the courtroom. 

“Even if the judge rules in our favor, we’ve still got to keep going. If the judge rules against us, we still have a hearing Tuesday,” he said. The group will attend a closed-door administrative hearing with the State Historic Preservation Division on Tuesday over many of the same issues.

The initial lawsuit said that a new environmental impact statement was required because a 2019 EIS didn’t consider the impact of the stairs’ full removal. A judge rejected that argument in January, and the Friends of Haiku Stairs filed an appeal in February. No hearing has been scheduled yet.