Kekaha harbor project will be white elephant

The Cayetano/Hirono administration will spend millions of dollars of taxpayer

money to build cruise ship facilities at the Kekaha Small Boat Harbor based on

incorrect data. Once completed, these facilities will become a white elephant.

You might as well flush the millions of dollars down the toilet right

now.

At a public meeting on Sept. 6, state officials asked the 30 or so

people in attendance to write to them, stating whether they favor or oppose

building the cruise ship facilities at the Kekaha Small Boat Harbor. Only a

handful of the 30 people will bother to write. Based on this small sample –

just a tiny percent of the Kekaha community – the state will go ahead and spend

millions of dollars.

This meeting and future public meetings are just a

sham to justify a project which the politicians have already decided to

build.

Then after the cruise ship facilities are built and the money spent,

the people of Kekaha and Waimea will discover, to their horror, that their

towns are being inundated with hordes of tourists. Small boaters like me will

find that they cannot use their small boat harbor because of the many boats

ferrying passengers to and from the cruise ship and because of the tourists,

buses and taxis clogging the harbor.

The community will finally wake up and

act to reclaim their harbor by picketing the cruise ship passengers. The cruise

ship industry will take their business someplace else because they are not

wanted here. This will be known as Mazie Hirono’s million dollar white

elephant.

This project is a stupid idea. Small boat harbors were designed

and built for small boats. Not for thousand passenger cruise ships.

Two

years form now, Mazie Hirono will come to Kaua’i with her hat in her hand

asking the people to vote for her for governor. Kaua’i people will not forget

Mazie Hirono’s million dollar white elephant. I will remind

them.

Jerry J. Sokugawa

Kekaha