Kusaka: $7 fee not enough to rid island of junk cars

PO’IPU — It would take a fee increase to $7 per registered vehicle to pay for

disposal of junk cars on the island, Mayor Maryanne Kusaka said

yesterday.

The County Council’s Finance Committee yesterday formally

proposed raising the fee to $5, the highest allowed by the state. Councilman

Gary Hooser is against the increase, saying the fee alone won’t solve the

problem, and that a better plan needs to be formulated.

“Hello. This is a

user fee, not a tax,” Kusaka said.

She was responded to a letter from

Hooser saying he couldn’t support the increase unless funds could be moved from

real-property taxes to cover costs.

The county already uses property tax

receipts to fund the car disposal program, Kusaka said. It costs between $125

and $140 a vehicle to retrieve and eventually truck the junkers to Nawiliwili

Harbor to barge them away.

The final market is the Far East, and it is not

known how much scrap metal is selling for in that market, she said.

The

county disposes about 2,000 cars a year (actually, 2,800 shipped in 1999 and

1,700 this year), and the lower amount shipped this year indicates the island

is winning the war on junk cars, Kusaka said.

It is transients, not

longtime residents, who are responsible for abandoning cars along roadsides and

on private and other public property, Kusaka told a Rotary Club of Po’ipu Beach

meeting of about 70 Rotarians and their guests, including many off-island

visitors here for the PGA Grand Slam of Golf.

Soon, the county will for a

third time put out for bid a contract to operate the Puhi Metals Recycling

Center. When it was being built, Kusaka said, she envisioned someone paying the

county for the right to operate the center. During the first two bid processes,

reality set in, and the lowest amount a company wanted to charge the county to

run the facility was $50,000 a month, she said.

Critics of the $1 million

price tag for the facility, located on Puhi Road, need to understand that a

required environmental control — a 12-inch packed liner for the bottom of the

area where cars are stored before they’re shipped off-island — cost the county

$500,000.

The mayor covered a lot of ground during the meeting, saying,

among other things:

l The county would embrace any new owner of Grove Farm

Co.

l The county would support a co-op or municipally-owned Kaua’i

Electric, whichever is best for the island’s people.

l Work on a new

revetment wall to protect Ho’one Road and hopefully help restore Brennecke

Beach should be done by next January. The work is taking about five months,

while it took five years to get the necessary governmental permits to perform

the work, she said.

She learned, she said, that when replenishing a beach,

any old sand from any old beach won’t always do. Workers under the county

contract had to examine sand from Maha’ulepu, Kekaha and Po’ipu before finding

a sand texture and color which came close enough to match existing Brennecke

Beach sand, Kusaka said.

Speaking of Maha’ulepu, Kusaka said she favors

preservation of shorelines and doesn’t think the wild, unspoiled Maha’ulepu

coastline, with ocean swimming areas marginally safe at best, would be a good

place to build a hotel.

“Let’s leave it wild and unspoiled, as it is,” she

urged.

She said she hopes a prospective Steve Case, chief executive officer

of America Online, will be successful in his acquisition attempt of Grove Farm

and the accompanying Maha’ulepu.

The island wouldn’t be what it is without

the balance that its physical beauty provides, and provisions for a healthy

economy, as well, Kusaka said.

The Kapalawai development on Robinson family

land near Pakala is something the community needs and will eventually embrace,

Kusaka said. Lewis Guyser of Destination Villages Kaua’i is “a wonderful

developer” who is “very sensitive to the environment,” she said.

Kusaka

said she is encouraged that the council has approved funding for the salary and

operating expenses for the county’s first-ever recycling coordinator, and added

that the way to educate adults about the need to recycle must come from the

children.

“Right now, we have parents with bad habits,” part of the

throwaway culture, she said. The children will bring home the message of the

importance of recycling, and the parents will listen, she hopes.

A

lingering problem, Kusaka said, is the high cost of recycling. While it costs

the county only around $22 a ton to toss waste into the Kekaha landfill, it

costs around $400 a ton to process recyclable material such as newspapers,

other types of paper, aluminum and glass.

“The real problem is, it’s just

not cost-effective,” she said.

A new solid-waste supervisor will tighten up

“wasted time” at the transfer stations, and a program services assistant will

help with tons of governmental paperwork (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,

state Department of Health, etc.) associated with solid-waste disposal issues,

Kusaka concluded.

Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at

pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).