Letters for Thursday, April 9, 2009

• Farm Worker Housing Bill needs your support

• An open letter to Councilwoman Kawahara

Farm Worker Housing Bill needs your support

Soon the Planning Commission will vote on whether to adopt the Farm Worker Housing Bill. If it passes it will then go to the County Council for a vote.  

This is an important bill drafted by JoAnn Yukimura with the help of many others interested in a sustainable future for Kaua‘i.

The bill will allow temporary housing on farmland for farm workers making it easier and less expensive to produce food on Kaua‘i. In these changing times I think this is a good first step in creating a self-sustaining community on our island.  

Last Saturday I attended the Kauai Agricultural Forum. I was encouraged to see such a large turnout with so many forward-thinking people there.  

Ian Costa, the head of the Planning Department, expressed strong support for the Farm Worker Housing Bill during his brief 10-minute speech. It was obvious by their cheers and applause that the crowd was very pleased with his words.  

Mayor Carvalho was there as well and received a round of applause.  

I am encouraged that this forum, created by the people of Kaua‘i, has gotten the attention of our elected and appointed officials. When we are willing to work to make new policy, we only need to ask our leaders to assist us as our public servants to institute our desires.

Please let your representatives know that you support the farmers of Kaua‘i and the Farm Worker Housing Bill and you would appreciate their vote in support of it.

Rebecca Miller, Anahola

An open letter to Councilwoman Kawahara

As one of the panelists in this public forum I want to say mahalo for coming to this important public meeting.

Although the purpose of the Kaua‘i Agriculture Forum was to address how we, as an island community, can become food and fiber self-sufficient, it is part of a larger movement to design and build a sustainable Kaua‘i: an island community that is food and fiber (and energy) independent and self-sufficient, one that is a thriving community, economically prosperous, with 100 percent employment, well-educated citizens, and one that is interdependent upon one another for almost all goods and services, not one that is dependent upon imports — whether those imports be food, fiber, energy or visitors.

 Spending money to promote tourism (visitor imports) is not sustainable, economically, socio-culturally or environmentally. We need to adopt the “build it and they will come” (automatically) attitude and policy of building a thriving, vibrant and sustainable island community — the Garden Island that is truly a garden, where local people are well employed and own their own homes, where we grow all our own food, fiber and produce our own renewable energy and no longer import annually about $100 million worth of food, building materials and energy.

Instead, we will produce essentially 99 percent of these products right here on Kaua‘i. By doing so, we will create thousands of jobs, this money will stay in our island economy (the “magnifier effect”), be self-sufficient and independent, our children will no longer have to leave Kaua‘i to find meaningful jobs on the Mainland, we will have food, fiber, energy and job security, and we will become a “global model” of a sustainable island community. People will want to come from all over the world on their own just to see how we did it.

The results of building a sustainable Garden Island will be many:

• we will put locals first; re-localization = sustainability;

• we will focus on island interdependence first, not on imports;

• we will support only sustainable businesses that protect and enhance our precious natural and cultural resources first;

• we will adopt the premise that Kaua‘i’s only two forms of “natural capital” are Kaua‘i’s unique ecosystems: its forests, rivers and coral reefs, and our Hawaiian brothers and sisters, cultural practitioners; and any development that protects and enhances these two group of “natural capital” is by definition sustainable;

• we will define “sustainable development” as any development that protects or restores the environment (does not pollute), and improves and enhances the social, economic and cultural well-being of local people, particularly native Hawaiians, our host culture, our culture;

• we will recognize that the intent and implied meaning of our state motto: “Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘aina i ka pono” is much broader and profound than its literal meaning, and should be seen and its meaning understood as: “The life of the land (and of its people-keiki o ka ‘aina) are perpetuated (made sustainable) in righteousness (to do that which is culturally, environmentally, ethically, morally and economically correct),” which is an excellent definition of sustainability.

Mahalo nui loa Councilwoman Kawahara.

Don “Lalakea” Heacock, DLNR aquatic biologist