At the end of July, Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. made good on a promise he had made to the Kaua‘i people numerous times. On the campaign trail, in his “report card” and then in an interview with us, he said
At the end of July, Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. made good on a promise he had made to the Kaua‘i people numerous times. On the campaign trail, in his “report card” and then in an interview with us, he said he would site a new landfill before his first, albeit abbreviated, term ended. And he did it.
It was a decision that everybody agreed needed to be made, but a decision that nobody wanted to make. For decades, mayors — including Bryan Baptiste, Maryanne Kusaka, JoAnn Yukimura and even Tony Kunimura — have had the opportunity and responsibility to move the ball forward on solid waste and all have passed or punted. But not Carvalho, the old NFL lineman.
Let’s be clear — siting a landfill is political suicide. Councilman Tim Bynum appropriately compared it to siting a nuclear power plant — nobody wants one in their backyard.
No matter where the new landfill was put — there were seven other choices between Kekaha and Anahola — it would have made somebody upset, and on an island as beautiful and small as Kaua‘i, there is simply no truly good place to put one.
It’s a matter of choosing the lesser of eight significant evils. But refusing to choose where to put the refuse is a failure of leadership.
For Carvalho to take on that burden during a two-year window in which he’s simply serving out the remainder of Baptiste’s term is surprising and encouraging. It might have been easier to just avoid the land mine entirely and ride his convincing 2008 election victory to a new four-year term, but we’re glad he didn’t take the easy way out.
To be sure, there would have been political costs to not siting a new landfill. Had he broken one of his major promises to Kaua‘i’s people, Carvalho would have been roundly panned as a big-talk, no-walk politician.
Carvalho and his staff were wise to announce the selection now, relatively early in his short term, with the understanding that there are still 14 months between today and the 2010 election that will determine if he is allowed to continue to serve as the island’s mayor. His crew is banking on his ability to do enough good in that time span to make people forget about this inevitably unpopular move.
Whether that gamble pays off is something we’ll have to keep our eye on next year, but you can be certain you have not heard the last peep from Kalaheo on the matter.
Our praise for Carvalho making the decision is not to say we necessarily agree with the selection itself. The Westside has been unfairly burdened with a landfill for decades, and to plop 127 acres of garbage “smack in the middle” of a functioning agricultural operation, as it was described by Kaua‘i Coffee President Wayne Katayama, is certainly an odd choice on its face.
For now, we’ll reserve judgment and will weigh in again as the process unfolds.
We are counting on the Kaua‘i County Council to serve its most basic function as an independent branch of government and provide oversight of our county executive by going over the selection with a fine-toothed comb before forking over the millions of dollars that will be required to purchase the land from an unhappy owner in Alexander and Baldwin and then develop it.
As that review begins, however, Carvalho deserves to be applauded for stepping up, keeping his word, and making a much-needed decision on what is a much-overdue solid waste management issue.
Siting a landfill anywhere is tough. Doing so during a short two-year term is bold. And doing it quickly, before the 2010 re-election campaign really gets going, is shrewd.
