• Hairbrained idea • On animal quarantine and Green Harvest • Give peace a chance, stop the war • Thanks Hairbrained idea Please tell me that I read it wrong. They aren’t really considering using my tax dollars to trap
• Hairbrained idea • On animal quarantine and Green Harvest •
Give peace a chance, stop the war • Thanks
Hairbrained idea
Please tell me that I read it wrong. They aren’t really considering using my tax dollars to trap stray cats, neuter them, and then release them?
Maybe Nancy Pelosi is the newest member of our County Council. Our bird, a Sun Conure, is definitely against this hairbrained idea.
John Glover, Kalaheo
On animal quarantine and Green Harvest
Green Harvest is defended (“Flying high,” Letters, June 22) not for results, but for honor. There is no honor in doing the wrong thing, with the wrong method, and for the wrong reason.
This operation falls into the “doing something is better than doing nothing” category of justification, which is intrinsically ridiculous.
As wasteful, annoying and futile as “Green Harvest” is, it only takes second place on the list of idiocies.
First place? The 90 years of quarantine, replete with countless tragedies, without a single case of rabies detected, except for the rabid defense of this expensive abomination we inflict on people who are not yet us. It is anti-aloha. It is the shame of Hawai‘i. In return we get a little false security.
In the age of computers and airport security, documentation should replace quarantine entirely. Animals and owners don’t board without it. That’s already the case for people.
The other shame of Hawai‘i is that we cut education, services to handicapped, workers’ purchasing power and necessary projects. At the same time we fail to eliminate worthless, expensive and always stressful producing operations such as Green Harvest and quarantine.
Pete Antonson, Lawa‘i
Give peace a chance, stop the war
The hydro/FERC/FFP war is a bizarre waste of everyone’s time and effort. We pretty much all agree hydro should be investigated. We all want to see the lowest cost projects and that argues for at least seeing if we can make KIUC non-profit development work. We should all agree that historically water rights have been a huge source of corruption in the State of Hawai‘i using exactly the processes in place if we don’t try something different.
If its intentions were not clear enough, the KIUC Board passed a resolution stating that KIUC would only support diversion of water for hydro projects after needs were met for drinking, agriculture, cultural, recreations, etc. KIUC’s position is more restrictive for hydro development than I can imagine any other hydro developer taking and is consistent with KIUC being a co-op and taking the broad view to do the best things for the membership.
As I understand the arguments against KIUC/FERC/FFP, FERC is a federal process and somehow bad. The fact that FERC is a federal process is irrelevant. There are good and bad federal processes and good and bad state processes. What is very relevant is if the process is better or worse.
The FERC process is better; it has no disadvantages and several advantages: It does not bypass any state permitting process; without doubt, it leaves the ultimate decision on water rights and flow levels at the state level. It does reduce the chance of inefficiency of multiple competing entities, in this specific case it blocks a for-profit entity trying to keep the co-op from developing a cheaper project. Importantly, it creates additional transparency that may help reduce corruption — corruption that would increase the costs of the projects.
Aren’t lower rates important? Isn’t preventing corruption important? I urge everyone to vote YES on the hydro ballot issue.
But more importantly, I urge people to stop the war, a war that is only going to hinder hydro development anytime soon — and the chances were probably already less than 50/50 — hydro development is always difficult, and should be, because water management is both important and difficult because of competing interests for water.
For whatever reasons — and I cannot imagine them at all — the FERC opponents have, up to this point, blown any chance to be helpful to the people of Kauai, and blow their chance to help the environment. Sometimes there are difficult tradeoffs, I get that, but there are no difficult tradeoffs here at all. The FERC, FFP, KIUC process actually being proposed would focus attention on exactly the difficult issues we should be focusing on. The FERC license (not permit) is way down the road and KIUC has already said they are not committed to that part of the process if we are lucky enough to get that far.
If you’ve looked at the FERC process at all, if you’ve listened to the KIUC/FFP roadmap at all, you see abundant places where community input, environmental input, and practical input is sought — every single possible real issue has multiple places for community input. That’s where we should be focusing our attention.
Walt Barnes, Lihu‘e
Thanks
I would like to take this opportunity to say that if it wasn’t for Green Harvest commandos eradicating that despicable marijuana, I never would have discovered the fun of being a meth addict. Thank you.
Also I think you guys should carry bigger guns because my grandma thinks you guys are wimps.
Robert Reynolds, Lihu‘e
