• Wailua Beach path ‘free ride for tourist industry’ • Ethanol a non-starter • When does it stop? Wailua Beach path ‘free ride for tourist industry’ The Wailua Beach bike path supporters had better take notice on the latest shoreline
• Wailua Beach path ‘free ride for tourist industry’ • Ethanol a non-starter • When does it stop?
Wailua Beach path ‘free ride for tourist industry’
The Wailua Beach bike path supporters had better take notice on the latest shoreline erosion that is taking place on the beach today.
The recent coastal surges that have happened in late May and early June have now broken through the county’s own 40-foot shoreline setback ordinance.
The electrical box fronting the Kuamo‘o intersection and the adjoining educational stand is now closer to the shoreline less than 19 feet from the crumbling sand dune.
The concrete lifeguard base and the former volleyball sand lot, along with boundary boulders from the makeshift parking lot, have now fallen into the surge.
Much of the planned bike path is now much less than 40 feet from the new high water mark. The sand path is crumbling and now developing cracks and water rivulets.
The “big bucks” spent so far on the Wailua Beach path and the cement path being built behind Kintaro would have been much better spent on hiring our youth for park cleanup and restoration this summer.
The Wailua Beach bike path is nothing more than a free ride for the tourist industry, a boondoggle for the corps of bike renters popping up in Wailua and a twisted view of paradise for some well-heeled newcomers who don’t understand protecting and leaving our Wailua Beach shoreline as-is.
Mayor Carvalho, stop this foolishness now.
James Alalem, Wailua
Ray Catania, Puhi
Ethanol a non-starter
What follows is the text of a letter just sent to Gov. Abercrombie. I hope he listens and takes action:
Dear Gov. Abercrombie,
Please repeal the mandate that we add ethanol to our gasoline. It is a really bad idea, wrong for our state and damaging to our economy. Put short, I would never voluntarily buy E-10 for reasons outlined below. Because of the mandate, I have no choice.
I reluctantly supported Gov. Linda Lingle’s E-10 mandate in the vain hope that it would help enable Gay and Robinson to stay in sugar production here on Kaua‘i.
For many years they had been good stewards of the land, keeping thousands of acres in ag production and providing many jobs. Sadly, as they geared up to switch to ethanol production, they realized it would be a money-losing situation, just as sugar production had become. They bowed out.
Others seem willing to try growing sugar cane for ethanol production, but it is very hard to believe they can be more efficient than Gay and Robinson and harder still to believe they can succeed.
It is bad enough that we in Hawai‘i have to import all of our gasoline. Because of the mandate we also have to import ethanol which is inherently more expensive than gasoline. When mixed with gasoline it makes a substandard fuel with many drawbacks. It runs OK in both of our vehicles but there is a 3 per cent mileage penalty with E-10, adding to the already higher fuel costs. (It did cause an immediate fuel filter failure in our Chevy Venture van, but it ran OK after we bought a new filter.)
E-10’s propensity to absorb moisture forces us to take defensive measures for off-highway uses.
There are expensive additives to help avoid moisture problems in engines like outboards, generators and mowers. The fuel tanks in lawn equipment like trimmers and hedge clippers should be drained back into air tight storage containers after each use. Then the engines should be run until the carburetors are completely dry, wasting more fuel.
Finally, waste aside, ethanol was suggested as a way to reduce carbon footprints. For our vehicles it does reduce gasoline consumption by about 7 per cent but that is only part of the carbon footprint. Burning ethanol also contributes.
More important, it takes a great deal of fossil fuel to produce ethanol, either from corn or from sugar cane. Any net reduction in carbon footprint is nebulous.
In closing, please put this bad mandate in the trash bin of history.
John Love, Kapa‘a
When does it stop?
On Saturday, May 23, Mr. Gene Henry dropped by our home saying he represented the Census Bureau and we were randomly selected to answer a survey. Needless to say, we never responded and on Friday, June 1, we received an FedEx notification saying are were required to answer the question of the survey.
This week, after returning home from church there was another notice stating we are wasting taxpayers’ money because he is having to keep coming.
When did it become law that we have to partcipate in a survey? Do we not comply with the Census Bureau every 10 years? What other information is needed anyway?
Perhaps I am making too much of this but when you have someone threatening my freedom to choose to answer his survey it just doesn’t sit well with me. Is there anyone else out there who has also been selected? I can be reached at mtorio@anahola.net.
Marie M. Torio, Anahola
