• Cheap natural gas is costly • Hanalei Plantation Resort project • Cleaners need to comply or shut down • Fact check needed at KIUC • KIUC should build wind farms Cheap natural gas is costly In recent TGI Forum
• Cheap natural gas is costly • Hanalei Plantation Resort project • Cleaners need to comply or shut down • Fact check needed at KIUC • KIUC should build wind farms
Cheap natural gas is costly
In recent TGI Forum commentaries, both Mr. Lewis and Mr. Rachap recently promoted the purchase of natural gas by KIUC. Digging deeper, one learns that there’s a sinister side to the promise of cheap energy from this source. It’s been well documented that those living in the areas where natural gas is being extracted are paying a life-threatening price.
Fracking, the process that removes methane (mostly) from rock shale in the earth, is creating health problems as well as degrading the lifestyle in communities where it’s being extracted. In Southwestern Pennsylvania, huge tanker trucks filled with fracking fluid roar though once sleepy towns; towering methane flaming stacks disrupt a former tranquil countryside with flares and jet engine noise. Fracking fluid, injected into wells to flush out the gas, contains several toxic chemicals that have contaminated drinking water and let off a strong odor. And breaking the rock shale emits high amounts of radon and possibly other radioactive substances.
“Pennsylvania’s residents are paying a heavy price for the state’s natural gas boom: undrinkable water, respiratory ailments and dead pets,” according to the July/August 2012 issue of Sierra Magazine.
The kicker in this scary scheme is that the greenhouse gas emissions from burning the natural gas for energy are said to be as toxic as those of coal or oil. Let’s do the right thing on Kaua‘i: focus on clean renewable energy to replace oil and not even consider profiting from the misery of others.
Gabriela Taylor
Keapana Valley
Hanalei Plantation Resort project
Recently, two more-or-less opposing editorials were published in The Garden Island, one on July 17 by Ma‘akala Ka‘aumoana, and another on July 20 by Alan Faye, both commenting on the proposed Hanalei Plantation Resort project on the Club Med property. My first and most basic question was simple: What is proposed and what does it look like?
Reading people’s textual descriptions of such a thing is not particularly helpful, and a picture of course is worth a thousand words, so a bit of sleuthing on the Internet yielded a draft, which could be found at http://lauhala.com/hinano/20120608-072440-hanalei-plantation-resort-draft-proposal.pdf.
Thank you Ohana Hanalei LLC for your transparency and posting this as public information. Now the residents of Kaua‘i and the North Shore can see what is proposed and form their own opinions.
For me, upon first review, this is a project, with more homes, hotel units, restaurant and other structures, that is larger than I had hoped to see.
The condo ruins in a funny sort of way represent a significant amount of open space, something I would hope is retained as part of new development.
This property will obviously be developed given its stunning location. Now begins the long process of coming to some kind of agreement that both residents and developers can live with.
Joseph Celona
Princeville
Cleaners need to comply or shut down
In a community like we have on Kaua‘i, it is so uncommon to find a business like Up To Date Cleaners that — for years — has shown a total disregard for safety and environment of the community where they are located.
They operate their business knowing that they have been cited and fined for failure to comply with any type of code enforcement made by county officials and inspectors from the Hawai‘i State Department of Health.
Just one of the violations states that the building has gas piping suspended and distributed throughout. All nine gas pressure regulators are not installed or vented properly.
The installations pose a serious fire condition should a regulator vent off and the gas is trapped in the building.
Note: The building was severely damaged with a fire last December.
There have also received multiple citations and fines from the DOH for excessive noise and operating a dry cleaning machine (hazardous material) without a permit.
The county has the authority to shut down this facility for the violations issued in two March letters from the county.
The county refuses to take such action even though Up To Date management blatantly ignores those demands.
Neighbors are incessantly bombarded with noise, exceeding levels mandated for a residential environment, as well as malodorous smells and trash blowing throughout the community.
It is time for the county to act and enforce their own demands for a safer working environment for the employees, Koloa School, Pa‘anau Village residents and the residents of Koloa Estates.
Thomas Babcock
Koloa
Fact check needed at KIUC
In his “In defense of KIUC” (printed in TGI on July 21), the KIUC communications manager, Jim Kelly, attempts to answer the Walter Lewis article of July 8.
Mr. Kelly’s concluding, tear jerking, statement is laughable: “We know what a huge burden high electric bills place on family budgets and our island’s economy.”
If in fact KIUC does care about members high electric bills, why have they done next to nothing to reduce them?
How are we expected to place any credence in any of Kelly’s other remarks (which represent the self-serving interests of KIUC’s management), when he states that “customers are paying 38 cents per kilowatt hour.”
Take out your most recent electric bill — look at the dollars you owed and divide that number by the figure shown as “usage.”
My neighbors and I come up with 44 cents not 38 cents. How do we apply for our refunds?
Allan Rachap
Koloa
KIUC should build wind farms
There was one windmill at the old Dairy Queen in ‘Ele‘ele and another at Dr. Spears’ old home west of the bridge on Kaumuali‘i Highway in Hanapepe.
I haven’t heard or seen any birds fly into it.
So, on that note, why don’t KIUC look into building a wind farm, too?
An ideal area would be close to the huge solar farm that KIUC is building near the old KIUC plant off of Waiolo Road near Port Allen.
We could benefit with this natural elements and be fossil fuel free.
Howard Tolbe
‘Ele‘ele
