• War, then and now • County Multimodal Land Transportation Plan • Hawaiian Christmas trees War, then and now During the Viet Nam war the United States sprayed massive amounts of agent orange on the Vietnamese jungles in an effort
• War, then and now • County Multimodal Land Transportation Plan • Hawaiian Christmas trees
War, then and now
During the Viet Nam war the United States sprayed massive amounts of agent orange on the Vietnamese jungles in an effort to kill all living vegetation and eliminate the hiding places and trails used by the Viet Cong. It was very successful in achieving those goals, but also resulted in a generation of children being born with horrible deformities. This spraying of agent orange, with its 2-4D chemical component, was considered an Act of War.
Today, here in Hawai‘i, our legislators, urged on by the chemical companies which have invaded our islands, are now promoting the spraying of this same chemical, as well as 70 other pesticides and herbicides upon us and our island. However, our legislators want to call it something else. According to Senate Bill 590, rather than acknowledging this spraying as an Act of War, they now would like to call it, “Generally Accepted Farming Practices.”
According to SB 590 these acceptable practices include the following:
(4) Ground and aerial seeding and spraying;
(5) The application of chemical fertilizers, conditioners, insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides.
SB 590 goes on to state that anyone who objects to these practices will be considered a “nuisance”, and such “nuisances” will not be allowed. There are already many here on Kaua‘i who are experiencing the serious health effects of the GMO spraying and who have a very different perspective on who and what the real “nuisances” are here in our islands.
Please be a “nuisance” now and express your opinions to your elected officials before our legislators, through SB 590, make your right to express and act upon your opinions illegal.
Michael Shooltz
Kapa‘a
County Multimodal Land Transportation Plan
At the Kaua‘i County Council meeting of Jan. 30, Resolution 2013-33 was unanimously passed by a 7-0 vote. This was a “Resolution accepting and endorsing the Multimodal Land Transportation Plan (MLTP) as a policy guideline for the county of Kaua‘i.”
Many of you citizens may not know what this resolution is about so let’s review some of it.
First, the council sought to act on this resolution before the people of the county had knowledge of or an opportunity to comment on the content and the accuracy of the points set forth in the MLTP. No action should have been taken by the council until the people had been adequately informed about the MLTP.
Second, in paragraph 4 of the resolution it states, “the MLTPs “Preferred Scenario” seeks to prevent growth in island-wide vehicle miles traveled above the 2010 level despite projected increases in resident and visitor population.”
Since visitor and resident population will continue to grow and 99 percent of those who are eligible to drive will use their vehicles for transportation, this “Preferred Scenario” (used 3 times in the resolution) is a dream. We live in a “real world” and have to make our laws and decisions based on what we have, not on what they should be if our world were a utopia or a Shangri-La.
And third, the consultants for this plan have stated, “there is a lot of latent demand for transit ridership on Kaua‘i. If you increase service we think for every 100 percent increase in service you would have more than a 100 percent increase in ridership.”
Really. When our county employees were given free bus passes only a small percent of them rode the bus so why would increasing service lead to 100 percent more ridership? And, according to the county’s latest figures (given to The Shadow), 2012 income from those riding the buses was $850,000 whereas the operating cost was $5,897,678 — $5,301,835 from the county and $595,843 from the Feds.
So we have a net operation loss of $5,047,678 without even factoring in the capital cost of purchasing the buses! And by putting more buses in service we greatly increase the subsidize cost and how much more subsidizing are the tax payers willing to spend?
Glenn Mickens
Kapa‘a
Hawaiian Christmas trees
Gov. Neil Abercrombie gave DLNR the OK to plant in the forest where three major fires occurred last summer.
Will some of the Christmas trees that are sent here on Christmas survive our weather, especially in Koke‘e?
If so, why not plant those trees here? With it grown here we don’t have to wait and we can get it freshly cut. Also, we wouldn’t have to worry about invasive critters or bugs that hitch a ride during shipment from the Mainland.
Maybe it could be planted in plots. So that the trees can mature and be ready to be cut down for Christmas. Than the year after, we cut from a different plot to let the recent plot regrow itself.
If any variety of Christmas tree can survive, let’s plant them.
Howard Tolbe
‘Ele‘ele
