Letters for Sept. 5, 2015 Overcrowding must be addressed The DLNR cannot be faulted for trying to reduce visitor numbers to Haena State Park. Unfortunately, now we are told they have to include residents in the daily cap of 900
Letters for Sept. 5, 2015
Overcrowding must be addressed
The DLNR cannot be faulted for trying to reduce visitor numbers to Haena State Park. Unfortunately, now we are told they have to include residents in the daily cap of 900 persons. This makes resident access opportunities even harder. There will be a push for educating visitors. Nice, but that will not reduce their numbers or give residents a better chance of being included in the 900 cap. Maybe we can get the visitor industry to give us some kind of shuttle we are told. Yeah, maybe.
How long are we going to look the other way and do nothing about our islandwide overcrowding? The state deals with crowding in Haena. Does the county have a department that deals with overcrowding for the island? Our mayor? Our County Council? No. We are on our own and I’m afraid we are no match for either the Hawaiian Tourism Authority or the Kauai Visitor Bureau. Until something is done to cap Kauai visitors we will compete with increasing numbers of them for everything we do, from our mundane errands to recreation including beach and park access.
Some of us may never get into Haena now under the 900 limit, yet we are to rest assured that the DLNR is educating our Haena visitors about the host culture. So it’s OK then.
Visitors work hard too, deserve vacations and our aloha, and provide jobs but it would be much easier to be appreciative if there weren’t so many of them.
This is not a private island where special interests, corporate interests, and resorts call the shots and can demand more tourism ad nauseam and it is not Disneyland. 70,000 of us are not on vacation. And several thousands of us have had it.
Paulo Tambolo
Wailua Homesteads
Who is accountable for state’s failure?
I just finished reading a small Associated Press article tucked away on page A5 in the Sept. 3 issue of The Garden Island.
The subject of the story is the State of Hawaii has spend more than $100 million in taxpayers money in an attempt to develop a functional enrollment system in compliance with the Affordable Care Act.
What was not reported in this article is the State of Hawaii has given up and now is giving the failure back to the federal government. How much more will it cost the taxpayers to complete the job? Where is the accountability?
Richard Smith
Hanalei
