• Tourism leading to overcrowding on Kauai • Dairy opposition protests are too much Tourism leading to overcrowding on Kauai While I appreciated the perspective of our “longtime” 40-year visitor whose letter voiced her disappointment in what I am going
• Tourism leading to overcrowding on Kauai • Dairy opposition protests are too much
Tourism leading to overcrowding on Kauai
While I appreciated the perspective of our “longtime” 40-year visitor whose letter voiced her disappointment in what I am going to call “overcrowded Kauai,” apparently she has not considered that residents also cannot find parking from Tunnels to Ke‘e. Of course, those living in the Haena area prefer less traffic, but most of the rest of us have a long drive to get there only to find no parking when we arrive. Yet this is our home and these places used to be accessible to us and now are not.
The visitor’s letter indicated she thought tourism was generating enough funds for services and road maintenance, which it is far from doing, as those of us living here know. We have potholed narrow streets, structurally deficient bridges, and no funds for widening our thoroughfares except for partial small sections. As for new roads to move the gridlocked traffic, not hardly.
Her point that the state is actively promoting Hawaii by marketing the islands to the nation and the world is not lost on us. That’s where most of her tourism dollars go, to the state and to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, not to provide adequate roads to handle all the traffic or to provide other services.
Yes, she has been misled by the HTA and their promotions which do not tell her that the places they promote are all but inaccessible. Residents are more affected because tourism tax money is spent on promotions instead of returning most of it to the counties for services and roads, which residents pay the bulk of the taxes for.
We are saturated with tourism and crowds in all our favorite places, beaches, trails, our stores and our roads. Residents are at the breaking point and our visitors aren’t happy about it, either. When are we going to disband the HTA?
It’s past time that tourism pays for their own promotions and it’s past time that this particular island not permit even one more resort.
Paulo Tambolo, Wailua Homesteads
Dairy opposition protests are too much
Just a couple subjects to hit upon after reading some of the letters.
First, if Waiopili Stream is so polluted from a source yet to be determined, why do defenders proclaim the beach area pristine? No swimming signs should be posted and in/on water activities curtailed to at your own risk.
Drinking water aquifers will be contaminated by the proposed dairy? What kind of water do you think one in the Koloa/Poipu area is drinking now? It maybe the result of decades of sugar plantation activities with all the chemical fertilizers and pesticides used, yet nobody complaining of illness.
Mother Earth seems to be doing a great job of filtering seepage down to the aquifers for clean water.
I read about biting flies as a concern, yet have never seen one here except mosquitoes which were present with the sugar operations, and some residential plants which can breed them. Flies go toward and breed in the “stink”… not attracted to clean areas (hotels) unless very strong winds blow them that way.
I’m older and maybe not as akamai as those other writers. Just my reaction to folks moving to what was an agricultural island, not demanding that nothing of that sort come back. Future farmers could make this Hawaii’s garden of produce if supported in the right way.
Masaru Shirai, Lihue
