Next to state and county government and the visitor industry, the military presence on the west side is the largest single source of jobs and revenues on Kaua’i. For the federal fiscal year 1999 (Oct. 1, 1998 to Sept. 30,
Next to state and county government and the visitor industry, the military presence on the west side is the largest single source of jobs and revenues on Kaua’i.
For the federal fiscal year 1999 (Oct. 1, 1998 to Sept. 30, 1999), the last full year for which numbers are available, the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands had a $122.4 million impact on the Kaua’i economy.
Salaries, supplies, meals, rental cars and accommodations for visiting individuals, and other factors contributed to the total, according to a base spokeswoman.
In the current federal fiscal year, $150 million in federal appropriations were approved for PMRF, though a base civilian employee said if a portion of those appropriations is for equipment, that won’t really impact the local economy in the same way the local jobs do.
“It’s hard to overestimate the economic importance to Kaua’i of the Pacific Missile Range Facility,” says Dr. Leroy O. Laney, professor of economics and finance at Hawai’i Pacific University and a consultant to First Hawaiian Bank.
“In today’s world, as all economies everywhere brainstorm to find some way to participate in the emerging high-tech ‘New Economy,’ the facility is invaluable. Just its presence on Kaua’i makes the island second most dependent in the state on military spending, after O’ahu,” Laney said. “The range also imparts to Kaua’i its own comparative advantage in attracting firms and development funding.
“Experimental agricultural funding may gravitate to the Big Island, high-tech money for incubator facilities or education may find its way to O’ahu or Maui, but Kaua’i serves as a magnet for established firms that are connected in some way as contractors or subcontractors to the missile ranged.”
The jobs offered to civilians on the base are good-paying, said Ian Emberson, who for nearly five years managed the Hanapepe and Waimea branches of Bank of Hawai’i and is now a mortgage loan officer working in Lihu’e.
“Those jobs are all very well-paid jobs. The average guy makes $40,000 or $50,000 at that base,” Emberson said. That means most of them can afford homes, new cars, going out to dinner and other expenditures that help the local economy, he noted.
In driveways in the newer residential subdivision behind Kaua’i Veterans Memorial Hospital and West Kaua’i Medical Center, many of the vehicles carry stickers denoting them as driven by base employees.
“Those people wouldn’t have all those houses there” if not for the base, Emberson said. “It’s a huge factor.
“It’s huge,” Emberson said of the base’s economic impact on the island, particularly on the west side. The employees live and shop at the small grocery stores in Waimea and Kekaha, buy gas, eat some meals at local restaurants and generally support the west side economy.
“I think it all helps. Obviously, it’s positive,” he said.
The base, more recently, has also become the home of hopes for the island’s high-tech future. Suffice it to say that the current tenants of the West Kaua’i Technology and Visitors Center, save for the visitor component of that building, would have little reason to set up offices in Waimea if not for the presence nearby of PMRF and its capabilities to track on its sprawling ocean range vehicles and weapons from the bottom of the ocean into outer space, and to provide real-time sea-warfare training opportunities using the latest high-tech gadgets.
While it is well known that many of these high-tech companies are into what’s known as dual-use technologies — developing hardware, software and other systems that have both military and civilian uses –their bread and butter should remain military applications.
The future of these high-tech contractors, as well as a military presence in the form of the Navy’s Office of Naval Research, is amazingly bright, as the second phase of the technology center was booked to capacity before one shovel of dirt has been turned to build the expansion.
The Office of Naval Research will be one of the phase-two tenants.
“A phase III may not be far behind,” Laney predicted.
The growth of these high-tech companies has changed the face of the base, said one base civilian employee who deals with financial matters.
There are nearly 1,000 civilian employees on the base, not counting those working for civilian contractors in Lihu’e, Waimea and other places around the island, while the actual number of active-duty military stationed at Barking Sands is closer to one-tenth of the civilian workforce.
With the base and its high-tech jobs comes an almost insatiable need for highly trained engineers, something the high-tech tenants of the technology center and base military and civilian leaders discussed around a table in the technology center’s state-of-the art teleconference room recently.
In some cases, the military and civilian employers vie for the same limited supply of qualified engineers. That’s good for former Kauaians wishing to come home to good-paying jobs, and bad for a manager with personnel gaps.
“(If) we want to bring more of our people back here, we’ve got to create opportunities,” said Mamo Cummings, president of the Kaua’i Chamber of Commerce.
The base and its need for highly trained personnel has prodded local grade schools and Kaua’i Community College to implement programs “to prepare our young folks. Then they have more of an opportunity to come back and stay on-island and have good-paying jobs,” Cummings said. “There’s more of an impact than just to our economy.”
The chamber, Kaua’i Economic Development Board, Kaua’i Visitors Bureau and other agencies on the island are teaming up to make Kauai’s young people what Cummings calls “tech-ready.” High-tech firms doing business on the island are willing to inform island educators and students of their qualification requirements.
“These folks recognize that they have to give back, and they’re so willing to do that. So I would really like to see that part of it put into the equation of their value here on our island,” Cummings said.
Politicians and others from Ha’ena to Mana and up at Koke’e were holding their collective breath late last year when the next president of the United States was being decided in the courts, because that man’s position on a U.S. missile defense system means the world to the future of PMRF’s role in national defense matters.
So far, President George W. Bush has indicated he feels the further development of a defense against incoming missiles is needed, though during the election campaign he was criticized for not having — or announcing — his national defense scheme.
That position, finally articulated, is good news for the base, and the island, in ways economic and otherwise.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
