Barbara Bennett’s letter to the forum was insightful but self-contradictory. While she says we all have the same vision to preserve and maintain the beauty and environment of our island, she then asserts that growth is inevitable and that we
Barbara Bennett’s letter to the forum was insightful but self-contradictory.
While she says we all have the same vision to preserve and maintain the beauty
and environment of our island, she then asserts that growth is inevitable and
that we need to trust the process of the 2020 General Plan Update.
Although
Ms. Bennett argues for controlled or limited growth she fails to recognize that
there are no meaningful provisions in the GPU to achieve or enforce such
control.
It is quite true that in the macro sense we cannot control
population change. The forces which determine our vital statistics and
migrations cannot be significantly affected by land use planning.
Accordingly if there is to be growth in our residential population we must
accommodate it. However, we can influence the factors which will cause changes
in our visitor population and if we wish, as Ms. Bennett says we all do, to
preserve the features of Kaua’i that we value, then decisions must be reached
and enforcement applied.
In 1998, the base year for the GPU, Kaua’i had an
average daily visitor count of about 17,000. In 2020 the median daily visitor
count the GPU expects is 26,000, an increase of over 60 percent. What we can
anticipate is that there will then be at least 60 percent more people on our
beaches and on our roads and rest assured there will be a beating of the drums
for 60 percent more tourist resort accommodations.
Changes of this
magnitude will certainly affect and not preserve “the natural environment of
this small island” as she puts it.
In my view, Ms. Bennett was too all
encompassing in her conclusion that growth is inevitable. It is a natural
result of the popular concept that more is better. However, I do not believe
that growth in the crime rate, in drug use, in school dropouts, in marital
dissolution’s, or in unemployment are inevitable.
And I do not think that
growth in Kaua’i’s visitor accommodation units is inevitable either.
We do
not need to put our trust in a process which has failed us. If we wish to give
effect to our conviction that the environment of Kaua’i is to be preserved then
we must register with our governmental officials our mandate that growth in
visitor accommodations must be ended unless the community specifically accepts
the need and desirability for the change.
There is no current shortage of
resort units for visitors and the ones that exist do not have a full occupancy
rate; there will be no unemployment caused if construction of new units is
stopped.
If we do not act, then we will find what history really does
teach us is that the existing laws and practices of our county will support
development on demand.
The choice is ours and the time is now.
Walter
Lewis
Princeville
