August 2016 PDF
August 2016
NEW & NOTEWORTHY: Spaceport Setback, Crumbling Highway
$10M in Band-Aids: The O`ahu Metropolitan Planning Organization has proposed appropriating $10.1 million to the state Department of Transportation (DOT) to design and construct repairs to sections of Kamehameha Highway between Kualoa and Hau`ula that are threatening to fall into … Continued
The Other War in the Pacific, A Report from the Frontlines
Mark Rauzon. Isles of Amnesia: The History, Geography, and Restoration of America’s Forgotten Pacific Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2016. The title of this book puzzled me at first. Its subject is the effort to restore seriously disturbed ecosystems on some … Continued
Coming PUC Decision Could Make Ka`u Solar Projects Uneconomical
An outdated and overpriced tariff scheme. An entrepreneur who exploited loopholes in a law intended to benefit small farms. And a residential community that is seething over the prospect of more than two dozen photovoltaic arrays, intended to generate more … Continued
Recent Court Rulings May Complicate State’s Ability to Grant A&B a Holdover
“House Bill 2501 invites litigation.” That succinct reply was all Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation (NHLC) attorney David Kimo Frankel provided Environment Hawai`i when asked back in May whether a holdover of water rights granted in accordance with the bill could … Continued
As One Court Case over `Aina Le`a Is Settled, Another, Larger One Looms
The state of Hawai`i has settled a lawsuit brought by Bridge `Aina Le`a, LLC, which had claimed more than $30 million in damages as a result of a decision by the Land Use Commission to downzone acreage the company had … Continued
East Maui Irrigation Co. Returns Some Water to East Maui Streams
Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. representatives have said it will be depriving its final sugarcane crop of water during the latter half of this year. So what’s happening to all of the tens of millions of gallons of water normally … Continued