•Thanks, Wilcox staff
•Ben Sullivan for a sustainable energy future
•The business of liberty
Thanks, Wilcox staff
I would like to commend the staff at Wilcox Hospital for the excellent care and service I received there as a patient. The citizens of Kaua‘i are very fortunate to have such an excellent facility staffed with dedicated and knowledgeable medical Dr.s truly concerned with the welfare of their patients. This is also true of the nurses and other support staff.
I would especially like to thank the following:
— Dr. J. Michael Murray for his professional excellence as our family Dr..
— Dr. Christopher Jordan for the surgical procedure I received last year which saved my life.
— Dr. Timothy Lee for restoring my eyesight. Thank you also for providing background music of your very own piano playing. Excellence!
— Dr. Kubota, Anesthesiologist whose sincere and caring concern guided me safely through the procedure.
— Kathy Clark, CEO. For all of her efforts and energy towards keeping Wilcox the best it can be.
Mahalo.
Rose Marie Brun, Kalaheo
Ben Sullivan for a sustainable energy future
Zero Waste Kauai is a local, community-based organization whose goals include educating the public and decision-makers about the potential for Zero Waste Management to provide a sustainable, economic solution to our growing solid waste problem.
Over the past year and a half we have been investigating the claims of the many proponents of waste to energy or burning our trash to create electricity. Based on our research we have concluded that incineration of our discards, even with the goal of recovering a portion of their energy value makes little sense either economically or environmentally.
The County Council on the Big Island recently reached the same conclusion when after years of searching for solutions, they finally went out to bid for a waste-to-energy facility.
The capital cost of an incinerator to manage Hilo’s trash — similar in size to that required for Kaua‘i — was $135 million. Even after calculating the potential revenue received from the sale of electricity the tipping fee — the fee the county and local businesses would pay to dump their trash — was estimated at $125 per ton.
Kaua‘i County taxpayers and KIUC rate payers would be much better served investing a fraction of that money in an integrated Zero Waste solution and using the balance to expand our commitment to alternative sources of energy, especially solar hot water, a technology that has its own inherent storage system, could provide an immediate impact on current economic situation with local companies providing local jobs, and would actually pay for itself in a few years.
At our March meeting, Zero Waste Kauai discussed the issues of sustainable waste management and energy generation brought up at the recent KIUC forum, and concluded that Ben Sullivan was the only candidate with a logical and people focused approach to future energy independence for Kaua‘i.
Ben Sullivan was the only candidate who truly represents our view of a sustainable energy future for Kaua‘i.
(Editor’s Note: The KIUC Board of Directors election results, published in Sunday’s edition of The Garden Island, show that Sullivan was the top vote-getter with 3,652 votes, or 22.5 percent.)
John Harder, Zero Waste Kauai
The business of liberty
I’m for HB 444 and not because of any vested sexuality interest.
I’m a heterosexual male who enjoys a male/female relationship and who happens to believe in liberty. After all, liberty is one of the fundamental pillars of America.
However, there are those that only see liberty for themselves, but not others. Liberty for all is the belief that what consenting adults do with their life is their business.
The purest definition of liberty is the allowance of those individuals to conduct their lives as they see fit even if others don’t like it. The operative phrase there being consenting adults.
As for religion and government, religion addresses marriage and government does civil unions. There are a lot of religions and for those that don’t want to condone same-sex marriage they aren’t forced to and of those that sanction it so be it.
Government not being in the business of marriage, but being in that of liberty should legalize civil unions regardless of sexuality.
(Editor’s Note: HB444 failed in the Senate last week, but there have been discussions of it resurfacing with amendments.)
Mark Perry, Lihu‘e
