• Landfill on wheels • Evolution and
creation • Wind energy is Kaua‘i’s
future
Landfill on wheels
It’s only taken Kaua‘i County government 16 years to once again locate a new site for Kaua‘i’s landfill site. Mayors have appointed multiple committees, spent millions of tax dollars, and thousands of hours to determine the best site, and strangely enough a new choice pops up out of the blue.
No longer is it the Kaua‘i Coffee farm site, thank God; instead it has traveled back to the Hanama‘ulu site known as Ma‘alo. Of course, we have not heard from the residents of Hanama‘ulu yet, the ones who fought so hard just a few years ago to keep the landfill out of their community.
Logically, it’s been recommended to remain in Kekaha where its been these past 16 years; where the community welcomes it; where climatic conditions are ideal; where an environmental impact statement has already been done; and where it lost by only one vote to the disastrous Kaua‘i Coffee farm choice in the last voting event. BUT, logic has nothing to do with it: only “money, power, politics,” the politicians’ creed.
Why is this new Ma‘alo site popping up all of a sudden? Just look at the big winner. Whose land gets a new four-lane “bypass” highway and maybe a bridge or two built through his vast Grove Farm “gentleman farmer’s estate” which will be paid for by state of Hawai‘i and the feds Dept. of Transportation, your tax dollars? With the on-going widening of the Kukui Grove shopping center area road, wouldn’t that be a great place to connect a bypass road around Hanama‘ulu? What a coincidence! WARNING: Don’t allow them to take Kaua‘i down the AOL-TimeWarner debacle path. That’s where its headed.
It’s not going to change with the same plantation leadership. Vote for new government leadership this election for the sake of our children’s and grandchildren’s futures as well as the future of our beloved island. It was the “old plantation leadership” that got us to where we are today. GET OUT AND VOTE “NEW” across the board. ALOHA.
John Hoff, Lawa‘i
Evolution and creation
Phil Higginbotham, I am sorry to make your head explode ( “Blind faith,” Letters 9/30). I think you can calm down a bit, though, because the young-earth creationists are not going to take over the public classrooms of Hawai‘i anytime soon.
A few points to consider: 100 years ago, the creationists did control the public classrooms. Now, the evolutionists control the classrooms. Today, in math and English, an average public-high-school diploma is below what an eighth-grade education was 100 years ago.
In the Scopes trial, the Evolutionist Darrow spoke on and on about the need for freedom in the classroom for students to hear both sides of the debate between creation and evolution. Since then, the evolutionists have changed their tune and have silenced all debate in most of the U.S.
Personally, I believe the Bible, but I do not believe it demands a young earth. A few examples: A) Some believe the Bible indicates a large time gap between the first and second verses of Genesis 1. B) The Hebrew word for “day” can be figurative. C) The Hebrew word for “father” (in the genealogies) also means “ancestor.”
Darwinism has nothing to offer about the origin of life. The point of Darwinism is that the combination of mutation and natural selection can bring about improvements in existing life. Mutation can only produce tiny changes. Natural selection can then select these tiny changes for their benefit, which, over time, can add up to big changes.
This can work for things like the shape of a bird’s beak. Tiny changes can produce tiny benefits and add up together to a new beak shape over time. However, it does not work for complicated systems. Take your automobile as an example. Disassemble your auto into tiny parts. Then, start reassembling them one by one. For Darwinism to work, every time you add a piece, the auto’s performance must show improvement, so it can be selected. It might work for a garden shovel. But it cannot work for an auto, a computer, etc.
Darwin was aware of this limitation, but he did not have the scientific knowledge that we now have. We now know that life systems are far more high-tech and complicated than an automobile. There is no way for mutation and selection to build complex systems that have many interdependent parts.
The young-earth folks have contributed to science by pointing out that petrified wood, canyons, stalactites, coal, soil layers, etc. can be formed very quickly. Many features of the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption appear to be millions of years old.
I think science and truth are best served in the free market of ideas. Let the Darwinists, the young-earth creationists, and the old-earth creationists all participate in the debates.
Mark Beeksma, Koloa
Wind energy is Kaua‘i’s future
I read in your September 26th edition that a Boston-based wind-power company is seeking to build its third wind farm in Hawai‘i. It will produce 70 megawatts of electricity capable of providing power to 15,000 homes by 2012. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is the way to go for Kaua‘i. Last year I read of a $200,000 study on how to relieve our dependency on foreign oil. We did not need to spend that money on a study. I figured that one out for $20 when I filled my car up with gas, lowered the window and drove from Princeville to Kapa‘a. When I passed the old dairy farm, I was amazed at the amount of wind blowing in from the ocean. I see this on every trip I make to Kapa‘a and Lihu‘e. There, I could have saved the county their $200,000, found the location for a wind farm, stopped our dependency on foreign oil, found a way to make our island self-sufficient by utilizing the wind for electric power and power for our farms to grow more local produce. There you go KIUC, and you don’t even have to refund my $20.00.
Mahalo,
Richard L. Turner, Princeville
