Letters for Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Take care of our ‘aina •  Concerns about Morgan’s Ponds • Slow down, we don’t live on a race track • Thanks for alerting readers about scams • Remember the next time you vote • Solution for Mr. Wells

Change in online commenting policy

Starting July 1, The Garden Island has changed how it monitors the online commenting portion of thegardenisland.com. All comments will go through an approval process. Not all comments will be approved. Priority will be given to those that are topical, remain within our comment policies and contain the author’s full name and hometown. 

We encourage continued use of our online comment feature as well as the Letters to the Editor in our print edition. The Garden Island values reader input and encourages thoughtful debate.

Take care of our ‘aina

This is a letter that I wish I didn’t have to write. This should be common sense, common courtesy. Taking care of our ‘aina should be so important that it should always be in our minds.

 This past weekend (July 15 and 16) was a big weekend at all the beaches, certainly the North Shore: lots of parties, barbecues and  a huge water fight for the kids and teenagers at Hanalei Bay. So much fun, so much laughter — food for the soul.

Unfortunately, when the people left, some left their trash: mammoth amounts of cans, beer and liquor bottles, plates, glasses, cutlery, 10 deflated floats and a cooler.

Surely, it was late at night and people would come back in the morning to remove it?

Besides being unsightly, if we had a high tide, some of it would have been washed out to sea to pollute our oceans. We waited two days — no one came.

My husband carried five huge trash bags to the dump.

What can people be thinking? This is our ‘aina. Our island is a treasure given to us by God. For those who were born here, maybe we take it for granted, but it is such a rare and beautiful place, truly, and we are so privileged to live here.  

We’ve traveled extensively, and there’s no place more beautiful.

Please remember to take care of our ‘aina. Take your trash with you. Teach your children to be proud, respectful of others and care for their heritage.

Candi LaCour

Hanalei

Concerns about Morgan’s Ponds

Over a year after the so-called Lydgate pond restoration, it seems like Oceanit has come out with a draft report that has been kept away from the public like the secret archives of Spectre. I asked Oceanit for a copy and was referred to the county engineering director, Larry Dill, who thought well of not returning my call.

Furthermore, it’s hard to understand why we are still dealing with Oceanit that butchered the project in the first place.

In fact, at the last county council meeting, Mel Rapozo suggested to get a report from a different company, and like every other good suggestion, it seems like it went unattended.

Anyhow, rumors are that Oceanit agrees with some of the suggestions that were made a year ago by myself and other people concerned about the Morgan’s Ponds, and specifically:

• Pumping the silt from the bottom of the pond.

• Possibly putting a membrane on the floor of the pond and sand on the top.

I’m not sure if they got the idea of lowering the wall in order to allow more wave action.

Furthermore, I think that if the county would provide a daily cleaning of the beach, most of the debris that gets on the beach on low tide would be prevented from going back in on high tide.

There is, however, one suggestion supposedly made by Oceanit that really frightens me, and that is to open the wall and the right side of the pond, where the lifeguard stand is.

This is a terrible idea. The right side of the pond is the only place where the pond has been kept pristine, because it was never dredged.

It is where the water is clear, the fish are most visible, the keikis play (the keiki pond has been reduced to a little puddle of mud) and the tourists snorkel.

Opening the wall over there would be a big safety hazard, put the keikis and the tourists in the open ocean with currents and predators, possibly ruin the right side of the pond and would not solve the problem with the silt and the debris that is all piled up on the left side. You may as well kiss goodbye to the Morgan’s Ponds.

Let’s try not to make one mistake after another and to keep the public informed.

Lucia  Eichenberger

Wailua Homesteads

Slow down, we don’t live on a race track

It seems like every day more and more drivers are getting away with speeding. As I drive home at night — after a long shift at work — I find myself being honked at for driving the speed limit. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we expected to drive the speed limit? Or do people expect us to drive 45 mph in a 25 mph zone just to put ourselves at risk?

Anyway, I was tired and all I wanted to do was get home, but I drove the speed limit. Finally, after a car followed me closely behind for five minutes with his highlights glaring my view, I was finally forced to pull over and let this sour driver pass.

As I continued home, I thought to myself: Has the Kaua‘i I have learned to love really have this much ignorant drivers on the road? What’s all this rush for?

So, to all us Kauaiians, born locals or raised locals, Hawaiians or hapa haoles, I give respect to all of you and I dread hearing the sound of a crash killing any Kaua‘i resident.

So I beg you, please drive with aloha. Our island doesn’t need more innocent drivers to lose their lives because of someone doing something as foolish as speeding. Our island is built on so many smiles and signs of aloha that we don’t need impatient drivers taking over our highways.

A note to our tourists: Please respect the speed limit as I understand the mainland has some high speed limits and it can take some adjustment.

A lot of times, tourists come to Kaua‘i for vacation. I know as much as you do that on vacation you do not have a car crash on your to do list, right along with that snorkeling tour.

Kaua‘i is a place to enjoy. A place to celebrate our kama‘aina our aloha spirit and our love for our community.

Respect our ‘aina and, more importantly, respect yourself. Don’t speed, Kaua‘i isn’t built for NASCAR.

Chloe Marchant

Kapa‘a

Thanks for alerting readers about scams

I, too, have recently been contacted by scam artists promising Publishers Clearing House grand prizes, and the set up was the same as described in the July 17 article “Koloa resident avoids phone scam”: Go to Walmart or Kmart and send a Western Union money gram to an address that the caller gave me to cover a minimum government tax.

I received two other calls saying that something was wrong with my computer and I had to send money to fix it.

After the fake PCH call, I called the FBI in Honolulu and they told me that it’s one very common scam and the calls were most likely coming from a foreign country and are hard to trace because they use different phones.

Thanks for alerting your readers about this and be aware that there are many scams of all kinds out there.

Bill Powers

Kapa‘a

Remember the next time you vote

Mr. Hooser has some nerve announcing he’s running for county council. It still disgusts me every time I remember that he had been elected as our senator.

It must just be that everyone has forgotten what he pulled a few years back.

 He didn’t pay his taxes; it was something like $80,000.

It was stated in The Garden Island a few years ago he negotiated a settlement with the state tax department for the smallest fraction of that.

What if everyone else did that — didn’t pay and then worked a deal to just pay a portion of what they actually owed?

Maybe we should all try it, after all, you get elected as state senator for that, and now possibly county council again.

He also proposed to have our general excise tax increased a while back!

He can’t/doesn’t pay his taxes so why not raise everyone else’s taxes? Do you really want a man like this to be one of our county council members for that matter?

Remember this the next time you vote!

Allie Valverde

Kapa‘a

Solution for Mr. Wells

In response to Michael Wells’ July 12 letter concerning Kaua’i’s plastic debris (“It is the plastic in the ocean and on the beaches”), there is a solution to this dilemma but the County of Kaua‘i council and mayor are unwilling to listen, much less learn about, the possibility of solving this problem.                                          

This author attempted to gather the attention of our elected marionettes at least on three separate occasions over the past six years, but our efforts have been rebuffed.                                                                                          

“Most disconcerting are the small pieces of Styrofoam … and other plastics.”

Mr. Wells even “hauled out nine truckload of plastic” only to find out “that our inadequate recycling system would not take it.”

 As Mr. Wells relates, “the only place to take it was our already overfilled landfill.”

Mr. Wells asks, “Is there a solution and if so, what is it?”

Yes, there is!     

It’s in Portland, Ore. and you can look it up on the Internet. Go to www.agilyx.com/about-us and check out the site. They can turn plastics one through seven back into crude oil, and we have been working with them since they began.                                                                                             

Of course, our elected marionettes wouldn’t listen to us then and  I do not expect our puppets to pay heed to this suggestion.

Read about Agilyx and then, this election, think about those that wouldn’t listen. Vote the older professional politicians out of office.  

John Hoff

Lawa‘i