• Warden has helped inmates start over • Pipeline project crucial to our future • Time to trim highway shrubs
Warden has helped inmates start over
I am a former KCCC inmate. Three years ago I ended up in The Lifetime Stand. I was hopeless, broken, a lost cause. I had been to so many programs, women’s groups, drug court. I failed them all. I did not believe I could change but I was willing to try anything. I couldn’t stand the person who stared back at me in the mirror.
I still have a long way to go, a lot of wrongs to make right, but today my children and I are living a life I never dreamed possible. My babies have a loving mother because of Sgt. Sia, the warden, the amazing staff and LTS. I am deeply hurt and saddened by the outrageous allegations against Neal and I want the people making them to stop and think about the hundreds of lives that have been changed through Lifetime Stand or the hundreds that would miss out if KCCC became just another housing facility for criminals. The warden has dedicated his entire life to helping rehabilitate inmates. He truly cares about our lives and the lives of our ohana even when we ourselves cannot. Lifetime Stand is special and unique. Miracles happen there every day. Please just stop with the allegations and let the warden and his staff continue saving lives and helping the community.
Amanda Yeager, Kauai
Pipeline project crucial to our future
Your editorial on the Keystone pipeline (TGI, Feb. 10) is misleading and in some respects wrong. It is important to realize that the extraction and export of large quantities of bitumen from the Albertan oil sands is not inevitable. The Keystone decision could well be crucial to future developments.
If Keystone is not approved, the oil from Alberta, most of it at the extreme end of carbon-emissions, has only two other means of export. One, which your editorial mentions, is by train. But the dangers of train transport are increasingly recognized and now facing tougher regulations, even from Canada’s conservative government, which has an exceptionally poor record on environmental protection. Moreover, there are inherent limits as to the quantity of oil trains can move, and they involve fewer long-term commitments than pipelines.
The other export route would be via the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline through British Columbia to the Pacific Coast. But this pipeline faces massive opposition. Most native groups are opposed to it (and the natives are resilient and well-organized in B.C.). And public opinion is so hostile to this prospective pipeline that any provincial government will take great care to act cautiously. Many people of various political views think it will never be built.
So, if Keystone is not approved, a major source of carbon emissions may not be developed much further. This could be one positive step toward moving the world away from our dependence on fossil fuels and toward renewables, which we’re going to have to do some day anyway. And it’s worth remembering that investing in renewables is almost always a better source of employment than oil, which on the whole, is a rather feeble producer of steady, long-term jobs.
Robert Malcolmson, Nelson, British Columbia
Time to trim highway shrubs
In my twice daily walks into and out of Kapaa town, I can’t help but notice the properties, both business and residential, that maintain — and don’t maintain — the sidewalks along the Kuhio Highway. Some have allowed grass, shrubs, and even tree branches to encumber the sidewalks to the detriment of other pedestrians who frequent the roadway. Many of these are tourists who are occasionally forced out into the street because of the overgrowth. For many of these property owners, it’s probably just a matter of not paying attention to this fact. Perhaps they’ve even forgotten that they are ultimately responsible for maintaining the public right of way abutting their yards.
The county personnel charged with noticing this and giving written and verbal warnings to these property owners have also failed to do their duty, perhaps because there are not enough folks to do it. Either way, some trimming of overgrown grass and some hedge and shrub cutting is needed to prevent further growth and provide a more safe sidewalk for all, including the occasional wheelchair user. This long weekend certainly provides an extra day for the effort.
Bob Gillchrest, Kapaa
