Awesome art show by students
Regarding Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School’s art show at Kukui Grove Center Kauai Society of Artists space, in a word — awesome!
Caroline Miura, Kapaa
Use of public water questioned
At an April 26 Lihue Business Association meeting, Grove Farm representatives delivered a program entitled “Legacy Plantation Waterways.” This refers to the ditch system that diverts water from the Eastside Wailua watershed and elsewhere to where sugar cane used to grow.
They said that these “legacy waterways” “operate under state commission jurisdiction.” In fact, Grove Farm has never had a permit to divert water from natural streams. To the contrary, the public’s ownership of surface water is clearly stated in the Hawaii state constitution, and anyone who wants to use it must ask through the permitting process.
Grove Farm would have us believe that when Steve Case bought Lihue Plantation Company in 2000, ownership rights to the water were transferred with the sale. This is false. It’s like buying a car, then expecting free gas to operate it.
The water commission referenced, Commission for Water Resource Management, has been remiss for decades in monitoring the disposition of water flowing down Wai‘ale‘ale and Waikoko streams and the other streams between them. Only recently has CWRM undertaken a stream-flow study to establish flow rates that may be used to establish rules governing allocation of the people’s water that will benefit the public at large, not big, land-owning corporations.
Why this matters is, first, Grove Farm is presently capturing public water, then selling it back to the Kauai Water Department for $2M a year.
Second, these “legacy plantation waterways” have literally dried up streams and rivers, so that traditional Hawaiian taro farmers could not grow taro, and aquatic fauna that need to migrate up and down a river are significantly negatively impacted.
Third, if big, land-owner corporations gain control of the water, it enables them to grow subdivisions and shopping malls. Today’s island population overshoot makes obvious that population growth management needs to be in the hands of Kauai’s people through their elected government, not in the hands of profit-driven land companies.
Politicians whose fortunes are tied to an obsolete, plantation-era political and economic system, (County Councilmembers) Arthur Brun, Arryl Kaneshiro, Derek Kawakami, need to be replaced in the coming election with candidates unbound by this profits-before-people model, who share a belief held by most island residents that Kauai is at a turning point.
Michael Goodwin, Wailua
