Removal of tree canopy
degrades Honokaa Park
The county Department of Parks and Recreation plans to remove the majority of the tree canopy at Honokaa Park. The decision was made without community consultation.
A Parks and Rec representative later attended a meeting with community members and said department staff would attend an on-site review of individual trees on Feb. 5 with community members and an arborist to see if there was room for compromise, and perhaps, a more measured plan to remove and replace trees over time so that some of the canopy could be preserved.
Reportedly, this meeting did not take place, and Parks and Rec is proceeding with plans to remove the majority of the park’s tree canopy all at once. Though this might save costs in the short term, it also greatly degrades the quality of park use for Honokaa residents and visitors.
In theory, parks exist for the communities that use them, not simply as places on which Parks and Rec administrators can impose their will.
I earnestly request that Parks and Rec Director Clayton Honma, Mayor Kimo Alameda and Councilwoman Heather Kimball take whatever steps are necessary to stop the planned large-scale tree removal until meaningful community input can be obtained and reasonable efforts are made to explore options that will not lead to rapid, wholesale destruction of the park’s tree canopy.
I am confident that, working together, we can develop a mutually acceptable plan that meets both Parks and Rec’s objectives and the needs of the community.
Richard Leman
Honokaa
Power plant will produce
truck pollution, air pollution
Mr. Glen Kagamida and I probably have a few things in common (Your Views, Feb. 19). I assume we both want what’s good for our island and what’s good for our friends and neighbors. And we both want to solve the energy problem. Where we differ is on how we get there.
I lived in 91直播 back before it was a state. We had trucks then — sugarcane trucks trucking trash all over the road, and factories that burned the sugarcane, all for private profit.
What Honua Ola is proposing is that we go back to those days of trucks trucking stuff to the burners and making a mess of our island in the process.
At least in the old days, the wind would eventually make the air breathable once more, and the ocean pollution was limited to harvest time, but the Honua Ola proposal won’t be so easily solved, as it will be 24/7 every single day of the year. Truck pollution, air pollution and water pollution, that’s their proposal, 24/7. And, like the sugarcane operation, all for the profit of a private corporation.
My vote is in favor of what we already have and can efficiently expand: clean, modern energy from solar, geothermal and wind, all of which we have in abundance, all of which can be expanded, and all of which are super-clean energy sources without the problems of trucking trees and burning them.
To jump-start this process, I would encourage both state and county legislators to explore tax incentive programs that would help underwrite progress on all three options. And they might even explore ways to incentivize 91直播an Electric to explore these options, too.
This is the 21st century, so let’s act like it. Let’s choose modern, clean, unlimited energy and walk away from 1950s’ thinking with its concomitant road litter, air and water pollution, and road hazards from trucks.
Skip Sims
Ninole
