Save Kahului Harbor

To: House Committees: Finance ,Transportation
Hearing Date: Thursday, October 25
Time and Location: 9:00 a.m. Auditorium, State Capitol
From:Karen Chun

Dear Representatives,

I realize you are under incredible pressure to pass this bill due to the excellent PR done by HSF.  But we are counting on you to add protections for the neighbor islands.  We are trusting the Legislature to protect us from Lingle's trampling of our neighbor island needs.

Please do not pass this legislation in its current form. There are many untruths, mistakes, and flaws with unintended consequences in this bill.

The biggest is that the legislature has opened the door to any governor to violate HRS 343 WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES.  Because this bill says "It is not the intent of the Legislature" to stop a project from operating prior to acceptance of an EIS IF THE GOVERNOR TELLS IT TO GO AHEAD. The bill doesn't explicitly say what entitles a project to ignore HRS 343 but that is the clear implication in the first paragraph.  You have just added a huge loophole to HRS 343.  That paragraph is not necessary.   Taking it out has no effect on the bill but closes this dangerous loophole.

Other problems:

  1. The title is not descriptive.


  2. We all know this is a special interest bill being passed so HSF can continue flouting HRS 343. By pretending it is a bill for “large ferries”, you open the door to any company coming into Hawaii and starting a ferry service prior to doing an EIS. Probably no one will because they, unlike HSF, know that the economics just don't make sense. But you are leaving the door open. I also doubt that any judge would believe this isn't a bailout bill for one specific company and therefore unconstitutional. So this subterfuge really isn't necessary.

  3. Section 1(a) Paragraph 2: “approved by the lower court approximately two years earlier.” No lower court approved it. The Court ruled in error and was subsequently  overturned.  HSF knew it was under appeal.  HSF knew they were taking a business risk going ahead.  A prudent business would have done the EIS right then in 2005.

  4. Section 1(a) Paragraph 2: “such an occurrence is not explicitly contemplated in chapter 343, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is not consistent with the intent of the legislature, an as such, the policy that should be adopted under law must be amended and clarified.” The law was written ESPECIALLY for a new project. Saying that this situation is not “explicitly contemplated” is nonsense. Saying the legislature didn't intent that large ferries do an EIS before commencement of operations is simply not true.

    If you mean a situation where the Governor deliberately flouts the law, a timid judge rules no standing when the State is sued and subsequently that judge is corrected by the Appeals Court and the Governor is told to do an EIS – well this is EXACTLY what the law was written for.

    If you pass this part of the law, you are basically saying that any time Gov. Lingle (or any governor) wants to ignore HRS 343, she will get away with it because “It is not explicitly contemplated” that the governor will ignore HRS 343.  Putting this loophole into this legislation is bad law and unnecessary to the effect of the bill.

  5. Section 1(a) Paragraph 3: “furtherance of the legislature's goal of promoting a sustainable future for its residents, a large capacity ferry vessel compamy would also utilize technology that produces less carbon emmissions when compared to inter-island aircraft transportation with the same carrying capacity.”

    This is utter nonsense. Since when would you transport a car via airplane? If you compare passenger fuel use between interisland air and HSF, the airplane uses LESS fuel per passenger mile than HSF and is thus emits less C02. The HSF goes about 3 times as fast as an interisland barge. Since fuel consumption goes up with the cube of velocity, HSF could use 27 (TWENTY SEVEN!) times as much fuel and put 27 times as much carbon into the atmosphere. HSF is BAD FOR SUSTAINABILITY and BAD FOR GLOBAL WARMING. And this bill's statement is BAD SCIENCE.

  6. Section 1(a) Paragraph 3: “between islands in a very short period of time”. 3 hours instead of 9 hours for barge and 1/2 hour for airplane. Not a real big difference when you take into account that HSF will arrive after the morning markets which is times wrong for our farmers. At the Maui Senate hearing, one farmer testified that air freight is cheaper and faster than HSF for him.

  7. Section 1(a) Paragraph 3: “produce...lower cost” Our farmers and business people testified that since they had to send a driver over with their produce, wait until the next morning for the market (which they missed due to the HSF coming into 'Oahu in the afternoon) and also because there is no way to come back without spending the night, that this would be considerably more expensive than shipping via Young Brothers.

  8. Section 1(a) Paragraph 3: “ferry...would foster diversified agriculture...” This statement is simply not backed up with any facts whatsoever.  Farmers have consistently testified that HSF has far more potential to harm their operations due to the spread of invasive species than it does to help them unless stringent methods of inspection and washing of vehicles is put in place.

  9. Section 1(a) Paragraph 3: “immediate operation of...ferry...in the public interest...continue...while environmental impact statement are conducted” There is no evidence to support this statement.  We have all lived without the superferry up until now.  We can wait another year or so.

  10. Section 1(a) Paragraph 6(1) Oversight Task force has no power, is composed in the great majority of Lingle appointees.

  11. Section 2(b) Sets no time limit on completing EIS. Makes no provision for HSF to pay for damage it causes because and EIS wasn't done first. Makes no provisions for halting HSF, if it turns out it is creating serious damage, sets no baseline with which to measure impacts.

  12. Section 2(c)1 “critical importance of the inter-island ferry service” There is no critical importance. We have lived without this ferry service ever since the Hydrofoil went bankrupt and we can continue living without it while it does an EIS. This is just nonsense.

  13. Section2(d) “at the same time, protect Hawaii's fragile environment” This is so despicably hypocritical, that is needs to be removed in order for the judge who is going to be asked to strike this law down as unconstitutional not to have a heart attack laughing so hard at the sheer, brazen baloney.

  14. Section 3. If the EIS is found lacking, HSF can continue operating. There is no incentive ever to do a real EIS with effective mitigation measures.  There is no enforcement to put mitigation measures found during the EIS into place.

  15. Section 4 does not state what measures Governor Lingle is to require of HSF. Since her original bill contained absolutely NO MITIGATION measures, one assumes she will likely impose NO MITIGATION MEASURES. This leaves the environment and neighbor islands completely unprotected.

  16. All drafts of the EIS, comments, review, and notices of hearings or meetings shall be posted prominently on the State website so that the public may access all relevant documents easily.

    (In the past, DOT has sent 1 copy to the library where it is too expensive for us to access and copy it. It is extremely important that the EIS and all associated events and documents be posted prominently and quickly on the State Website.)

  17. “(e) All statemenst and other related documents shall be made available for inspection by the public during established office hours.” Change this to: “(e)All statements and... shall be posted on the State Website expeditiously and prominently.”

  18. “(f) The office shall be responsible for the publication of the notice of availability...” should be changed to “(f)The office..... AND BY POSTING PROMINENTLY ON THE STATE WEBSITE”

  19. (g) add AND BY POSTING PROMINENTLY ON THE STATE WEBSITE”

  20. (i) shall commence as of the date notice of availability of the draft statement is intially issued” Insert AND POSTED PROMINENTLY ON THE STATE WEBSITE

  21. Section 12. The majority of the task force is Lingle appointees. Lingle appointees need to be the minority. There should be an equal number of Task Force members from each island appointed by each island's county council. Lingle's guys can come to meetings in case anyone wants to ask them a question but don't get to vote.

And finally a personal plea.  If you do nothing else, make them slow down the last 5 miles into Kahlui Harbor.  Every year a mother whale and her calf come there and they are kind of friends of the paddlers.  In fact, I've accidentally run over them in the canoe with my stroker hitting the calf with a paddle.  Because you absolutely cannot see them.  They rest 12 inches under the water, no spouting, no movement.  They hear the slow moving freighters and get out of the way (I think they didn't hear our canoe).  But they have no experience with the 34 knot HSF.  The first time HSF takes that route while they are there, the whales will be killed.

I say this because my friends were in a canoe coming back to the harbor and saw the HSF waaaay out there and thought they had plenty of time to get into the harbor before it caught up to them.  Before they knew it, HSF was on top of them.  As it passed, right at the mouth of the harbor (beginning of no wake zone) the 5 foot wake almost swamped the canoes and they were only saved because of the expertise of the steersmen.

The people who are saying there are no whales on the Kahului side of Maui don't know anything.  We see lots of them when we are out in the canoe during whale season as well as the pod of dolphins who visit Kahului Harbor regularly, a monk seal who has been hanging out at the harbor and ranging up to Kanaha and many turtles.

PLEASE PUT A 12 KNOT SPEED LIMIT WHERE WHALES ARE during whale season and don't kill the monk seal!