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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/05/expansion-plan-for-lihue-airport-is-riling-residents-already-tired-of-over-tourism/" target="_self">Expansion Plan For Lihue Airport Is Riling Residents Already Tired Of Over-Tourism</a><br />');
document.write('<span class="rss-date">Fri, 27 May 2022 10:01:46 +0000</span><br />');
document.write('Kauai’s principal airport is in dire need of a facelift, but a new modernization plan by state officials would add three gates and expand rental car capacity, drawing ire from residents of an island trying to rein in staggering tourism growth. Pressure for more runway space at Lihue Airport hinges on the fact that the airport’s three-decades-old master plan is the oldest in the state and does not take into consideration the tremendous growth in annual visitor arrivals over those years. In April, Kauai visitor arrivals numbered 115,578, the highest number of April arrivals in at least the last 15 years, according to preliminary data from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. Last year there were 813,347 visitor arrivals to the Garden Isle, down from nearly 1.4 million in the pre-pandemic era of 2019. Few would argue there isn’t a need to improve the condition of an aging airport that cannot keep up with current, no less future, demand.  The main point of contention, however, is a data point at the crux of the Hawaii Department of Transportation Airports Division’s draft master plan for Lihue Airport that organizes the planned renovation around a future demand forecast of 4.5 million annual departing and arriving passengers. The Lihue Airport draft master plan proposes a new contiguous rental car facility that would increase the airport’s rental car footprint by up to 30 acres. Brittany Lyte/Civil Beat/2021 At a series of public meetings, airport officials have said that the added gates themselves do not induce demand. Rather, the proposed airport development would meet the demand that’s already there — or expected to come. Jonny Wichman, vice president of the Hanalei-Haena Community Association, said he doesn’t buy that logic. “To me, it’s one of those things where if you build it, they will come,” he said. “If you increase the airport by six gates, then you’re going to fill those six gates. So where does it stop?” Kauai Chamber of Commerce President Mark Periello said that he would like to see state transportation officials write an airport master plan that aligns with community concerns with over-tourism that are encapsulated in the island’s destination management action plan. “The airport is operating, really, in what seems like a vacuum in that they aren’t considering the experience of the person who gets to Kauai after they leave the airport,” Periello said.  As such, state and county political leaders are calling on state airport officials to reformulate the plans and try again. “It’s unfortunate that the consultants hired might be tone deaf to the community,” Gov. David Ige said Wednesday at the Kauai Chamber of Commerce’s annual governor’s luncheon, adding that he plans to tell folks at the DOT to do “more listening and less talking” when it comes to developing the Lihue Airport master plan. The Woes Of Lihue Airport The long list of Lihue Airport deficiencies includes security bottlenecks, insufficient air conditioning and too-small gate waiting rooms and rental car counters. No one would be wooed by the scant food concessions and retail options.  There’s a problem with aircraft waiting on the taxiway for an open gate. The taxi and cell phone waiting lots are insufficiently sized. A shortage of public parking stalls has occasionally led travelers to miss their flights.  As declared in a March 2022 Yelp review, “Some small airports are a joy, this one sucks.” Hortencia Narayan, left, and Dolores Zambrano, both of the Bay Area, arrived at Lihue Airport last May with no prospects for a rental car to get around the island due to a pandemic-related rental car shortage. Brittany Lyte/Civil Beat/2021 In some ways, expansion is needed. But increasing the number of airport gates from nine to 12 and expanding rental car capacity clashes with popular opinion that something has to give to rein in the visitor industry’s intrusion on the daily lives of residents fed up with traffic jams, overcrowded beaches and illegal parking. The plan also fails to take into account a shift in the island’s long-range planning strategy to take on a bigger role in managing tourism at a time when the sheer number of visitors on the island at any given time has been likened to an invasion. Haena State Park, the most popular tourist attraction in the farthest reaches of Kauai’s rural north shore, was redesigned in 2019 with new crowd control features — including a 900-person daily visitor cap and increased law enforcement — and has become a case study in how to stave off over-tourism, not only for the benefit of local residents and the delicate natural resources but for the enjoyment of the tourists themselves.  Launched after the park revamp, the Go Haena Shuttle has reduced traffic along the lone road that winds through rural Wainiha and Haena by about 3,500 cars per month, according to The Hanalei Initiative. And at the airport, new shuttle services added in 2021 aim to transport visitors to their accommodations while reducing the number of rental cars on the roads. These and other efforts to address the problems of over-tourism, including environmental degradation and the looming threat that Kauai could someday lose its reputation as a premiere visitor destination if its most iconic vistas and experiences are overrun, are guided by a series of state and county long-range planning documents published in recent years that solidify a shift toward a less-is-more tourism model. The 2018 Kauai General Plan calls for limiting new resort development and says that “any permitted growth in the visitor industry needs to consider the negative impact it can have on our infrastructure and our communities.” Similarly, the 2021-2023 Kauai Destination Management Action Plan lays out a blueprint toward better visitor management. Any expansion of the Lihue Airport to accommodate more visitors goes against these plans, Wichman said. “They’re not taking into account that the frustration level of your visitor is very high today because they’re told to come here and they get here and they want to go to the beach but there’s no parking,” Wichman said. “They want to go to the grocery store and there’s no parking. They want to go to the Na Pali Coast and there’s no reservations. They want to get food and there’s a 30 minute line, even at a food truck just to place your order. There’s terrible traffic.” Is More Tourism Inevitable? Lihue Airport could potentially choose not to expand, DOT airport division officials said in an email. However, the Federal Aviation Administration would question why the airport isn’t working toward addressing air traffic congestion in light of increasing forecast demand. Doing nothing, the division said, could result in the loss of 90% of the division’s funding for Lihue Airport improvements. That’s because the state, in order to receive FAA funding for airport improvements, agrees to provide a safely operating, maintained airport. Part of that agreement includes planning to accommodate the increasing number of aircraft wanting to schedule flights into Lihue Airport, according to the email. Lihue Airport’s 20-year master plan expired 13 years ago. State officials are working on a new master plan to better accommodate the large growth in passengers over the years. Allan Parachini/Civil Beat/2020 DOT spokeswoman Shelly Kunishige would not make someone from the department’s airport division available for an interview. The very nature of how airports receive funding is problematic, according to Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami. “The DOT, in large part, is self-funded, so they are very dependent on the revenue that they generate from the airports to be able to maintain the level of service that all of us enjoy when we have to fly,” he said. “And I think it’s because of this funding mechanism that they are, in a sense, always striving to increase revenue.” At a recent public meeting, Senate President Ron Kouchi, who represents Kauai, told state airport officials that the plan needs to account for basic considerations, such as whether the island’s highways are equipped to handle more vehicles. Unsatisfied by the response he received, Kouchi said he and Kauai Rep. Nadine Nakamura are penning a letter to Hawaii’s federal delegation to raise concerns about the airport expansion and to see if the FAA would take into account carrying capacity when forecasting airport use levels and before approving additional flights landing. Lihue Business Association President Pat Griffin described a sense of unease among Kauai residents familiar with the plan due to its assumption that more tourism is inevitable.  “The island’s rich culture and vulnerable environment should not be ignored,” she said in an email. “They deserve a belated but prominent place in this discussion.” The post Expansion Plan For Lihue Airport Is Riling Residents Already Tired Of Over-Tourism appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.');
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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/05/more-hawaii-schools-are-using-dogs-to-sniff-out-covid/" target="_self">More Hawaii Schools Are Using Dogs To Sniff Out Covid</a><br />');
document.write('<span class="rss-date">Fri, 27 May 2022 10:01:43 +0000</span><br />');
document.write('With cases of Covid-19 on the rise again in Hawaii, a Big Island school is hoping to permanently deploy a pair of four-footed detectives to help sniff out the virus in students and staff. And maybe invasive species and tree-killing fungus as well. Volcano School of Arts and Sciences recently completed an 8-week pilot project with a female Belgian Malinois named Cobra. The 8-year-old dog is trained to detect a variety of scents from fungal pathogens to coronavirus. Cobra’s highly sensitive sense of smell is not unusual. Dogs have over 300 million scent receptors in their nasal cavities compared to some 5 million in humans. Dogs with specialized training are commonly used for sniffing out drugs, cadavers, explosives, avalanche victims and people buried under earthquake rubble. Emerging research, including a new study led by a Maui-based canine expert trained in medical bio-detection, suggests that dogs are highly effective at detecting Covid by picking up on volatile organic compounds found in the breath, urine and sweat of infected people. That’s what the pilot project at the Volcano-based public charter school seems to have demonstrated. The school spearheaded the Covid detection project with an innovation grant from the governor’s office. Two other Big Island public charter schools helped with cost sharing and hosted Cobra in their classrooms: Ka Umeke Kaeo in Keaukaha and Innovations in Kailua-Kona. Cobra visits students at Volcano School of Arts and Sciences. Courtesy: Volcano School of Arts and Sciences “Cobra is a star canine,” said Kalima Kinney, principal of Volcano School of Arts and Sciences. “She’s very friendly. The students really bonded with her.” The dog is owned by Innovation Detection Concepts, based in Florida. Her recent stint on the Big Island was her second tour of duty in Hawaii. The U.S. Forest Service originally brought Cobra to Hawaii island in 2018 to help the agency get a handle on rapid ohia death, a fungal disease that has wiped out swaths of ohia forest on the island. The dog had previously trained to detect beetle-transmitted laurel wilt disease that was killing avocado trees in Florida. Cobra’s work on the Big Island four years ago was proof of concept, essentially a trial run to see if the dog could detect fungal samples hidden in live ohia trees. Researchers were searching for a way to detect the fungus before the trees showed visible signs of distress. That way foresters could apply a chemical treatment to save the trees from rapid ohia death. Cobra at work sniffing masks used to protect against Covid-19. Courtesy of Volcano School of Arts and Sciences Cobra performed well in the scent detection trials, said Kinney, whose husband is a Forest Service research ecologist who worked on the project. When the Covid pandemic began to sweep the U.S., Cobra switched gears. She underwent training to detect Covid on exhaled breath samples using methodology developed by researchers at Florida International University. Dogs trained at the university’s International Forensic Research Institute can identify odors produced by metabolic changes in infected people. The dogs can achieve up to 98% accuracy after they complete the training, according to a news release by the Volcano school. During her recent time on the Big Island, Cobra spent her days shuttling between the three public charter schools. Students would place their masks in a designated spot and Cobra would use her high-powered nose to sniff out viral odors. If she got a hit, Cobra would lie down. The school would promptly notify the student’s family that the child should be tested for Covid. During the time Cobra was on the island, students learned about the science of canine scent detection, dog training and handling, as well as careers where dogs are used, such as law enforcement, agriculture and health care, said Aubrey Hawk, a Volcano school board member. Some students got to practice being assistant handlers with Cobra, who is also an emotional support dog. Now that Cobra has returned to Florida, teachers involved in the pilot project are developing curriculum and citizen science-based projects for the Hawaii PK-12 Research & Development Consortium. The consortium is a network of schools in Hawaii collaborating to expand experiential, culturally relevant learning. Kinney hopes to raise $280,000 to train, purchase and deploy two scent-detection dogs who can permanently live on the Big Island. They would be trained to detect Covid as well as up to five additional scent targets. The targets could include fungal pathogens, brown tree snakes and other invasive species, she said. Cobra works with dog handler Kaikoa Hauoli Nalu. Courtesy: Volcano School of Arts and Sciences “The benefits here are not only detecting human disease but also plant and animal diseases,” Kinney said. This isn’t the first time Covid detection dogs have been used in Hawaii. The nonprofit Assistance Dogs of Hawaii, based on Maui, worked with Queen’s Medical Center in canine Covid detection research led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The 2021 study, submitted for peer review, found that specially trained dogs were able to rapidly detect Covid, even in people who were asymptomatic, with up to 94% accuracy. More recently, four Labrador retrievers from Assistance Dogs of Hawaii have been screening students entering Seabury Hall, a private college prep school in Makawao on Maui. The dogs sniff sweat samples taken from students who volunteer for the pilot project, said the nonprofit’s executive director Maureen Maurer. Maurer is the principal investigator on a new study published on May 7 in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, the open access, online journal of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Using 584 sweat samples taken from patients at The Queen’s Medical Center, non-hospitalized patients at an outpatient Covid testing site, and at the homes of participating volunteers, researchers found the dogs detected Covid with 98% accuracy. The study concluded that canine olfaction is an accurate and feasible method for diagnosing Covid in asymptomatic, and pre-symptomatic infected individuals. Her research remains ongoing and she’s planning to share the protocol she created with other agencies that can scale it worldwide. Maurer is currently consulting with the California Department of Public Health to train dogs using her methodology to screen students at public schools. “We’re finding consistently that the dogs are able to detect the virus two days earlier than PCR tests,” said Maurer. “It’s very exciting and that’s what we’re working on right now. “It could be groundbreaking,” she added.     The post More Hawaii Schools Are Using Dogs To Sniff Out Covid appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.');
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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/05/the-coronavirus-pandemic-caused-an-uptick-in-eating-disorders/" target="_self">The Coronavirus Pandemic Caused An Uptick In Eating Disorders</a><br />');
document.write('<span class="rss-date">Fri, 27 May 2022 10:01:38 +0000</span><br />');
document.write('Josie Lesmeister knew her bulimia had reached a crisis point during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when the University of Hawaii student went into her bathroom to make herself vomit, and nothing would come out, because she had been puking so often. “My mom had to take me to the emergency room when she found me lying on the ground in my bathroom,” said Lesmeister. Over the course of the pandemic, Lesmeister was admitted to the hospital twice for her eating disorder. “I was sort of screaming for help because I didn’t have that good of a support group,” Lesmeister said. “I think it was the stress of the pandemic on top of having no sort of support, which is why I lost a total of around 70 pounds.” For many who developed mental health disorders due to – or amplified by – the pandemic, treatment options they desperately needed were hard to find. The state of Hawaii considered addressing urgent mental-health issues, like eating disorders, through Senate Bill 2467, but it died in the crossover to the House on March 17. Though the bill didn’t pass, the problem it sought to address persists. A survey done by the American Psychological Association found that almost 7 in 10 psychologists nationwide with a waitlist reported that it had grown longer since the start of the pandemic. Since the pandemic, the National Eating Disorders Association reported that there was a 58% increase in calls and texts from people who were utilizing their hotline. Eating disorders have the second highest risk of death of any mental illness, after opioid addiction. Someone in the U.S. dies from an eating disorder every 52 minutes, according to the National Eating Disorder Association. A survey found that reports of eating disorders has increased 21% since 2019. Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2021 Hawaii’s mental health care system became overwhelmed with new clients because psychiatrists and therapists were in high demand. According to a survey conducted by Hawaii Health Matters, there has been a 21.1% increase of young adults who have developed symptoms of an eating disorder since 2019. Mental health disorders, such as eating disorders, have been a global issue among young adults for many years but according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of hospitalizations for eating disorders has doubled since the pandemic. Legislative Efforts Stalled In order to address the growing rate of eating disorders among young adults in Hawaii, lawmakers have considered restructuring the mental health system. Sen. Stanley Chang believes that one way to improve this issue is to change the stigma of how mental health is viewed as well as including annual mental health exams for everyone in Hawaii. “If everyone were to go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist on an annual basis, and everyone were to be getting some mental health care to begin with through those annual checkups, then I think that would greatly de-stigmatize the problem,” Chang said. Mental health concerns, like anorexia and bulimia, have reached the crisis point, and legislators are trying to force insurance companies to cover annual mental health screenings. But they are getting push back from those companies, who do not want to cover the costs. Senate Bill 2467, which passed the state Senate but died in the House, requested that one annual mental health screening would be included in health insurance coverage for diagnosis or mental health disorders, including eating disorders. As cases of eating disorders and other mental health issues increased, lawmakers declined to advance measures that would have required insurance coverage for mental health screenings. Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2022 Chang said that “each year we try to pass this bill, and this year it is the furthest it has ever gotten.” In the meantime, Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, Senate Health Committee chairman, said the group is working toward tackling this issue, as well as other mental health issues, by “restructuring the system around crisis.” “The approach we’ve taken this year is to restructure the system, so that it’s easier to navigate if you are an individual in crisis or if you’re trying to help someone who is going through a mental health crisis,” Keohokalole said. An initial step is the introduction of the 988 hotline, which will connect a caller to a service provider or social worker who can assess the situation and get someone to help. “It’s basically 911 but for mental health crisis,” Keohokalole said. Another tactic, Keohokalole said, is to build capacity in Hawaii’s health care systems, including restoring positions in the state Department of Health’s adult mental health divisions. For Lesmeister, she said the stress of the pandemic pushed her into the eating disorder. “I’ve always had girlfriends that were so tiny, and so I always felt like I was so huge all the time, and then I think that’s when I started to develop a bulimia disorder,” she said. UH students Nicole Taylor and Emma Cullen also began suffering from mental health concerns and eating disorders during the pandemic. Before they knew it, they felt out of control. “I remember I ate so much to the point where I could not physically get out of bed,” Taylor said, “and this was a cycle that happened almost everyday. I think it sort of stemmed from being stressed with everything I had going on, and I think the pandemic made it worse, because, I mean, we were all living in fear, and I started to think we would be in lockdown forever.” On top of being at a school far from home, some UH students also spoke of their struggles with bulemia and anorexia. Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2022 As a result, Taylor said that she turned to food and started to binge eat more than usual, gaining almost 20 pounds since the pandemic first started. “The clients that I have that struggled with distorted eating behaviors started to struggle more intensely after the pandemic,” said Nikki Moravec, a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in eating disorders. “Even some clients that I had who were in recovery reached out to me after the pandemic started because they felt it was a really hard time for them and they started engaging in those behaviors again.” She said eating disorders are a mental struggle people deal with that is incredibly hard on the body, both mentally and physically. UH student Cullen said that the stay-at-home mandate affected her weight and caused her to fall into a depressive state. “Because I was always at home watching movies, I was always constantly eating snacks,” Cullen said. “I was just around food more, and it was right in front of me, therefore I put on like 20 pounds during Covid, and that really messed me up for sure.” Moravec explained that although body image may be one reason young adults begin to engage in habits that can lead them to developing symptoms of an eating disorder, often eating disorders stick around due to their effectiveness in numbing feelings. “Very often, eating disorders actually start as a diet,” Moravec said. “Then it becomes something that a person may recognize what they’re doing, or not doing, with food that serves as coping functions.” Cullen said, “When I am in a lower episode, I will eat until my stomach is absolutely killing me, and I think that I’ve always used food as a coping mechanism throughout my entire life. For example, if I’m pissed off and I’ve had a bad night, I want to come home and eat a bag of chips because I feel like that will make me happy.” Social Media Use Social media use may also contribute to the increase in reports of eating disorders during the pandemic. “Here in Hawaii it is an even bigger problem because we are continuously exposing our bodies,” Moravec said. “One of the amplifiers of eating disorders is comparison, and most of the time people are comparing themselves to something that is unattainable.” “I think I’ve always compared myself to others when it comes to my physical appearance,” Taylor said. “One time I was invited to a party on the beach, and I chose not to go, because I knew I was going to have to be in a bathing suit, and I didn’t feel confident.” For Cullen, she said she stopped going to the beach because she felt she had developed a double chin. “I remember I was driving with my friend to Diamond Head, while I was in the passenger seat and I kept looking in the mirror,” Cullen said, “and I told her to turn around because I didn’t want anyone to look at me.” Lesmeister said at one point she wanted to transfer to a school in Oregon, where she thought she could wear clothes that covered her body more. One psychologist suggested that eating disorders may be amplified in Hawaii, where the beach and the weather mean more people could be seen in bathing suits. Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2020 “I remember calling my mom and telling her I didn’t want to go to school in Hawaii,” she said, “because I felt like every day I was forced to put on a bathing suit and socialize even though I wasn’t happy with how I looked.” Researchers have also found links between the mental-health crisis, smartphone use, and body dysmorphia. A survey conducted by the National Library of Medicine, for example, showed “that about 70 percent of internet users, especially the young generation worldwide, were using their smartphones or mobile phones more as a direct result of lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak.” Lesmeister said smartphone overuse contributed to her condition, adding, “I was always on my phone because I had nothing else to do, and numerous Instagram models would continuously pop up on my feed, and I think everyone tries to live up to an unrealistic standard.” Taylor and Cullen said that social media definitely impacted the way they looked at their bodies. “When I got the heaviest, I didn’t want anyone to see me,” Cullen said. “I stopped posting on Instagram for months at a time, and then I would start going on Tik Tok, which was 10 times worse.” Taylor said she spent hours scrolling through her phone instead of being productive or even moving around. “One time I started crying, because I saw so many people that I believed were more attractive than me,” Taylor said, “and I realized I had been in my room for hours rather than trying to look like them.” Moravec, who cares for patients with eating disorders, also chalked up the increased rate of eating disorders to social media. As young adults were unable to engage in activities such as school, work, etc., she said the rate of their screen time usage increased. Apps such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok saw an increase of 61% during the beginning of the pandemic, according to a study from data consulting firm Kantar. “I really think that stepping away from social media made me a much happier person overall because it definitely made me be more okay with my body,” Cullen said. Although Cullen has lost 15 pounds since the start of her weight loss journey last year, she said that once she stopped comparing herself to other people online, it allowed her to become more happy with herself. These UH students — and they say they definitely aren’t alone in these struggles — said that working on their mental state has helped them to become more content with their body image. “I know that a lot of people my age deal with this sort of problem,” Taylor said. “I think it’s also important to know that nobody judges you more than yourself.” Lesmeister said she hasn’t forced herself to throw up in more than a year. “Although I’m not at my skinniest anymore, I’ve learned that these expectations everyone tries to live up to are not real,” she said. “I’ve learned to be more happy with myself by going to therapy as well as reminding myself that as long as I’m happy with myself, it shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks of me.” The post The Coronavirus Pandemic Caused An Uptick In Eating Disorders appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.');
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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/05/how-a-powerful-lawmaker-forced-through-a-contentious-energy-bill/" target="_self">How A Powerful Lawmaker Forced Through A Contentious Energy Bill</a><br />');
document.write('<span class="rss-date">Fri, 27 May 2022 10:01:34 +0000</span><br />');
document.write('During the waning days of the 2022 legislative session, a bill to protect coffee — one of the state’s most valuable cash crops — was alive by a thread. Sponsored by Rep. Nicole Lowen, a Big Island lawmaker who chairs the House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee, the original measure called for tightening labeling laws to ensure that coffee labeled as, say, Kona coffee, included at least 51% coffee grown there. By the end of session the Senate had watered down Lowen’s bill to a measure calling for a study. And with House and Senate conference committee members at an impasse on April 28 — the day before all bills faced a pass-or-fail deadline — something unusual happened. In the waning days of the 2022 legislative session, Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz made a number of moves to gain leverage over a House member that would determine the fate of Dela Cruz’s pet energy bill. Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2022 Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee who was pushing a controversial energy bill, suddenly appeared on the Senate conference committee presiding over Lowen’s coffee bill. Lowen’s House committee had defanged Dela Cruz’s energy bill the previous month by removing a provision designed to redirect Hawaii’s transition from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy. Any attempt to resurrect Dela Cruz’s energy bill in conference committee would have to get past Lowen. Now, by appearing on the conference committee overseeing Lowen’s coffee bill, Dela Cruz was showing he had leverage over Lowen. And that was not an isolated incident. A record of committee assignments on April 28 shows Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz suddenly moving onto committees negotiating the fate of bills sponsored by Rep. Nicole Lowen. Hawaii Legislature Four times in the session’s 11th hour, Dela Cruz suddenly appeared on conference committees with the ability to make or break bills Lowen had sponsored. In all four cases, Dela Cruz replaced other members of the WAM Committee with himself. Then, the legislative record shows, Dela Cruz vanished from the committees almost as suddenly as he appeared, dropping off the committees the same or next day. Neither Dela Cruz nor Lowen would comment on Dela Cruz’s machinations. But the record shows a pattern: Dela Cruz repeatedly put himself in a position to kill Lowen’s bills at the last minute. The legislative jockeying illustrates the influence a single legislator can have on the legislative process. In the end, Lowen flipped her position on Dela Cruz’s energy bill. In turn, Dela Cruz let Lowen’s bills move forward with no objections. Russell Ruderman, a former Big Island senator who served alongside Dela Cruz, said the only thing unusual here was that Dela Cruz left a record of his maneuvers. “That’s Donovan’s power play in the baldest terms,” Ruderman said. “It sure appears he held Rep. Lowen’s bills hostage to get what he wanted out of her.” Unusual Last-Minute Moves It’s not unheard of for lawmakers to ask to switch onto or off of conference committees, said Hawaii Senate President Ron Kouchi, who makes the conference committee appointments. Kouchi said he usually grants the request of senators when they ask him. “Certain bills are important to different chairs, and he wants to be there” on the committee, Kouchi said. But the record shows in the last days of the 2022 session, the changes in conference committee assignments were dominated by Dela Cruz’s flurry of changes involving Lowen’s bills. For example, the record for the 2022 session shows a handful of committee reassignments earlier as conference committees were forming, but in two instances the bills were ones carried over from 2021 and went nowhere. In another instance, in a routine move, everybody on a conference committee was discharged because the Senate, it turned out, agreed with the House draft after all. Dela Cruz’s reassignments were different because they happened all at once and late in the session. Plus, almost all involved one House lawmaker’s bills. Out of 13 switches made on April 28-29, eight involved Dela Cruz and Lowen’s bills, House records show. Although Dela Cruz wouldn’t comment on why he was added to the conference committees dealing with Lowen’s bills, he did deny that he makes deals with other lawmakers to support or oppose bills. But he added, “I guess you could call consensus building making a deal.” The Concern Over SB 2510 Hawaii’s energy statute calls for virtually all electricity sold in the state to be produced by renewable resources by 2045, and, if signed by Gov. David Ige, Dela Cruz’s legislation, Senate Bill 2510, will change the law that says how Hawaii is supposed to make the transition. Hawaii’s energy statute currently allows the utilities, developers of power facilities and regulators to navigate the enormously complicated shift to renewables, guided by factors like reliability and costs for customers. All of this is unfolding against a backdrop of swiftly changing technology that has driven down the costs of wind and solar, for example, and the development of giant batteries that have made electricity produced by wind and solar available even when there’s no wind or sun. One beneficiary of SB 2510 could be Hu Honua, a controversial wood-burning power plant on the Big Island. Utility regulators on Monday rejected the company’s request to approve a contract with Hawaiian Electric, in part because the deal would increase the typical residential power bill by $10.97 per month. Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2022 Utilities and other stakeholders say prescribing exactly how much of each type of renewables must be used will make their difficult task even harder. There’s also the question of whether Hawaii wants to lock itself into using certain technologies when something cheaper and more reliable might come along in the next two decades. But Dela Cruz argues the current law’s hands-off approach isn’t working. For months, he’s been pushing the idea that each island’s renewable energy portfolio needs to include a certain percentage of “firm renewables.” This generally means using things like wood or biodiesel to fire generators. In January, the senator sponsored his bill requiring that each island’s renewable portfolio consist of at least 55% firm renewables. The bill also limited the use of any other type of renewable to 45% of the portfolio. The bill’s most visible beneficiary would be Hu Honua, a beleaguered wood-burning Big Island power plant facing an uncertain future. Amid contentious debate, the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission on Monday in a 2-1 decision rejected Hu Honua’s request to lock Hawaiian Electric into a 30-year contract with the facility in part because the PUC said such a contract would increase typical monthly residential power bills by almost $11. Greenhouse gas emissions were another concern, the PUC said. Dela Cruz’s bill could revive Hu Honua’s hopes by requiring the Big Island to use Hu Honua’s power regardless of cost and emissions. Rep. Nicole Lowen altered Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz’s energy bill, but the senator succeeded in changing the language through legislative maneuvering. Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2018 The prescriptive percentages in Dela Cruz’s measure drew criticism from a range of local energy experts, including the University of Hawaii’s Natural Energy Institute, Hawaiian Electric and the Hawaii State Energy Office. The Hawaii State Energy Office, for example, testified it was “concerned that as written, establishing such constraints in statute may interfere with the development of an optimized system that balances energy security, grid reliability, and cost control based on available technologies, resources, and needs of Hawaii’s energy systems at the time.” Despite such concerns, the bill sailed through the Senate. But when it reached its first stop in the House, Lowen’s Energy and Environmental Protection Committee, lawmakers started heeding the critics. Lowen declined to comment about the maneuvering behind SB 2510, but said she disagrees with prescriptive mandates. “You can see my preference for policy is based what the House passed out,” she said, referring to her committee’s draft. “It reaffirms what is already in statute and has to do with reliability and affordability, greenhouse gas emissions and reducing our reliance on imports. It is already in law.” On March 17 the committee voted to delete the prescriptive quota language from the bill. The bill remained that way — essentially defanged — until late April. That’s when House and Senate members were assigned to sort out their differences in conference committee. While most bill drafts are made public before lawmakers hold hearings on them, giving the public the chance to testify, conference drafts are different. Although voted on in public hearings, they are negotiated behind closed doors, and there’s no chance for testimony. Such was the case with the energy bill. During the first conference committee hearing on the energy bill, on April 27, Sen. Lorraine Inouye, the Senate conference committee chair, explained the bill was still “a measure in the making,” the video record of the hearing shows. She suggested interested stakeholders contact her office to obtain a draft, when one was available, but stressed that anything produced would still be subject to ongoing negotiations. She moved to reconvene the next day. That’s when Dela Cruz intervened directly. Stakeholders Pushing For Veto On April 28 Dela Cruz appeared on the conference committee hearing Lowen’s coffee bill, and then he was taken off before they voted. The same day Dela Cruz appeared on conference committees determining the fate of three other bill’s Lowen had sponsored: one related to recycling, another to require state facilities to implement measures to enhance energy efficiency and the third, establishing a goal to make sure statewide greenhouse gas emissions are at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. The status sheet for Rep. Nicole Lowen’s House Bill 1800 setting a goal to limit greenhouse gas emissions shows how Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz jumped onto and off of the conference committee at the 11th hour. Hawaii Legislature The next day, Lowen had the chance to vote for or against a new draft of Dela Cruz’s bill. According to this draft, each island would have to generate 33% of its renewable electricity from projects like Hu Honua, and resources like wind and solar would be capped at 45% of the total portfolio. To Lowen, “being too prescriptive with required percentages does not make sense.” “We don’t know what the sweet spot is going to be,” she said. Still, with Dela Cruz hovering around the conference committees deciding the fate of Lowen’s bills, Lowen and Rep. Lisa Marten, Lowen’s vice chair on the House energy and environment committee, voted in favor of the bill adding prescriptive language. In the end, Dela Cruz — perhaps the most influential senator in the Legislature and who has a reputation for playing hardball — ultimately prevailed in getting his favored bill passed. Lowen’s four bills also passed. Now, the only obstacle left for Dela Cruz is a potential veto by Ige. The post How A Powerful Lawmaker Forced Through A Contentious Energy Bill appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.');
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document.write('<li class="rss-item"><a class="rss-item" href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/05/hawaii-can-do-many-things-to-limit-ocean-pollution/" target="_self">Hawaii Can Do Many Things To Limit Ocean Pollution</a><br />');
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document.write('Paradise, utopia, or the perfect getaway are different names for the beautiful Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii is a bucket-list place for visitors across the planet. As islands with marvelous beaches, stunning views and fascinating culture, these islands never seem to lose their beauty. However, behind all the grand hotels, local shop fronts, and flourishing green mountains are piles of trash that flow into the archipelago’s waters. Plastic floats into the mouths of marine life and fatally chokes them. Because of this, fish are caught with pieces of plastic in them, affecting us. Polluted concrete cities and glorified landfills are far more accurate descriptors for this tropical heaven. These problems highlight why we as a society need to make a change. We can do many things to limit pollution, such as ensuring our garbage reaches a trash can, picking up rubbish we see on the ground and reducing our use of single-use plastics. If we all make an effort, soon, we will start to see results. We, a group of high schoolers from all over Oahu, came together and call ourselves the Fathers of the Waters. We aim to help contribute toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal No.14: Life Below Water. Goal No. 14 focuses heavily on marine life and its conditions. Our main goal is to inform more people about what’s happening in Hawaii and get them involved, whether they are tourists or locals. “We made this group because we all care about the waters of Hawaii, and we know that the quality of the water in Hawaii has gone down in recent years. Our group decided to come together to take a small stab at a solution by actually doing something ourselves,” Isaiah Tanaka, one of our members, explained. A screenshot from the UN website on Sustainable Development.  “We are Hawaii’s future, and we need to start doing something about these beaches because if no one does anything, it will be too late for future generations,” group leader Charlie Ho points out. Humanity is the problem the environment faces, and we need to come together to find solutions and make a difference before it’s too late. Our group uses social media to inform and educate people about our island’s dire situation. On April 24, we displayed our passion for this goal by taking a trip to Heeia Fishpond on Oahu’s east side. For over 800 years, this structure has been a primary food source for Native Hawaiians. Over generations, the people of Hawaii have relied on fish for their primary diet. With fish so abundant, Hawaiians wanted to make places where the fish would be more easily collected. So, they constructed chain fishponds. This important wall formation contains hundreds of thousands of rocks placed along the outer edge to create the fishpond’s walls, with gaps for gates to let in fish. Over time, rocks have fallen off into the ocean, and the walls and gates have crumbled down, creating a dying source of food income. By working on the land and using teamwork, and working with strangers all across America, our group is stepping forward to restore this landmark to its previous state. Some things we did included burning mangroves, moving around excess wood and weeding out other invasive species. When we did this, it made more room for the water and gave more room for native plants to grow. The Pacific’s Garbage Patch What can we, as a society, do to solve this problem of overpollution? Even though there are many steps to take, one of the main things to focus on is major beach cleanup. According to rePurpose.com, one of the most successful beach cleanups of all time was the collaborative Puri, India, beach cleanup, which was jump-started by India’s District Administration and took place in September 2019 on International Coastal Cleanup Day. While it didn’t record the most plastic picked up, it did see extensive participation. They put in the time and effort to help the environment, and if we all make an effort to go to a couple of beach cleanups, the world will be a better place in no time. With 5,000 volunteers, the people in India conquered a lot. Now, imagine that nine times over. With 44,456 total volunteers over the years, the most prominent organization in Hawaii is 808CleanUps. It is a group that helps clean places all over Hawaii, including many beaches. The volunteers have done hundreds of beach cleanups to help solve the problem of over-pollution, and in the past seven years they have collected over 381 tons of plastic. One massive reason we need these beach cleanups in the first place is because of the amount of waste tourists and locals produce, which unfortunately overflows into the ocean. According to dumpsters.com, the U.S. produces 268 million tons of trash each year. Even worse, only 140 million tons of that goes into landfills, which means 128 million tons of trash gets released into the oceans each year. The harmful effects of what we do can lead to creations like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a 1.6 million square kilometer mass of trash pulled from the American West Coast, East Asian coast and the Pacific. To put it into some perspective, that’s an area about twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France. However, the problem is that over 1.4 million people live on the Hawaiian Islands, and many aren’t doing nearly enough. We need to control overpollution in Hawaii and come together to put the time and effort into cleaning up our beaches and ultimately creating a cleaner environment. If we all make an effort, soon, we will start to see results. If people ranging from the East Coast to the West Coast to the Hawaiian Islands can band together for one day and clean a fishpond, we can too. As a group promoting awareness of our cause, we constantly need help to make a more significant impact. These problems are precisely why you — yes, you — should help contribute. Whether you are a local or a tourist, our beaches and waters are a vital attribute to every living being residing on or visiting these islands. Doing simple, small things like picking up after yourself, not littering, and using reusable utensils can help make a significant future if you work along with the guidelines of other organizations. We, the Fathers of the Waters, will continue to support and care deeply about the environment for years to come, and we hope you will join us in this action to save the beaches of Hawaii. As Maui County Mayor Michael Victorino said, “Choices have consequences.” The post Hawaii Can Do Many Things To Limit Ocean Pollution appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.');
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