HELCO
HELCO
Public wants decentralized production
After reading the March 24 front-page story on HELCO in WHT, I decided I could no longer stay out of the discussion. It seems HELCO has a plan to increase its centralized production and wants the PUC to support rates to pay for this.
What? HELCO certainly isn’t hearing what the public needs or wants. We want decentralized production. Everyone is putting up solar panels — but HELCO isn’t buying. What the public needs from its public utility is a “smart grid” and storage. This smart grid can buy power, store it and move it efficiently. The biggest problem now needing research is storage. HELCO isn’t even talking about it.
The PUC needs to establish the financial goals and structures needed for effective distribution and storage. If HELCO won’t adapt, someone will.
I guess the road to HELCO is still paved with good intentions.
Susan Golden
Kailua-Kona
Age discrimination
Forced to retire is
not a fun experience
Age discrimination is alive and well in America. The column on “too old to get hired” is such a realistic article it hurts. Being “forced” to retire early because I couldn’t find a job was not my idea of how I wanted to go out of the work force. I’ve been there, done that and did not find it fun.
Layed off at 55, I was looking for a new job, more than willing to take a cut in pay or lower position but nothing was offered. One excuse I heard was I was “over qualified” or they couldn’t “pay me what I was worth.” I even had one clueless CEO tell me to my face they were looking for someone younger — in front of a witness. No, I didn’t sue, but I sure was tempted.
Even though we could afford it, many people can’t, so finding yourself out of work and pushed into retirement is not a fun thing when you still feel young at heart and know you can do the job. Many of us enjoy working and resent people telling us we are not fit to fill their position because of our age.
Frank Dickinson
Kailua-Kona
Response
Soup cans, tuna cans not made of aluminum
C. Wallis (letter March 28) was written with the best intentions no doubt, however, the information is wrong.
Soup cans, tuna cans, etc. are not made of aluminum. They are mostly thin steel and tin. You can check this yourself by testing it with a magnet. But this does not mean they cannot be recycled, which would definitely reduce the volume of buried/burned trash.
Christa Wagner
Kailua-Kona