Banyan namesake desecrated
Banyan namesake desecrated
I have read with interest articles concerning the properties on Banyan Drive and homelessness. I have been coming to the Big Island for 26 years. I have noticed the increasing neglect of the namesake of the drive.
These majestic trees are being overgrown by invasive plants and used as shelters and toilets by homeless. Such a travesty with a pristine park adjacent to it.
I think it is noble of people to leave their deposit bottles and cans for the homeless but wonder if it enables the drug problem.
Mary Michol Oen
Kailua-Kona/Ohio
H2S (hydrogen sulfide) is the waste product of many different industries and second only in its toxicity to cyanide gas. For some reason, it wasn’t on the federal HAP (hazardous air pollutant) list until 1990 and once it was listed there, the industries that produced it lobbied Congress to have it removed in 1991, as it would set them up for potential law suits.
Upon that, H2S was immediately stricken from the HAP list, claiming it has been a “clerical error” and reclassified as an extremely hazardous substance. Here we have the second most toxic gas known relegated to slightly above the status of SO2 (sulfur dioxide), known otherwise as vog.
The difference between the two is SO2 is an irritant, while H2S is a neurotoxin, for which if it doesn’t kill you, it will not make you stronger, as once in your nervous system it can wreak all manner of havoc inside of you. H2S is federally regulated within the industries, but once it crosses their property boundary, all bets are off!
In Hawaii there is one hour averaging for H2S monitoring, so a dose that could knock down or kill you would be averaged out to the equivalent of a particularly nasty fart. This spontaneous reclassification was done by the same Congress that tried to have pizza and ketchup classified as vegetables for school lunch purposes, because they both had tomatoes, evidently not knowing or caring that the tomato is a fruit, something a ninth-grade biology student could have told them. This is a classic example of the reason, sanity and logic used in many of their decisions, the ones that affect our everyday lives. To many, the real clerical error is that legislators gets paid to do this kind of thing to us.
Dave Kisor
Pahoa
Who should be allowed to buy spray paint in Hawaii?
Recent letters to the editor have addressed the so-called coral graffiti, dutifully removed by some self-proclaimed do-gooders. Some people observe that the coral writing is now being replaced by spray paint on the lava. Thus, temporary “art” becomes permanent.
Without taking sides on that specific issue, here is my suggestion to lawmakers — enact legislation to stop allowing the purchase of spray cans by out-of-state visitors. Much to my surprise, when I buy paint at any local hardware store, the cash register is programmed to automatically halt the transaction until the cashier visually verifies that I am an adult, not a teenager. But, nobody ever checks my ID.
Happily, here in Hawaii, widespread graffiti by youths is not a problem. Apparently our young people understand that this is an island, not the throw-away world that we see elsewhere. Our young people realize that the aina is everyone’s property and everyone’s responsibility. So why do we in Hawaii use mainland mentality at our local hardware stores’ cash registers?
As for me, I would rather see the sale of a can of paint being made to a local teenager, rather than see one sold to a tourist. If there is opposition to this idea, I ask respondents to explain what possible good deed is ever accomplished by a visitor with a can of spray paint in hand.
James Donovan
Waikoloa