Letters to the Editor: April 25, 2020

SCOTUS decision affects Kealakehe WWTP

While the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the Clean Water Act was about Maui sewage discharges, it will affect Hawaii County disposal at Kealakehe as well. For 25 years, treated effluent has been dumped down a hole in the ground and USGS traced those discharges to coastal waters, which are now federally listed as impaired.

The solution is to end this illegal dumping and start doing water recycling. You don’t need an NPDES permit if you don’t pollute the ocean. Water recycling pays for itself through the sale of recycled water for irrigation. This frees up valuable groundwater. The original plan for Kealakehe Wastewater plan was to do recycling. That is what we should do now. Stop polluting our coastal waters.

The county should work with companies that do water recycling as a business much as Hawaii Water is doing now for the Waikoloa Resort community. With limited county funds, let’s leverage private resources. Honolulu has done the for the Ewa Water Recycling Facility in a partnership with Veolia. This really is not something new.

Steve Holmes

Kailua-Kona

Never miss an opportunity to lead from behind?

It is now so openly obvious that our elected officials are unable or unwilling to lead that we as tax-paying citizens need to voice our dissatisfaction the same way they are doing it on the mainland? They have now decided to keep Oahu closed for the most part until the end of May with no guidance on a soft reopening? How can the airlines that we depend on for our very survival and the people that come here on vacation plan anything? Eighty percent of our revenue comes directly from this source. The less populated islands, such as the Big Island, are ready to open with less than 100 infected people since this whole pandemic started, so why the complete lockdown from soon-to-be retired Mr. Kim?

I would love to hear something along the line of “the governor just contacted the president and requested that we need assistance with setting up testing at all the airports on all flights coming to the islands.” The new testing equipment such as the saliva test where you get the results in several minutes and maybe some of the other tests the president has been talking up? This would eliminate the 14-day quarantine that is killing any travel to the islands.

The president wants and the people want the country to open up safely and as soon as possible but there needs to be leadership at the local level. There are governors all around the country that are either grandstanding for attention or acting responsible and using common sense. I am hoping that our leaders try the common sense approach.

Bob Johnson

Kailua-Kona

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