Letters to the Editor: 3-26-16

Pre-dawn lawn care too much

As long-term visitors (sixth year), my husband and I have found Keauhou Bay a wonderful place to wait out the bad winter weather in our part of the mainland.

We choose to stay here knowing that the property is situated along the newly reopened Kona Country Club. At home we live on a golf course so we are very familiar with maintenance machinery noise. However, we have never been subjected to such early morning (read: pre-dawn) noise like here in Keauhou. Nearly every day, starting around 5:50 a.m.; so early the mowing machines require headlights!

The golf course is in constant maintenance with astonishingly excessive watering and much overuse of lawn fertilizers that will run into the ecosystem. The constant watering and so forth prods the owner to mow the fairways and greens, it seems, almost every day. I do believe that the Big Island could make much better use of valuable water.

I count at least eight condo properties that surround this under-played golf course yet the owner is completely insensitive to these annoying maintenance nuisances. We tried to engage the apparent owner in a conversation but he and his interpreter declined. Too bad he doesn’t live next to his property and be forced to hear the constant irritating equipment noises before sunrise.

It looks as if the upper course (i.e., mountain course) may be getting ready for a rehab. I am sure that that property will also require much water and fertilizer, as it has been inactive and ignored for years.

Changing the current maintenance practices to later in the day, and less often, would generate much needed aloha between the course ownership and his adjoining neighbors.

Kathy Arroyo

Keauhou

Hospital gets an A

I recently had to go to Kona Hospital Emergency Room on a Friday night and was admitted to the hospital. I was impressed with the care and attention I received. I saw a doctor, a surgeon and had a CAT scan all before I was sent up to my room. My room was clean and well maintained. All of the staff was very attentive. I especially enjoyed my nurses Katie and Evelyn for showing me the correct way to do the “hat dance.”

Considering all of the budget cuts the hospital has had to endure, I felt I had the best of care and would not hesitate to go there again should the need arise.

Thank you to all the staff and their devotion to their patients.

Julie Kennel

Kailua-Kona

Who are the real invasives?

I read with interest the March 24 letters to the editor, it appears that two of the biggest problems plaguing the Kona area are feral cats and leaf blowers.

I started to wonder how the heck such horrid things made their way to Hawaii, neither are endemic to the islands. As I remember my history, neither leaf blowers or cats hitchhiked here on double-hull canoes, feral chickens and pigs perhaps, but I’m pretty sure that we “haoles” (strangers) brought the leaf blowers and the cats.

This leads me to believe that perhaps it isn’t cats or leaf blowers causing these problems, it’s the most invasive of all species, us.

I think we all owe an apology to our Hawaiian hosts here, we have brought some pretty obnoxious things to paradise.

Duane Sherman

Ocean View

Reinstall buoys please

Recreational boating is now being done out of our new Kawaihae south harbor which became operational less than two years ago. About six months before it opened, the Coast Guard removed the red and green navigational buoys that defined this harbor entrance.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources, which has jurisdiction, requested that they remain in place but to no avail. Now, almost two years later, we are still operating without the guidance that these buoys should, by law, be providing. Without these navigational aids in place, safe daytime operations at this harbor, because of the adjacent shallow waters, is dicey and at night impossible. I humbly request that, for the safety of all our Kawaihae boaters, these navigational aids be reinstalled!

Tommy Tinker

Kapaau