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Help participate in Oahu community efforts to re-establish, perpetuate, and celebrate the opening of Makahiki season and the return of Lono at the following locations. Interested participants please contact event organizers by email if you have any questions concerning protocol, appropriate behavior, attire, and ho’okupu (offerings). Please be mindful and respectful of the traditions of the host community.

KO‘OLAUPOKO DISTRICT – December 4- 6th, 2009
Kualoa (Kualoa Regional Park)
Opening Saturday December 5th
6:30 AM Sunrise procession and ceremony begins
7:30 AM Registration
9:00 AM Päÿani (Makahiki Games)
6:00 PM Dinner and awards (potluck)
Contact : Umi Kai, (ulupono1@gmail.com; 840-5510)
• Families are encouraged to come and camp from Friday until Sunday
• Hawaiian Käne are encouraged to compete in the games (16 yrs and older)
• Interested Hawaiian organizations must email and RSVP in advance

WAI‘ANAE DISTRICT – November 20-21st, 2009
Mäkua (Mäkua Military Reservation)
Friday November 20th Preparation
Saturday Nov. 21st Community Access
9:00 AM Opening Procession and Ceremony
Contact William Aila (ailaw001@hawaii.rr.com; phone 330-0376)
• Mäkua Access is limited
• Interested participants must email and RSVP in advance
• Orientation session required (meetings available every Friday until Makahiki)

From Melissa:

Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) was denied approval by the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) of it’s Amended Biofuel Contract with Imperium Renewables on August 5, 2009. The amended contract would have Imperium import biodiesel from a West Coast refinery to power HECO’s new 110-megawatt generating plant, instead of a refinery built by Imperium.

Costs brought on by this amended contract would have shifted costs from Imperium to HECO’s customers, as it would have to import the fuel from the West Coast of the Continental US. The PUC ruled,

“…the Amended Contract limits Imperium’s potential liability for failure to perform, but HECO failed to provide credible evidence that such a provision, which substantially shifted risk from Imperium to HECO and its ratepayers, was necessary.” Given the substantial amendments to the Original Contract, which were not subject to a competitive bidding process (or some other process that would provide the commission with some assurance that the amended terms are reasonable), the commission finds that HECO failed to demonstrate that the Amended Contract is in the public interest…”

Although this is a win for HECO’s ratepayers, they must also ask themselves if biofuel is right for Hawaii. As stated in the testimony of Henry Curtis, Executive Director of Life of the Land, against the Amended Biofuel Contact,

Life of the Land’s position (on HECO’s application requesting the Public Utilities Commission’s of the State of Hawaii’s approval to commit funds estimated at $134,310,260 for the purchase and installation of the Campbell Industrial Park Generating Station and Transmission Additions Project) was that biofuels negatively impact climate change in a number of ways: producing ethanol and biodiesel requires the use of large amounts of fossil fuels, water, and land. Hawai`i is parceling off its agricultural land and where we would get the water remains a huge issue. Will Hawai`i ever be able to grow enough biofuel to satisfy our needs? Life of the Land doubts it. After one hundred plus years of plantation-style monocropping, is this what we really want to do? Growing biofuels is not about small farmers, it is about big agribusinesses and corporate farming. How will this help Hawai`i’s struggling family farms? Should Hawai`i be using our precious agricultural lands to grow energy crops or food? Since Hawai`i imports 90% of our food, wouldn’t promoting food security and feeding our people be a more prudent use of these lands? Biofuel production competes with food products for resources. In the US, corn that could be used to feed people and animals is siphoned off for fuel. In Brazil ethanol production displaces other crops which are then grown in newly decimated Amazon rain forests. The most productive source of biodiesel is palm oil. Most of the world’s biodiesel is grown in Indonesia and Malaysia on recently destroyed rain forests. … Indonesia ranks third in the world in greenhouse gas emissions from the carbon emitted by burning forests and peat soils to make room for mono-cropped palm oil plantations. In essence, we are substituting the greatest source of global warming – the burning of fossil fuels – for the second greatest contributor – deforestation. …

Also provided in the testimony of Henry Curtis, Dr. Tadeus Patzek, Chairman of the Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin, states:

Now I am predicting the diverse negative consequences of intensive biofuel use in Hawaii and dare the defenders of the Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO’s) decision to burn palm oil from Malaysia in an electrical power plant on Oahu to laugh at me. What seems to be at stake here is a tragically misguided decision by HECO to secure a new source of fossil fuel for its electrical power station. Their thinking seems to be that as long as the new fuel is not crude oil, somehow its flow will increase the strategic security of energy supply of Oahu. This type of linear, unimaginative thinking is characteristic of large bureaucracies under pressure to come up with a quick fix of a perceived problem.

Are monocropped agrofuels the fix to our dependence on petroleum, or should be be looking other places such as renewable energy systems? As HECO moves to solicit bids for alternative biofuel suppliers, that question should be in the back of everyones mind.

From Alana:

From “Hawai’i has a lot to gain from open ocean aquaculture” in today’s Honolulu Advertiser:

Just as we need to be off imported oil, we need to be off imported seafood. This opportunity can be an economic engine for Hawai’i, and hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.Let’s not stand in our own way. There’s  a lot to gain for everyone.

Absolutely.

The amount of seafood that we import is really astounding. It is upsetting, though, that in the wake of a very large aquaculture operation, which would export up to 90% of its ahi products, statements like the above, are used to defend it.

The article, by Jay Fidell of ThinkTech Hawaii, goes on to say that:

There are anti-aquaculture groups who don’t want “greedy” corportations to make a profit and export aquaculture products to outside markets. Those groups don’t acknowledge andvancements in the technology, and regularly diseminate disinformation about the industry. They’ve been pulling out all the stops, apparently bent on wiping out open ocean aquaculture in Hawai’i. Theyre’re completely wrong. Without open ocean aquaculture, Hawai’i would have to depend on foreign unregulated producers and overfished wild stocks. Those options are not nearly as secure or sustainable as the development of homegrown open ocean aquaculture.

I do not think of myself as entirely “anti-aquaculture”, I just think it should be done right. My cause is not to “diseminate disinformation”, it is to let people know that there are serious implications that multiple aquaculture ventures could have on Hawaii’s marine ecosystems. It is also to open peoples eyes to aquaculture in other parts of the world, and to how it has affected those places. This article makes it seem like there is some hidden agenda beneath fighting these giant open ocean aquaculture projects. But really, I have nothing to gain from this. I have neither read nor heard anything pro-open ocean aquaculture, aside from the people who would benefit direcly from it.

Rock, Metal, Petrol-based Product Dumped in Stream Bed

City of Honolulu Must Clean Mess, Halt Illegal Acts

posted by: Stewart

The U.S. government has ordered the City and County of Honolulu to clean up an illegal dump in Waianae after the city was found to have used a stream bed as a landfill for more than a year, in violation of the U.S. Clean Water Act.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which announced the order earlier today, the area of the dump was about 1.08 acres, or roughly the area of a football field.

The EPA’s order requires the city to remove the illegally dumped material and restore the stream bed and banks of Maili’ili Stream near Waianae. Under the order, the city of Honolulu also must refrain from dumping more material in the stream bed, which is located near Waianae, a poor community on Oahu’s Leeward Coast that is largely populated by Native Hawaiians.

In July, the EPA inspected the stream and confirmed that concrete rubble, metal debris, dirt, and petroleum-based asphalt had been placed in Maili’ili Stream. The city had filled an area of about 1.08 acres in Maili’ili Stream: along both the north and south banks, the fill was about eight yards wide for a distance of about 175 yards. Fill extended across the entire 33-yard channel width for the uppermost 70 yards of the stream, the EPA said.

“This order will protect the coastline and water quality by removing the unauthorized fill and restoring the Maili’ili Stream to its previous condition,” said Alexis Strauss, the EPA’s Water Division director for the Pacific Southwest region. “It’s vital to consult with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and obtain needed permits well in advance of any fill activity.”

From Kealoha Pisciotta, President of Mauna Kea Anaina Hou and one of KAHEA’s Board of Directors:

As a former telescope system specialist on Mauna Kea, I value both Polynesian and modern astronomy. Unfortunately, the West Hawaii Today editorial endorsing the Thirty Meter Telescope Board’s selection of Mauna Kea over Chile contained several inaccuracies—and one insult to Hawaiians.

Portraying modern astronomy as an extension of traditional Native Hawaiian star and navigational knowledge is inaccurate and obscures the fact that modern astronomy now threatens to displace traditional astronomy on Mauna Kea and the people who practice it there. Hawaiians use Mauna Kea’s high elevation landscape for ceremonies that contain star and other knowledge essential to modern Hawaiian voyaging, knowledge our ancestors used to discover thousands of tiny islands spread over ten million square miles of the vast Pacific Ocean, before the time of Christ and millennia before modern astronomy.

But the constant building of new telescopes has destroyed critical landmarks and obstructed essential view planes that reveal star paths and astronomical alignments. Too much of Mauna Kea’s landscape has already been leveled, and TMT plans to bulldoze more. Eventually, thousands of years of traditional knowledge codified in the landscape will be lost, and practitioners will no longer be able to keep the knowledge alive. With TMT may also come nighttime access restrictions to areas we now use for traditional astronomy. These are among the reasons Hawaiians urged the TMT Board to build in Chile, which their own analysis suggests will inflict less environmental and cultural damage.

From Alana:

Entitled Aquaculture in Hawaii: Economic Advantage or Source of Sustainability, the Hawaii Venture Capitalist Association’s recent meeting addressed the benefits of many types of aquaculture in Hawaii. I think the presentation did a good job of explaining how aquaculture could be in Hawaii, in its most ideal form.

One of the first things mentioned was that aquaculture could help restore wild fish populations that are headed towards extinction. They failed to address, however, how that would happen. It is accepted in the scientific community that fish raised in fish farms are much less fit to live in the wild. Another weak point in the presentation was explaining how the current and future open ocean aquaculture ventures would increase self-sufficiency in Hawaii by reducing imports. Up to 90% of the future ventures’ fish would be exported, while the 10% allotted for Hawaii would go to restaurants like Alan Wong’s and Mariposa, restaurants that most people here can’t afford to go to on a regular basis.

There were also two slides that were completely skipped, clearly regarding genetics. I understand that this may have been due to time constraints, but the public deserves to know not only about possible economic gains from aquaculture, but also the genetic and environmental consequences of it.

A good way to sum up the outlook of the meeting is with the quote

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly”

this quote was used during the presentation, but who is to say what is worth doing and what isn’t? Is anything worth doing badly anymore? A  commenter on one of m previous posts claimed that “fish poop” produced from aquaculture can curb the effects of climate change by absorbing the CO2 from the atmosphere, and adding it to the ocean. However, as my previous “ocean acidification” post details, an increase nutrient-rich fish effluent leads to the acidification of the ocean, thereby further risking the health of many ecosystems.

Once again, I urge everyone to learn more about what is going on in terms of aquaculture in Hawaii.

Here are some links to more info on open ocean aquaculture. It is our responsibility to find out as much as we can while we can.

Food and Water Watch: Fish Farms

Kona Blue Fish Farm

Hawaii Oceanic Technology, Inc

From:  Andrea

Just last month, Act 155 was passed in the Hawaii Legislature, amending Hawaii’s renewable energy law.

One of the highlights of this amendment was the strengthening of Hawaii’s Renewable Portfolio Standards (often abbreviated as RPS).  These standards are binding for electric utility companies, which must satisfy the specified percentage of their net electricity sales with electricity generated from renewable energy sources by the specified date.

Now, Hawaii’s Renewable Portfolio Standards are as follows:  10% by 2010; 15% by 2015; 25% by 2020; and 40% by 2030.  The two standards that Act 155 changed are the two later dates:  the 2020 standard was increased by 5%, and the 2030 standard was a new addition.

This strengthening of Hawaii’s Renewable Portfolio Standards was a wise move by the Hawaii Legislature.  Hawaii should be a predominant leader in the renewable energy realm, considering that it is the most oil dependent state with over 90% of its energy needs met by imported fossil fuels– a doubly detrimental impact with carbon footprints from long-distance importation and burning.  The context of climate change and sea-level rise heighten Hawaii’s energy vulnerability.

Yet, Hawaii is also ideally situated to move the ball forward with renewable energy due to the high availability of solar, wind, wave, and tidal energy.  Thus, the Legislature’s addition of the long-term standard, 40% renewable-created electricity by 2030, is in line with Hawaii’s position of great need, vulnerability, and opportunism.

However, the short-term standard could be a bit more aggressive.  Although a five-percent increase to 25% by 2020 is an improvement, a few other states have more stringent short-term standards.  For example, California is requiring 20% renewable-created electricity by 2010– double Hawaii’s 2010 standard.  And, Maine has a 2017 standard of 40%, Hawaii’s standard for 13 years later, while New York has a 2013 standard of 24%– 9% greater than Hawaii’s 2015 standard.

Regardless of the precise standards, the definition of “renewable energy” sources must be amended.  While creating more stringent standards in the short-term is ideal, amending the definition of “renewable energy” to only encompass those sources that are truly clean is a must.

As it stands now, the definition of “renewable energy” does not contain any qualifications.  For example, it includes “biofuels.”  Such an unqualified authorization allows utility companies to meet the standard with, say, palm oil, which fits the broad definition of “biofuels.”

What’s the problem with palm oil qualifying as a renewable energy source?  This “biofuel” implicates a significant carbon footprint due to carbon-emitting land change.  After the deforestation, heavy fertilization, and peatland burning required to produce the palm oil, the production of this “biofuel” actually contributes more to global warming, opposed to ameliorating the crisis.

Renewable energy sources and, thus, renewable portfolio standards for utility companies should authorize only clean renewable sources in life-cycle terms.  Renewability should be just one requisite for clean energy sources; the holistic footprint, including emissions, land change, and other environmental impacts, also must be taken into account.

Otherwise, we may simply displace the impact to another medium.  Without amending the law to reflect this crucial qualification, the renewable portfolio standards may end up perpetuating the very problem that they are intended to improve.

Want Hawaii to lead a meaningful renewable energy transition?

Contact your representatives in the State Legislature and voice your opinion!

Here’s contact information for our House representatives:

http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/site1/house/members/members.asp

And, here’s contact information for Senate members:

http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/site1/senate/members/members.asp