Four years after a controversial Land Board vote, the Hawai`i Electric Light Co. is still battling to keep alive a Conservation District Use Permit to expand its power plant at Ke`ahole, near the Kona airport on the western side of … Continued
Last summer, the Consumer Advocate was invited to comment on a proposal HELCO made to the Public Utilities Commission, asking the PUC for approval of an agreement it had reached with Enserch Development Corp., an independent power producer. As described … Continued
HELCO’s Integrated Resources Plan, approved by the Public Utilities Commission in 1996, outlines a demand-side management program that is intended to result by the year 2013 in savings of 31 megawatts of generating capacity. But, according to HELCO’s report to … Continued
The plan of an independent power producer to build a power plant on Department of Hawaiian Home Lands property at Kawaihae on the Big Island has been vigorously opposed by several DHHL beneficiaries. Chief among their objections has been the … Continued
Land Board Must Reconsider Haseko Permit, Supreme Court Says The Supreme Court has rebuked the Board of Land and Natural Resources over the board’s decision to award a permit to dredge a channel across Conservation District land at `Ewa Beach. … Continued
Sixty-three snakes have been confiscated, turned in to the state or caught in the wild in Hawai`i between July 26, 1994, and February 4, 1998. Only one of them was a brown tree snake, caught in a Schofield Barracks warehouse … Continued
Hawai`i and virtually all other oceanic Pacific islands lack native terrestrial snakes. Consequently, the native birds lack adaptive behaviors to deal with these predators. The apparently inadvertent introduction of the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) into Guam well illustrates the … Continued
The taro lo`i of Ke`anae and Wailuanui in East Maui are surely among the most photographed in the islands, ranking high along with the famous patchwork of irrigated rice and taro fields at Hanalei Valley on Kaua`i or the shimmering … Continued
The term of the first water license granted to Alexander and Baldwin was 20 years. Now, more than a century after that first license expired in 1896, A&B and its subsidiary, East Maui Irrigation Company, Ltd., take water from the … Continued
The administration of Big Island mayor Steve Yamashiro has adopted a policy that could lead to a new round of substandard subdivisions – not in Puna and Ka’u this time, but marching up the Hamakua Coast and around the north … Continued