Environment Hawai`i has completed ten years of publication. With this issue, we embark on our second decade.
It is an achievement in which we take some measure of pride. The newsletter has consistently given its readers reports that are neither so arcane as to be unintelligible to motivated readers, nor so condescending as to insult their intelligence.
The newsletter was founded on what we believe is a sound premise: that in a democracy, intelligent people, if given the means with which to understand a problem in its full complexity, will be motivated to take the necessary action to remedy it in a responsible fashion.
What has this to do with the environment?
In Hawai`i, the citizenry has been ill-served by the dominant broadcast and print media. Consider, for a moment, the stories that we, by dint of hard work and doggedness – and not by favor, leaks from unidentified “informed” sources, or partisan insiders – have managed to break:
The Hawaiian Riviera Resort: Charles Chidiac, the promoter behind this project intended to be built along the most remote coastal area of the Big Island, managed to win the favor of the Waihe`e administration, the several Big Island Chambers of Commerce and business associations (not, in itself, any particularly difficult accomplishment), and favorable, if not downright fawning, press coverage. Our report (July 1991) revealed quite a different side of the developer: in hock up to his eyeballs, with mortgages held by offshore Caribbean banks. The information was there for any and all to see in the state Bureau of Conveyances, but no one had bothered to look for it until we did.
Del Monte’s ongoing use of heptachlor: Since the early 1980s, Hawai`i has held heptachlor in particular disregard. When heptachlor turned up in cow’s milk – the result of the green tops of pineapples being fed to dairy cattle – the public uproar was extraordinary and heptachlor was promptly banned.
Or so most people thought. The reality was otherwise: Del Monte, which had hoarded its stocks, continued to use the chemical, parsimoniously applying it so that its supplies would last well into the 21st century – a fact we uncovered in the course of researching water contamination in Central O`ahu. The only parties in on the secret were the company and the state Department of Agriculture.
Within a week of our disclosure of the ongoing use, Del Monte announced it would stop using the chemical. Again, the information was available, in an Environmental Protection Agency report, but not one of the swells of the Advertiser or Star-Bulletin had bothered to check.
The Case of the Conflicted Space Czar: In the spring of 1993, the state was aglow with the apparent headway being made by its “space czar,” Adm. Thomas Hayward, USN (Retired), in moving forward with plans for a space launch facility. Amid great fanfare, a letter of understanding with Lockheed had been signed (although the state read far more into this than Lockheed) to move forward with the project planned for Ka`u, over the protest of most of the district’s residents.
After Environment Hawai`i reviewed the financial records of Hayward’s contract, it became abundantly clear that Hayward was working as a consultant not just for state, but for Lockheed and any number of other defense and space contractors. Our story made the front page of papers across the state and within a few months, the space launch facility was just a bad (albeit expensive) memory.
In each of these cases, and many more, our reports changed the way the state and its various agencies were conducting the people’s business. In each case, the environment, public health, and the public pocketbook emerged the better for our work.
To be sure, not all stories have positive outcomes. Many of the reports we have published on certain land use controversies, water disputes, solid waste, and the like, either have not yet been resolved, despite years of litigation or protracted administrative hearings. More depressing yet, our reports on many of the state’s imperiled species will probably be resolved only when the issue is moot: that is, when the animal or plant is removed from the list of endangered species because it has become extinct.
Yet in every case, in every report, no matter how depressing, a lesson may be found. If we do not record our mistakes, how can we ever learn to avoid them in the future?
In Hawai`i, where the newspapers and broadcast media are led by the nose by the “news” releases of spin doctors (whether in state or private employ), where every other source of news is committed to improving the bottom line of private corporations (almost every one of which is owned by out-of-state interests), where outrages and impertinences and insults to the public interest occur with astounding – and unremarked – frequency; in such a state, the importance of a vigorous press free and unencumbered in every sense of the word cannot be over-emphasized. If Environment Hawai`I has made some small contribution to advancing the cause of an independent press in the state over the last ten years, as we believe we have, those years have indeed been time well spent.
To all the devoted readers, staff, board members, and supporters whose friendship and contributions have made this possible, we extend our most sincere and profound mahalo.
Volume 11, Number 1 July 2000
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