The staff of the Commission on Water Resource Management is too nice. That was the general consensus of commissioners at a May 16 meeting where, in one violation case after another, fine recommendations were minimal, to say the least. In … Continued
“Anybody who sees this would say, ‘Oh, my God! What are we doing?” That comment came from Hawai`i County Council member Brenda Ford, who represents the South Kona area where the Planned Unit Development proposed for the ahupua`a of Waikaku`u … Continued
What do fishery council members and executive directors talk about when the public isn’t listening? At a meeting of the federal Council Coordination Committee held last month in Hawai`i, at the Mauna Lani Bay Resort, it was possible to get … Continued
Land Board Approves Legacy Land Projects On May 11, the Land Board unanimously approved funds totaling $4.6 million for seven projects of the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Legacy Land Conservation Program aimed at protecting more than 12,000 acres … Continued
Appellants in the Na Wai `Eha case have a laundry list of gripes about the Commission on Water Resource Management’s June 2010 vote setting interim instream flow standards (IIFS) for four West Maui streams. To start, the commission erroneously used … Continued
Pamela Frierson. The Last Atoll: Exploring Hawai`i’s Endangered Ecosystems. Trinity University Press, 2012. 285 pages + notes, bibliography, and index. $16.95 (paper). It took author Pamela Frierson more than a decade to work her way up the jewels in the … Continued
On June 6, every seat in the ornate second-floor courtroom of Ali`iolani Hale was taken well before the 9 a.m. start of oral arguments before the justices of the Hawai`i Supreme Court. Stragglers were forced to stand. That day, parties … Continued
The findings in legislative auditor Marion Higa’s report on the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai`i Authority (NELHA) should come as no surprise to anyone who has been keeping up with that agency through the pages of Environment Hawai`i. The report, … Continued
The state’s feed-in-tariff (FIT) program is simply experiencing growing pains. That’s the opinion of Harry Judd, the independent observer (IO) appointed by the state Public Utilities Commission to oversee the FIT program, launched in 2010 to facilitate the interconnection of … Continued
The Maui County Council is standing in the way of the state’s efforts to develop the commercial potential of nearly 700 acres of state-owned land in Pu`unene. The Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Land Division has appealed to the … Continued