{"id":10281,"date":"2018-03-12T20:51:21","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T20:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.environment-hawaii.org\/?p=10281"},"modified":"2020-11-17T21:23:58","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T21:23:58","slug":"new-noteworthy-tradewinds-ezra-honors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=10281","title":{"rendered":"New & Noteworthy: Tradewinds, Ezra, Honors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tradewinds Moves Forward:<\/strong> The company that has been holding for years the right to harvest trees from the state\u2019s Waiakea Forest Reserve, near Hilo, has taken a step forward. The company, Tradewinds LLC, has signed an agreement with the Big Island utility, HELCO, to deliver some 2 megawatts of power to the utility over a 20-year period, beginning in Oc- tober 2010. By then, Tradewinds hopes to have completed work on a power plant in O\u2018okala, which will burn waste from the veneer plant it says will be up and running by mid-2009.<\/p>\n

The company has applied for a clean air permit for the veneer mill, but in February two residents of O\u2018okala petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency, asking that the permit be denied.<\/p>\n

Tradewinds received the license to harvest timber from nearly 9,000 acres in Waiakea nearly seven years ago. Since then, it has requested and received from the state time extensions and other amendments to its original agreement. Under the most recent terms (October 2005), the deadline for completion of both the veneer plant and the power plant was July 1, 2008, with a \u201cdrop dead\u201d deadline of January 1, 2009.<\/p>\n

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Paul Conry, administrator of the Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Division of Forestry and Wildlife, said he was aware of the slippage in schedule. \u201cThey\u2019ve sent notice saying they\u2019re requesting extension of that July 1 deadline until the end of the year,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the meantime, they\u2019ll comply with the conditions in the license,\u201d calling for advance payment of $3,000 a month in so-called \u201cstumpage fees\u201d until January 1. If they\u2019re still not compliant with license terms by then, Conry said, the matter will go back to the Board of Land and Natural Resources for reconsideration.<\/p>\n

Ezra on Wastewater, Light Rail:<\/strong> U.S. District Judge David Ezra is expected to issue another ruling soon in the ongoing lawsuit over the City and County of Honolulu\u2019s many sewage spills from its wastewater distribution and treatment systems. At a June 30 hearing, he did not say outright how he would be ruling, but he did not hold back withering comments on the mess the city now faces.<\/p>\n

When James Dragna, a California attorney representing the city, said that the city plans to sign an agreement this month with the federal government that should resolve many of the issues raised in the case, Ezra said, \u201cSeveral years ago, attorneys for both sides of the Honolulu sewer litigation stood in front of me beaming about having resolved \u2013 so they thought \u2013 the issues, only to have … sprung a leak.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The \u201cdisastrous deferred maintenance\u201d by the city was \u201csomething quite disturbing to this court,\u201d he went on to say. He noted that this was not a criticism of the current administration, but still expressed dismay that fixing the system \u201cis now going to cost taxpayers of this commu- nity multiple millions of dollars.\u201d He added he was also disturbed by \u201cpeople out there, I\u2019m not saying who\u201d who are placing the blame on the \u201cbig bad people at federal court.\u201d Ezra told counsel for all parties to talk to their clients about the rhetoric being disseminated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a perfect storm going on here. We have these expenses going on here at a time when [we can least afford it]….In terms of priorities, this comes first,\u201d he said, adding that while he was not for or against light rail, \u201cwe have a broken sewer system that needs to be repaired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ezra\u2019s ruling will address claims raised in 2004 by plaintiffs (Sierra Club, Hawai\u2018i Chapter; Hawai\u2018i\u2019s Thousand Friends; and Our Children\u2019s Earth Foundation) and dismissed by Ezra in 2005 for being \u201csubstantially identical\u201d to claims that had been addressed years ago. In a turnabout rare in federal courts, Ezra reinstated those claims earlier this year after plaintiff attorneys William Tam and Christopher Sproul argued that an Environmental Protection Agency-state Department of Health lawsuit against the city over the 2006 Ala Wai canal spill proved that claims could be made against the city for spills after 1994.<\/p>\n

Honors:<\/strong> Last month, the Hawai\u2018i chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists announced its awards for work published in 2007. Environment Hawai\u2018i was honored in three categories. Teresa Dawson received finalist awards for her stories on the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council and for her column \u201cBoard Talk,\u201d which chronicles the actions of the state Board of Land and Natural Resources. Patricia Tummons received a finalist award for her investigative reporting on Venu Pasupuleti, Megasoft, and the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai\u2018i Authority.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tradewinds Moves Forward: The company that has been holding for years the right to harvest trees from the state’s Waiakea Forest Reserve, near Hilo, has taken a step forward. The company, Tradewinds LLC, has signed an agreement with the Big … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-august-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}