{"id":14523,"date":"2022-07-03T10:54:58","date_gmt":"2022-07-03T20:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.environment-hawaii.org\/?p=14523"},"modified":"2022-07-03T10:55:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-03T20:55:00","slug":"new-hu-honua-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=14523","title":{"rendered":"New & Noteworthy: Maciolek Obituary; Hu Honua Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Remembering <\/strong>\u2018Doc<\/strong>\u2019 Maciolek: <\/strong>Dr. John A. Maciolek (1928-2021), a career biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service and former zoology professor at the University of Hawai\u02bbi at M\u0101noa, died at his home last summer in Westlake, Oregon.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At UH, Maciolek regularly taught the upper division limnology course, which included field work in many Hawaiian aquatic habitats. He served as committee chair for doctoral and master\u2019s students, most of whom went on to careers in state and federal resource management agencies and academia. His legacy and that of his students in aquatic ecosystem science is rich and diverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His own research focused on non-marine aquatic habitats throughout Hawai\u02bbi and the insular Pacific. He described all six natural lakes in Hawai\u02bbi, which are among the highest, deepest and saltiest in the country. Together with his doctoral student Amadeo Timbol he described the complex food webs in Kahana estuary on O\u02bbahu, one of the earliest research efforts to bring this approach to estuarine habitats.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early 1970s, when anchialine ecosystems were mostly unknown and unstudied throughout the world, Maciolek focused on these threatened habitats in Hawai\u02bbi and elsewhere. With Drs. Richard and Julie Brock, he described many of these ponds along the Kona coast of Hawai\u02bbi and on Maui.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among his most lasting accomplishments was his effort, together with Hawai\u02bbi state Senator Nadao Yoshinaga, to establish the Hawai\u02bbi Natural Areas Reserves System in 1970, and to designate the \u02bb\u0100hihi-K\u012bna\u02bbu NAR on Maui in 1973 to protect its anchialine ecosystems.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Submitted by John I. Ford, senior associate at Haley & Aldrich, Inc., and Robert A. Kinzie III, emeritus professor of zoology at the University of Hawai\u02bbi-Manoa.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hu Honua Rebuff: <\/strong>On June 24, the Hawai\u02bbi Public Utilities Commission issued an order denying Hawaiian Electric\u2019s motion to have it reconsider its decision of May 23, which rejected the utility\u2019s proposed power purchase agreement with Hu Honua, owner of a nearly completed power plant north of Hilo. At the same time, it also denied Hu Honua\u2019s motion for \u201creconsideration, clarification, and further hearing\u201d of the May order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commission had ruled that Hu Honua, which would burn wood to produce its energy, did not show that it would sequester more greenhouse gases than it released, describing its claim as based on speculative assumptions and unsupported assertions. It also found that the proposed power purchase agreement \u201cis likely to result in high costs to ratepayers, both through its relatively high cost of electricity and through the potential displacement of other, lower cost, renewable resources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hu Honua has undertaken an expensive public relations campaign to win public sentiment, but the PUC was unswayed. Hu Honua\u2019s claim that it relied on a previous and overturned approval of an earlier power purchase agreement to move forward with construction \u2013 an equitable estoppel argument \u2013 had no merit. \u201cHu Honua did not have a reasonable basis for proceeding with the project during the appeal period, given that the commission\u2019s alleged \u2018direction\u2019 to proceed with the project was made within the context of the terms of the amended [power purchase agreement], which provided for a tolling period until a final, non-appealable order was issued, which Hu Honua acknowledged,\u201d the PUC found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warren Lee, president of the company, which now calls itself Honua Ola, released a statement following the PUC decision: \u201cWe are disappointed \u2026 but we are not giving up because Honua Ola is in the right on this issue.\u201d In late June, the company appealed to the state Supreme Court, which has already heard three appeals on the matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remembering ‘Doc’ Maciolek: Dr. John A. Maciolek (1928-2021), a career biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service and former zoology professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, died at his home last summer in Westlake, Oregon.  At UH, Maciolek … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14,498,18],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-14523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change","category-energy","category-july-2022","category-new-noteworthy","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14523","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=14523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}