Hydro Good or Bad?

OK, here we go. This is the issue, or rather the incident that made me want to start blogging about Kaua`i.

Back in December, I saw a government notice in the newspaper about some company applying for permits to build a hydroelectric plant on Kaua`i. Alternative, renewable energy is good, especially for an island that runs its generators on ever more expensive imported oil. It would be ideal to use the energy we have, and falling water is usually abundant here.

Fortunately, such proposals are available for public scrutiny, and I went searching for the documents online at the Federal Energy Regulatory Comission (FERC docket P-12534). Buried in one of the PDFs is the following key diagram:

So the proposed dam and reservoir is immediately (about 1000 feet) upstream of the Wailua Falls, just outside the Wailua River State Park. There are plenty of reservoirs on Kaua`i leftover from the days of irrigating sugar cane, so one more isn’t a big deal. Still, you’d think they could use one of the existing ones (I hope to report on the Alexander Reservoir after an upcoming Sierra Club hike). More seriously, the flow over the falls will be greatly reduced, even stopped in times of drought, as is currently done with catchments above 800-foot Waipo`o Falls in Waimea Canyon. And I don’t want to be an alarmist, but any crack or failure in the earth filled dam will silt up the pool below the falls.

The second impact on the public will be the destruction of the South Fork of the Wailua River due to the placement of the powerhouse and it’s access road. The map shows it directly along the river or perhaps on a private land enclave within the State Park. This is an undeveloped area of forest and riparian habitat, lush, green and natural as seen from the lookout on Kuamo`o Road. The natural trace of the river will be interrupted by the powerhouse, and the pristine banks will be cut through by its access road (not shown on the proposal map).

As if that weren’t enough, the power transmission lines and their inevitable access road are mapped straight over a forest reserve on Kalepa Ridge. Again, this is a mostly unspoiled natural feature that is visible to everyone from the major highway between Lihu`e and Kapa`a. Who knows, maybe this will open up Kalepa ridge to hiking, but why can’t we get a trail without a powerline–there’s a novel concept.

I hope I’ve shown that there are major flaws with this hydro-electric project as proposed. Does that mean that hydro-electricity is bad? Not at all, just that this landscape-intensive source needs careful thought and placement. Hopefully, there will be chances for public input, time for redesign, and hopefully relocation of this project. We need hydro-electricity on Kaua`i, but like all the development that’s proposed, we also need to think about where we put it and how we integrate it into our landscape.

I have to add that our bureaucracies seem to be doing their jobs because the Hawaii Department of Health and the US Department of the Interior filed comments notifying the applicant about the environmental regulations that apply.

E kala mai ia `u

This title means “sorry” in Hawaiian.

Sorry this is taking so long to get up an running. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out how to configure Wordpress to not allow strangers to publish their own articles on my blog. Then I found out WordPress just released a new version of their software and the upgrade instructions took longer to read than the original “famous 5-minute” installation. So I saved all 4 of my old entries to a text file (and found how to turn off public article publishing), deleted the old version, and as I write this entry in the text file, I am uploading the new version.

Any day now, I’ll be going live.

For a moment there, I was thinking of just writing plain old HTML pages and calling it a blog, but then I thought that comments and search features are useful. Anyways, the dates on all previous posts are wrong, I originally started this blog on February 1st, which explains this apology.

Verboten

The title means “forbidden” in German. So far I can think of only one topic that I will avoid and censor:

To be clear: I am writing this blog to promote my own views and opinions. However, I will expressly avoid partisan thinking, narrow-mindedness, predjudices, and name-calling. I ask that you flag me in your comments if I do any of these. I will remove, edit, censor, or strikethrough any comments that go in these directions. I’m an honest person, you’ll just have to trust me.

Speaking of comments, please use them if you wish to discuss any of the topics, and I will respond through them. Please do not email me to start a private discussion–the point is to bring these ideas into the open.

These are the rules. Thanks for paying attention to them.

2 inches of rain

It’s late again, I’m still spending more time setting up this blog than writing.

But, I finally changed the title to “A Kauai Blog” for now at least. So, after all the rules I set for myself (some will say I’m becoming germanic), here are some of the things I created this blog to share:

1. First but not really foremost: the weather. Hey, that’s what most people have been talking about for eons, they don’t call it shooting the breeze or parler de la pluie et du beau temps for nothing. But mostly that’s what Kauai is often about: wind, rain, sunshine, or any two of these in combination.

   For example, we had 3 inches of rain last night, and another 2 inches this evening. After getting over 5 inches just after Christmas, I decided to record rain when it happens. So I can tell you we got a total of 11.5 inches of rain before midnight on Jan 31. Since I still like doing scientific things, I’ll post graphs of rainfall when I make them.

2. Anything having to do with the outdoors, hiking, discovering cool new places, local adventures, etc.
3. My opinions about what’s going on here on Kauai. My interests are mainly in maintaining the Aloha spirit here on the island through sensible development, conservation of natural areas, preservation of native culture and local history.

   I see this as a way to write a letter to the editor of the newspaper and have it published every time, just like friends of the publisher.

4. Updates on public meetings, events, or activism that promotes or degrades any of my causes above.
5. Pictures of any of the above. I’ve always believed that a picture is worth a thousand words, so it’ll save me some typing. I won’t commit to a picture a day, but I like the concept and will use the Picture category to track the ones I do post.
6. Random things of interest to me. These might include quotations (one of my favorites), book reviews, links to websites that I find interesting, links to my own website when I update it, etc. I will also go off on philosophical or metaphysical ramblings at times, so please bear with me.

I guess that’s a good start.

To blog or not to blog?

That is the question of our times, it seems.

My answer must be to blog, because as I write this, I am uploading the blog software to post this. I feel I’m jumping on the blog-wagon a bit late, but hey, I’ve been busy with other interesting things.

Actually the real question of our times is: “What to write in our blogs?”

I’m going to start with a few rules for me:

1. I will try not to be a nombriliste, which is French for “focused on my own navel.” So while I will definitely be giving my opinions here, which is the point after all, I will try to avoid shutting out the rest of the world.
2. I will try to limit the stream of consiousness and write in such a way that most people can understand. I’ve had to rewrite this post already to adhere to this rule.
3. I will try to write in standard journalistic English that hopefully even second-language English speakers can read. That doesn’t really cramp my style because I have none. Plus, I’d rather spend time thinking about what I write instead of how clever it sounds.
4. I will try to avoid jargon and computer slang, because after all, not everybody’s life revolves around the internet. I will also try to avoid inside jokes, but since I broke that rule with my previous first post, so I will allow obscure references–nuance.
5. I am, however, still free to be creative and make bad puns. I am also free to make spelling and other mistakes, errare humanum est (which I did not know is a quote from Cicero–I love quotes and they are allowed too :-). Obviously so are emoticons, those little sideways punctuation faces–but I’m a traditionalist, so I keep them as text and not little images.

OK, I already broke the stream of consciousness rule, so maybe it’s time to get on with the show.