Kauai Protestors Block Ferry

August 30, 2007 | In Activism, Environment, Transit | 2 Comments

This is a continuation of “Why I Support a Ferry EIS.”

With the ferry scheduled to arrive at 6 pm last Sunday, opponents organized a press conference at Nawiliwili park at 4 pm. I arrived in time to hear a native Hawaiian blessing and short speeches by a county council member, Jo Ann Yukimura, and by our state senator, Gary Hooser. It was a small crowd of about 100 people, most of them with signs:

The park is adjacent to the seawall that extends into the harbor, providing a perfect view of the entrance to the harbor. The road that runs past the park and along the sea-wall is also the entrance (and exit) to the ferry terminal. Demonstrators were gathering at the park and then driving or walking down the jetty where they could wave signs at the ship and at the ferry terminal gate.

Update: Here is a map published by the Honolulu Advertiser showing the location of the protests in the harbor. The only problem is that it omits the key access road that runs under the park and along the jetty (colored in yellow on my correction). While this road has a gate at the turn to the jetty, it provides access for fishing and now for vehicles to the ferry terminal. This road obviously provided a perfect place for land-based protestors to wave signs at the ferry but also for surfboarders to access the water closest to the blockade.

Unfortunately, I had to leave early and I never saw the ferry on Sunday. According to the Garden Island article, the number of protestors grew to about 500, and more courageously, a dozen surfers paddled out to block the boat channel. The ferry entered the harbor, but the Coast Guard radioed for it to back off to avoid any accidents. Here’s a video from one of the protestors showing the surfers going out and the ferry backing up. Then the Coast Guard boats pick up or chase the surfers away:

The ferry docked an hour or two late (depending on the source) and then unloaded its passengers. Unfortunately, the vehicles needed to exit right next to the protestors and this led to confrontations, as shown at the end of the video above. I heard people were laying in the road, deflating tires, pounding on cars, yelling at their occupants, and arguing with police officers. Update: I also heard that drivers were advancing into the crowd of protestors. I dislike these actions from both sides because they create anger, and under the influence of the emotion, both sides become threatening and violent towards each other.

I do not support such behavior, and I hope organizers and participants in future demonstrations work to prevent it from happening again. The point was to block or further delay the passengers, which it did, but I’m certain that ferry opponents lost much support and sympathy as a result.

The next day, Monday, all of the ferry opponents felt empowered by those few surfers who managed to delay the ferry. Word was sent out again and protestors converged on the jetty around 5 pm. We heard the late news that a Maui judge had issued and injunction temporarily stopping the ferry to Maui, but not to Kauai. In any case, the ferry was on it’s way, I could see it on the horizon while driving to Lihue.

The first thing I noticed was that the police presence was much greater than the day before. The police closed the access road to prevent protestors from bring in cars, though seemed to be blocking the road themselves:

There is another access to the jetty road through the park, and I assume some protestors tried to bring a car and the police towed it away. The protestors in this picture are da big bruddahs (brothers) from the Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi, a local Hawaiian independence movement. I saw them both days at the protest, they say the laws of their government require an EIS for the ferry as well. They may also look big and tough, but they were all very friendly and peaceful when I saw them.

Despite the police and tough-looking guys, the area of the protest was calm, festive even. I went back to the car to get my sign and my daughter—it was my afternoon to baby-sit and we ended up seeing many children among the protestors. We walked to the end of the jetty where the main group was, staying with other families a short distance away from the noise.

By then it was past 5:30pm and the ferry had arrived at the harbor. However, there were even more surfers than the previous day already blocking the boat channel. The ferry was probably told not to enter, so it stayed outside the breakwater:

While the ferry was maneuvering outside the harbor, I got a good photo of the ship’s hull. I added the outline of the humpback whales roughly to scale to show how they could get hit. With a speed nearly twice that of any other ship currently operating, nobody knows if they can detect each other soon enough to get out of the way. There is also a video about the risk to whales with graphic images of whales killed by high-speed ferries elsewhere in the world.

This time, the Coast Guard was already deployed, using their big white cutter to support the little zodiacs. This view shows the whole harbor, with the breakwater on the right, the protestors in the channel, the ferry standing off, the Coast Guard cutter and zodiacs, and the Ninini point lighthouse in the distance. Behind the white cutter is the port tug boat. At first I thought the tug was waiting to bring in the ferry, but then I thought the ferry can go in on its own, so I’m not sure why the tug was out there.

Every now and then, another surfer would jump into the water from the jetty and the protestors would cheer him on. Seeing that the surfers were not moving from the channel, the Coast Guard tried to pluck them out with their zodiac boats. It was hard to tell what was going on from shore, so it’s not clear what the tactic was, whether they were just talking to the surfers, ordering them to leave, intimidating them with the boats or actually trying to pick them up somehow. Here’s a video I took, it’s 30MB:

Behind the protestors was the ferry terminal staging area, where cars wait to be loaded on the boat. It didn’t seem that full, and many of the passengers were out of their cars, watching the ferry and the protestors. I felt bad for these people, they were stuck behind the fence, waiting with no end in sight. I feel the ferry company lured them with $5 fares into their risky tactic of launching service before the court injunction. Maybe the company thought the threat of stranding passengers would give them leverage to keep operating, a sort of fait accompli.

After a while, the big white Coast Guard cutter moved over into the shipping lane, heading towards the protestors. It sort of gives the ferry an aura of a military escort, though you can see from the photo that all the guns were covered, fortunately.

On Sunday, there was a report that the Coast Guard used some sort of net to round up the surfers. I don’t know if a net was deployed again, but after a while the big cutter and the zodiacs pushed together towards the surfers, herding them mostly to one side of the channel, as shown in this 60 MB video:

While the surfers were mostly out of the channel, the Coast Guard boats were now in the way. But the surfers just stayed in the water and we couldn’t tell what was really going on. In this sort of stalemate position, a Coast Guard plane came in to land at the airport, and everyone wondered what kind of reinforcements they were bringing: negociators, divers, SWAT teams? Everybody was afraid the surfers were trapped and waiting to be plucked out of the water.

But then the tide started to turn, so to speak. While the channel was half-cleared, the tug boat motored back into the port, with big cheers by protestors who assumed it had given up on helping the ferry into the harbor.

Then some Hawaiian outrigger canoes paddled through the harbor and out into the channel, confusing everybody. At first the protestors thought they were saviors, the “big” boats coming to help. But they just paddled through and kept going out towards the light house. Then they came back and milled around, but never really stopping. Even from the news stories, it’s still not clear whether it was just paddling practice with some rubber-necking or if they really meant to join the blockade.

Whatever it was, the paddlers must have confused the Coast Guard as well because the zodiacs moved around and the surfers migrated back into the shipping channel. The cutter backed off again and the stand-off continued. I never saw any reinforcement arrive for the Coast Guard, so maybe it was just an observation plane.

When the sun was setting and I had to leave, the surfers were still occupying the channel, the zodiacs had given up harrassing them, and the ferry was still waiting outside the harbor.

Later that evening, I read online that the ferry had turned around soon thereafter and went back to Oahu without ever docking.

On Tuesday around noon, the Coast Guard announced that it had safety concerns about the situation and recommended that the ferry not sail to Kauai. Based on that assessement, Governor Lingle asked the ferry to suspend operations to Kauai. On Wednesday, the temporary injunction against the ferry using the port on Maui was extended while the hearing is delayed until the following Thursday.

For more articles about the ferry opposition see hui-r.info and IslandBreath.org.

Why I Support a Ferry EIS

August 29, 2007 | In Activism, Environment | No Comments

In two evenings of protest, demonstrators and activists on Kauai blocked the channel of Nawiliwili harbor, forcing the ferry to turn around without docking. This is the culmination of months of efforts to force the so-called Hawaii “super” ferry to perform an environmental impact statement (EIS), during which time grass-roots activism on Kauai and Maui has been steam-rolled by the state government on Oahu. As you can tell from my previous post, I am against the ferry operations as they have been implemented, and so I joined the protesters.

Here is a brief history of the issue, as I understand it.

When a certain group of mainland investors formed the idea of providing ferry service in Hawaii, they naturally went to the state government and asked for money. The ferry will bring jobs (and campaign money) if the state will provide the infrastructure, they probably said. The only obstacle is that the ferry is a threat to sea creatures and it will export Oahu’s problems (drugs, crime, overcrowding, overuse of natural resources) to the neighbor islands. The county councils on Maui, the Big Island, and Kauai passed resolutions asking the state to require and EIS. No problem, said the Republican governor, my administration can exempt the ferry from that pesky EIS, and the 80% of state-wide electors who live on Oahu will love me for giving them a weekend get-away.

So the state of Hawaii spent a minimal amount (I’m not sure of the exact number) to retrofit ferry terminals on Oahu and Kauai, but the port on Maui needed upgrades and changes, so that one cost $40 million. In the meantime, environmentalists and activists on Kauai and Maui started realizing the potential impact of the ferry. After a hard year of lobbying, their state legislators (senators and representatives) finally heard their plea and introduced bills requiring the EIS before operations could begin.

Since an EIS would be a statewide study in this case, with many, many issues, it would certainly delay the project, which would scare the investors and lose the deal. Though the neighbor island legislators were powerful, and the local activists gave testimony in record numbers (again, see my previous post), the bills were killed through procedural tactics by some key allies of the governor. In desperation, the proposed bills were modified to allow operations to begin while the EIS was being conducted, but even that was rejected.

So the ferry corporation began its public relations campaign, creating anticipation for the ferry with full-page ads in all the newspapers, but only giving lip service to the environmental concerns. Activists on Maui took their case to the courts, arguing that state laws does not allow the governor’s administration to exempt such a project from an EIS. But in the meantime, the ferry was built, shipped to the islands, and paraded around (though its first visit to Kauai was unannounced—were they expecting opposition?). Then the company delayed announcing any specific launch date, it wasn’t until August 11 that they announced online reservations for service originally planned to start today (Tuesday, August 28). In the meantime, the ferry made it’s first official visit to Kauai on August 19 for a viewing, which oddly required participants to register names and show IDs.

Last Thursday, the lawsuit on Maui was unexpectedly heard by the state Supreme Court, which unanimously ruled that the governor’s administration was wrong and that an EIS is required by state law (Honolulu Advertiser article). They sent the case back to a Maui judge who would then need to issue the ensuing injunction, ordering operations to stop until the EIS would be completed. The Maui court was scheduled to reconvene Monday to issue the ruling before the ferry began operations.

In an arrogant move, the ferry corporation announced on Friday that it would begin operations on Sunday, in defiance of the supreme court’s ruling (AP article that appeared in the Garden Island on Saturday). In order to fill the ferry on such short notice and create some buzz, they announced $5 fares until September 5 and it worked—nearly all trips to Maui and Kauai were sold out.

Word immediately got out on the coconut-wireless, through email lists and websites, that everyone wanting to oppose the arrival of the ferry without an EIS should meet at the port on Sunday. In a way, I feel that a vague malaise about the original, scheduled arrival on Tuesday was concentrated into real action to oppose the advanced (and probably illegal) arrival on Sunday. I read on the news that only a dozen people protested the arrival of the ferry on Maui, and I was determined to help increase the number on Kauai.

For more arguments and background into the ferry and its opponents, see hui-r.info and IslandBreath.org.

Island of the Apes

September 7, 2005 | In Blogging, Environment, Tourism, Fauna | No Comments

I recently discoverd Monkeywire.org, which has lots of interesting articles about primates in their archives. Many articles report on the latest behavioral research, wherein we learn that primates mourn their dead, understand money, steal only when others are not watching, try to fit in, and pick up human habits such as smoking.

With more research, we might even find some primates have legends that deny they evolved from lemurs. Now that I’ve said that, I need to make a new blog rule forbidding religious discussions here.

What’s the connection to Kauai? Well, the plans for a Maui Ape Center seems to be falling through, and though it is pure speculation on my part, I wonder if they considered relocating to Kauai. Which leads me to ponder whether a primate sanctuary is compatible with a Hawaiian island. It would definitely be out of place culturally, but so is much of the tourism here. And I assume there is little chance of the primates escaping, so we shouldn’t have to worry about another invasive species.

In the end, I think an environmentally oriented research center would help reinforce Kauai’s image as a protected place. So, I think someone should invite the preserve to Kauai.

Solar Electricity

August 31, 2005 | In Homeowner, Environment | 4 Comments

Another attraction at the fair was the vendor’s tent where we talked to Bob from Sol Systems, a local solar electricity contractor (website currently broken). Somewhere down the line, I’d love to install photovoltaic panels all over the garage roof and get free electricity. The problem is that the panels and all the other electrical hardware can run upwards of $24,000 for a house the size of ours. With monthly electric bills between $100 and $150, it will take a long time before the electricity is really free.

However, since the electric company burns oil and naphtha on Kauai to produce electricity, our rates will probably go up unless the utility increases its proportion of renewable energy sources. The sad part is that the price of solar panels is going up as demand increases faster than supply.

The type of system we would get is called grid-tied. This means that there are no batteries and you sell electricity to the grid during the day and buy oil-generated electricity at night. Such systems have become much more common recently, because the electronics to do so have become more available. This is good for the electric company because it helps reduce the peak generating capacity they need during the day due to air conditioning and business activity. Hawaii state law mandates that the companies purchase home-produced power, although they do not pay you beyond what you use. You can reduce your electric bill to zero on a monthly basis, but you can’t get carry-over credit or any money back.

Brush Fire Extinguished

August 24, 2005 | In Environment, Development, Journalism | No Comments

The fire was mostly out by Monday morning, but hot spots were still burning on Tuesday, probably the larger wood that caught near the ridge. Today crews were still extinguishing the last of the smoldering piles. I went to the edge of the field near the marina today and saw a crew coming back and put out the last one of them. Over 400 acres were burnt accornding to the newspaper. All in all, it was a mostly harmless fire: no people or buildings were threatened, the fire crews got some easy training, only the weeds in the abandoned cane field really got burned, and the forest reserve on the ridge was spared. Here is what it looks like now:

On a related note, almost the exact area in the photo is slated to become a Hawaiian Homeland neighborhood. This is land held in trust for the descendants of the native Hawaiians since the time of the overthrough of the independant Hawaiian nation. Once it is parceled out and utilities are installed, people who can prove at least half-Hawaiian blood can rent the land for $1 per year for a long-term lease and then build their own house. While it is relatively far from shopping and town amenities, it should be a rather low impact development. And I guess the last people you can fault for developping the island are the Hawaiian people.