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.

Stupid Ferry

January 31, 2007 | In Activism, Transit, Neighbor Islands | No Comments

One unique character of Hawaii is that each island has evolved in the motoring age without the benefit of vehicular passage between the islands. This makes each island so much more independent and unique due to the limited movement of people and goods. For example, there are very few RVs (camping-cars) blocking the roads on Kauai because residents don’t need them and nobody can bring them here easily. More importantly, while Oahu might have nearly one million residents, Kauai is not over-run with city-dwellers on weekends.

Now, the so-called “super” ferry wants to change all that, not to mention harm our fragile ocean and island eco-systems in the process. After several years of lobbying, the ferry project has been granted a license to operate by the governor’s administration, without any preliminary study about how it will impact the people or environment of Hawaii. As details about the size (350 feet / 105 m long and 11 feet/ 3.5 m draft) and high speed (35 knots / 40 mph / 65 kmh) of the ferry were made available and people realized what it really means to have a ferry, much opposition has developed on Kauai and Maui (the Big Island is spared until 2009). Concerned citizens have created the website superferryimpact.com to raise awareness about the many ways in which a ferry would negatively impact Kauai.

With service scheduled to begin in July of this year, the state legislature finally looked into the matter and drafted bills to require the studies. This is my letter in support of those laws, with some links added.

TO: Chair, Hermina Morita, Energy & Environmental Committee
  Vice-Chair, Mele Carroll, Energy & Environmental Committee

RE: In favor of HB702, requiring Environmental Impact Statement on Hawaii Superferry

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT ON HAWAII SUPEREFERRY, being heard 2-1-2007, 0800, Room 312, House side, State Capitol.

Testimony:

Aloha,

The so-called “super” ferry represents such a change in how people and goods will move between the islands that no state harbor improvements should be made for the ferry before an environmental impact study (EIS) has been done.

For me, the most serious impact to consider is the danger to the whales. The ferry will travel at over 40 miles per hour, and whales are often near the surface. The newspaper today contained an article about a “speeding” cruise ship in Alaska killing a whale, and the ferry vessel will travel even faster. Imagine the effect that one whale death will have on the growing eco-tourism market in Hawaii. Even if ferry activity were limited to the summer months when the whales are in Alaska, what about green turtles, also an endangered species?

I am also worried about invasive species, both plants and animals, spreading between islands. Dealing with the coqui frog on Kaua’i has wasted thousands of hours of work and will cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars. Weeds are choking our forests and their seeds can easily hitch a ride on vehicles. The ferry spokespeople claim vehicles will be cleaned, but an EIS will mandate how to do it thoroughly. Finally, I’ve heard callous people claim that the only solution to Kaua’i’s chicken “problem” is to import the mongoose so readily seen on other islands. How does the ferry intend to protect against such a calamity that would decimate the island’s native bird population, including the nene?

Any type of ferry is also sure to cause economic and social impacts. The fact of the matter is that neighbor islands have developed an economy and society that does not rely on vehicular travel between the islands. Given the population imbalance between the islands, the ferry will certainly affect issues such as traffic, over-crowding, and crime much more on the neighbor islands than on Oahu.

An Oahu resident might not mind sitting in Kapa’a rush hour traffic instead of that on the H-1, but local residents are sure to feel the additional surge of traffic. Even though vehicles will come and go on the ferry, there will undeniably be more passenger-miles driven on Kaua’i, and most of it will be concentrated on weekends, the only time many residents have to enjoy their parks and beaches.

Overcrowding at said parks and beaches is therefore also an issue. Neighbor island counties already have limited resources to maintain their parks and hire lifeguards. An influx of users, in addition to the crowds of tourists, will degrade the experience for everyone. I also think that Oahu’s homelessness problem will be exported to Kaua’i and Maui, creating a further burden on those counties.

The ferry website does not address how drugs and criminals will be prevented from traveling between islands. Unless an impact statement can identify solutions such as photo identification checks and video surveillance, what will keep fugitives, criminals and illegal drugs such as “ice” from spreading to the neighbor islands on the ferry? What if such measures are unconstitutional?

One last impact that I find galling is the unfairness of the advertised ferry schedules towards neighbor island residents. With late departures and overnight stop-overs, it is obvious that the schedules all favor Oahu residents and happen to inconvenience neighbor island residents. An impact study might suggest how all residents could benefit equally from the ferry.

Perhaps an economic impact study is necessary as well, in order to see if the inevitable cost of all the environmental mitigation measures is even justified. What are the benefits to private individuals and groups when compared to flying and renting a car or bus? What are be benefits to businesses given the advertised rates, and are those benefits equal for neighbor island businesses given the disadvantageous schedules? What are the potential revenues, direct or indirect, to the state that justify the outlay for the harbor improvements? What if the ferry business is not successful, can the state be reimbursed for the harbor improvements that directly benefited the ferry?

All the environmental and economic risks also need to be weighed along with the potential disruption of current island lifestyles, existing businesses, and current harbor users. That’s why I ask you to please enact this legislation to require impact studies before any harbor construction or ferry service can begin.

Mahalo.

Accident Scene

November 2, 2006 | In Journalism, Transit | 2 Comments

I happened to drive by this accident scene yesterday soon after it happened. Since I had my camera, I slowed down and got a lucky shot (apologies to the drivers behind me). You can see the base of the pole in front of the white stick, and you can just feel the tension on the hanging wires:

I resisted blogging about it because I don’t feel the need be a local reporter, nor do I have the time. Accidents are mostly of interest to locals, and while I’d love to reach out to them, the newspaper does it better. Except when it doesn’t:

Source: kauaiworld.com on Nov 2, 2006, photo by Adam Harju. Poor quality is due to enlargement.

Next time I’ll call them up and ask if they take submissions.

Speed Trap

March 31, 2006 | In Transit | 1 Comment

On a recent sunny Sunday, a rare break in this rainy month, we were headed to Poipu to find a beach. However, I got caught in a speed trap on the Koloa bypass road, also called Ala Kinoiki, which kinda ruined our day.

Map source: maps.google.com, annotations by the author. Note that the “Mahaulepu Rd” on this map does not go to Mahaulepu.

The Koloa bypass road has a single 25 mph (40 mk/h) speed limit sign and is perfect for catching unsuspecting speeders. From the north, drivers are lulled by the lack of houses into thinking it is not yet a 25 mph residential zone. From the south, the houses are behind walls and the intersection isn’t very apparent. And the place where the police park their cars to point the radar is hidden by curves from both directions. As in most other places in the United States, the police probably won’t stop you if you are going less than 10 mph (15 km/h) over the speed limit.

However, the fine for going 41 mph in a 25 zone is $137, so I suppose it is very profitable for the police. Looking at the ticket, you can see other fines. For example, it’s a good thing I had all my papers in the car and that the baby was properly attached in her car seat. As you can see, running a stop sign or illegal passing have a lower fine, even though they seem more dangerous to me. But alcohol violations are highly punished, including drinking at a scenic lookout. You’ve been warned:

I probably shouldn’t make a big deal about it, after all, even the Ultimate Kauai Guidebook says to watch out for speed traps on the bypass road. Another speed trap they don’t mention is on the main highway in Wailua, between the old Coco Palms hotel and the Wailua beach. Again, it’s a 25 mph zone with a wide road and no residences, so many people go much faster. It is actually a dangerous area because many people look at the beach or check out the surf but traffic can be stopped because of the lights. I’ve seen several rear-ended cars there.

Deadly Bike Route

November 18, 2005 | In Transit | 1 Comment

At the end of October, a man on a bike was killed in a hit-and-run accident on Kuhio highway, across from the Wailua golf course. In the newspaper article about it, they say they found a mangled bicycle propped up against the guardrail and the man’s body in the ditch on the other side. Another article says the police have apparently identified a suspect but haven’t made any arrest yet (it also mentions a different location, but I think it is the same incident).

Like in much of America, bicycles are an afterthought on Kaua’i. If the shoulder is wide enough, it is designated as a bike route. When the shoulder gets narrower, such as on Kaumualii highway before the road to Poipu, there is a sign saying “End Bike Route” in the middle of nowhere. In the case of this fatality, he was on a bike route, but in a location really too narrow to be designated as such. Here is the area and the sign:

In this photo near where the man was reportedly killed, you can see the ditch on the right side, and the guardrail between the roadway and the ditch. The shoulder itself is only about two feet wide, and the pickup truck in the photo is near the double yellow line, giving the photographer or biker another two feet of space. Needless to say, not all drivers are as courteous, and large trucks can’t be.

To give credit to the road maintenance crews, the weeds used to grow from under the guardrail and onto the shoulder, making it ever more narrow and dangerous. But even before this incident they either cut them or sprayed herbicide to get rid of them. I actually first considered taking this picture when there were vines growing out of the top of the sign (if you look carefully, you can see where they were cut).

I’m creating the new category Transit to deal with bicycles, cars, buses, roads and bridges on Kauai.