Caring for Our Land - New Articles

CARING FOR OUR LAND

Our Scenic Pahoa Solid Waste Transfer Station

Some good news and some bad news: The gates are up, which is an EPA requirement, so we’re stuck with them and the limiting hours. However, you can now dump bulk items like refrigerators and mattresses at a set-aside area. The Dept. of Environmental Management has received a lot of complaints about the security guards (how many of you have they told to dump on the side of the road?) and is responding by hiring County employees instead of farming out the job to a private company. Another good thing is that we finally have signs, and they actually have the words “solid waste” on them – lots of new people moving in never heard of transfer stations and got lost looking for “the dump”, so they did.

The “Ice” Epidemic and the Brownfields Program

Brownfields is a federal program that identifies and works with states to mitigate hazardous waste sites. Hawai'i has been building its program since 1997. People who buy property previously contaminated are not liable for cleanup, and the properties can be cleaned up by state, county and/or nonprofit organizations. The EPA foots the bill.

If you want to nominate a Brownfields site, contact Terin Gloor at the Solid Waste Division, 108 Railroad Ave., Hilo. Malama O Puna has written him about how “ice” production can create Brownfields sites. His response: “…the insidious effects of manufacturing crystal methamphetamines is more than the drug itself, but also the damage to the land. As we look to identify and inventory potentially contaminated sites….your suggestion to work with the police department is an excellent idea that I will follow up on.”

Coqui Problems Increasing Exponentially

On 6/7 the Trib-Herald published “Coquís are beneficial” by Sydney Ross Singer extolling the virtues of the coqui and urging us to resign ourselves to making the best of it. Singer has been an avid proponent of coquí proliferation on this island for a long time now, and has been very effective in lobbying efforts to prevent use of caffeine. Then the researchers had to experiment to discover an alternative. This takes time, and while they were searching the coquí continued to proliferate.

How fast? Here in Hawaii, without the natural population controls which exist in their native Puerto Rico, the frogs reproduce at much faster rates. Females have been observed laying 20 clutches of eggs in one year instead of the four back home! Let’s do the math: start with 1 male and 1 female. A clutch of eggs from their union will, with a 97% live hatch rate, produce 30-40 froglets, of which at least 13 will be females. In a few weeks time they will be old enough to produce their own eggs: 13 times 30 eggs = 390 frogs in the second generation.

Those 13 females will join with the 195+ females from this hatching (= 208 females) to produce another 6,240 eggs in the third generation! More than 3,000 of them will be female. The fourth generation of eggs will be laid by more than 3,208 females, and so on. The population increase is exponential. Within six months the 10th generation of eggs will be laid by 1,120,306,408 females. The 13th generation (i.e., in less than a year) of eggs will be laid by 285,454,072,758 (two hundred eighty-five TRILLION, four hundred fifty-four billion, seventy-two million and seven hundred fifty-eight thousand) females. Note that I am not counting the males, whose numbers are slightly higher and are the ones making the noise. The only reason I stopped calculating was that even using very conservative data, my calculator has its limitations. Apparently the coquí do not.

One frog may not be unpleasant to listen to, but in a short time the accrued decibel level (75 db x 285 trillion plus) falls well within the inner ear damage range. I, for one, would rather hear the intermittent traffic noise, barking dogs, and noisy neighbors that Sid Singer says they will drown out.

Malama O Puna has 2 sprayer units. One is housed at Nanawale and can be borrowed for one week at a time for free. Call Liz at 965-8080. The other will be spending the summer up Volcano way, preventing the frogs from gaining a foothold in the National Park

Pahoa re-Palmed:

The Pahoa Neighborhood Facility has not been immune to vandalism and theft. After the County finally (6 years later) replaced the Fern Trees with 6 Manila Palms, we got permission to fill in with 8 Fishtails. Then, when they had finally taken hold, someone stole 4 of them. We replaced them with 4 more. They, too, were stolen. On the off chance that it was only Fishtails the thieves wanted, we have just replanted with 4 large (15 gal. pots) Manilas. It is our hope that since the thieves are too lazy to grow their own, they will also be too lazy to dig up and carry these large heavy trees – especially now that our local police have added the community center parking lot to their regular patrol route. So if you happen to see someone digging up the palms in the medians, remember: THEY ARE NOT AUTHORIZED. Call the cops. These thieves are stealing from all of us.

Junk cars on private property

The County Department of Environmental Management (DEM) is proposing an amnesty program which would allow County removal of vehicles abandoned on private property. This will fill a long time need on our island, for many reasons:

All cars pay a $12 fee into the Abandoned Vehicle Fund whenever they reregister. Yet only those dumped on State or County land, including road right-of-ways, are eligible for removal per the current rules. This leaves a lot of junk cars sitting around being unsightly and dangerous. In high rainfall areas such as most of Puna, these junkers are mosquito breeding grounds, and thus a health hazard. The presence of junk cars on the side of the road also acts as a welcome sign for other types of litter, such as large appliances. Often, County road crews will push them off onto the private property so they can mow. In other cases, it is the dumper who does this. Usually the property owner, the “dumpee” is the victim, and yet according the current rules, is liable for removal of the wrecks. This is not fair.

On Nov. 17th Malama O Puna testified in favor of the amnesty program and asked that it be made permanent. If you support this initiative, call the DEM at 961-8083 and let them know it. And ask what you can do to help make it happen. Mahalo and aloha aina.

Brainstorming for a Library Garden

In only a few more years the State will close down the public part of Pahoa Library, leaving only the school library on the campus. In anticipation of this the Friends of Pahoa Library (FOPL) are working and planning for a new home for the Pahoa Public Library. Funds are being raised, an architect has been selected and sites are being considered. The community is being asked to step up to the bat and help to make this dream a reality.

Malama O Puna is suggesting a theme garden for the new library. It could be a Shakespeare Garden, which would utilize plants mentioned in the works (plays, sonnets, etc.) of the Bard, Ophelia’s monologue lists quite a few. The labeling of each plant grouping would include the quotation, with the plant name in bold face, and the source. High School English classes could take it on as a special project to research this information, so they would have a degree of "ownership" of the garden.

A similar possibility for a different theme garden would be a Poet’s Garden with the same type of interpretive signage. Gertrude Stein’s “A rose is a rose is a rose”, for example, could have three old fashioned roses planted in a grouping.

A Haiku Garden is another appropriate theme, since this form of poetry always has natural images and a wide range of plant names. Since haiku are, by definition, only 17 syllables, the signage could include the entire poem. Some of the plants would be peony, wisteria, pines, cherry blossoms, etc. With our sizable Japanese community, this could be popular – it would be suitable for a traditional Japanese style planting in a garden designed to be quiet and serene for meditation and reading, such as an interior courtyard. Or, instead of quoting haiku by famous Japanese poets, we could get the high and intermediate school students involved in haiku composition as a literary project.

I hope that this proposal will inspire a whole slew of ideas from the community. It is a concept we can all have fun with in the planning and execution, and future enjoyment in the results.

Coastal Conservation

With the real estate market soaring, lots of mainlanders are looking to buy oceanfront land, and they seem to think that the land use laws of their state of origin are the same here. Wrong.

Your realtor may tell you that some or all of the land you are buying is the SMA (Shoreline Management Area) and/or Conservation Zone. These designations are much more than labels; they determine what you can and cannot do on your land, and where on you land you can do it. Before you go into escrow, find out exactly what this means for the land you want to buy. Maybe your plans cannot be fulfilled on the parcel in question.

Some well-meaning people may tell you that you should just go ahead and forget about the permits, because (1) it's easier that way, (2) the government will never know, and (3) even if they find out they will just make you pay a small fine, which is easier than the permit application process. Wrong again! Your neighbors or someone else may report you and the State Department of Land and Natural Resources is now cracking down on violations. They may even make you take down that illegal seawall or building. Illegal clearing or construction in those areas is STEALING FROM EVERYONE ELSE IN THE STATE. Don't move to Hawai‘i to become a criminal. Do it right the first time, and start by educating yourself before you buy. The Romans had a saying, Caveat emptor (Let the buyer beware).

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