Green waste plan creates more problems
The county’s plan to force landscapers to haul waste up the Queen Kaahumanu Highway for an extra 40-mile round-trip is environmentally absurd and needlessly congests a highway that is already much traveled.
Simply put, this is the plan they came up with: waste everyone’s time, waste fuel and add more carbon dioxide to the environment, make the highway more dangerous. What is the county government here for if not to reduce CO2 emissions, to reduce highway congestion and danger, and to increase our collective efficiency?
Think I’m kidding? Look at the difference between traffic when school is in or out. Instead of the state running an adequate bus system for free, they charge for it and fewer people use it and then they have to charge more and then no one uses it and now our roads are a crowded joke when parents are taking their children to school — to say nothing of the wasted fuel and added CO2 emissions and dangerous traffic.
The cause of both is obvious: a penny-wise, pound-foolish keep-taxes-low mantra that ignores the fact we end up paying more in the end. More fuel usage means higher gasoline prices for all of us. Wasted hauling time and high tipping fees mean landscape services cost more. More highway congestion means more accidents.
Doesn’t anyone in our county government have the guts to say “no, we’re here to solve problems, not create them?” We’re all waiting and waiting and waiting.
Daniel Hodel
Kailua-Kona
Green waste disposal fees a bad idea
Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water, the county resurfaces the proposal to charge landscape companies waste disposal fees.
According to West Hawaii Today on June 13, the county’s jack-of-all trades, Bobby Jean Leithead Todd, justifies the fee because it has been part of the county’s solid waste plan for more than a decade. It was a bad idea 10 years ago and it’s a bad idea now.
I’m retired now but I was a volunteer firefighter in North Kohala for a decade. On more than one occasion I fought fires in tinder-dry areas that were fueled by mounds of landscape waste. These fires were extremely difficult to eradicate.
The imposition of the proposed waste disposal fees will increase the likelihood that landscape debris will be dumped in ravines and other off-road sites. This will result in more brush fires that will put us all in danger.
Please council members, in the interest of health and safety, reject the imposition of the waste disposal fees.
Dennis Brown
Kailua-Kona