Whining about the not-so-recent decision of the county not taking in newspaper and its type of paper at transfer stations is weak at best. This decision has been in the works for years now, and William Kucharski claiming this snuck up on him and his department is furthest from the truth.
If he wouldn’t have almost tripled the cost of the Kealakehe Wastewater Treatment facility by having everything plated in gold to benefit the nearby golf course and set back its completion date by decades, it would have been a simple transfer of the funds to make up for the cost of storing the newspaper in a temporary environment until a member of the community could come forward with a workable solution.
The only opinion you will ever receive from the county is higher taxes so we can do less with more for the citizens of Hawaii County. The county leadership will never come up with anything else but “Give us more money,” and then shift blame to other entities as to why nothing gets done.
West Hawaii Today has the opportunity to unite the readership about the issue of recycling, and be the source of ignition to remove the responsibility of the county in making decisions based on tax availability, instead of community involvement.
I am positive that the citizens of the Big Island who demand the county line up more containers for recycling more than just newspaper, but also to separate plastic, different types of cardboard, metals, and several other recyclable materials for re-purposing. There is a goldmine of heavy thinkers in the community who have vast experience in how to solve this problem if they wouldn’t constantly be shut out of the process by the county and its “we know best” tactics.
William Kucharski needs to step down as the department head if he cannot devote his attention to this issue a lot better then just blame shifting on every turn. The serious internal questioning should be done by the corrupted county political machine that can’t get anything right. The time for a high powered plasma incinerator was 20 years ago. The time for sewage treatment to gas was 20 years ago. Longmont, Colorado is powering their trash trucks in this way.
The restaurant and hotel industry on the Big Island alone wastes thousands of tons of glass a year, that could easily be converted to much needed sand for beaches, by a grinder that costs less than $1,000 and takes up less room in a kitchen than a baking sheet.
There are solutions to the recycling problem, and it will take time to train the county powers that be to actually take the action that the community demands, instead of the other way around.
WHT should take a more pro-active approach to this issue, as it stands to lose a lot of print readers if it continues to whine about it and do nothing.
Tim Estabrook is a resident of Kona.
