Kona, Hawaii County’s stepchild
Your front page article on Feb. 21 stated that “A 20-year plan to upgrade the Kealakehe wastewater treatment plant…risks sliding down the priority scale…” because “the first priority is the aging Hilo sewer plant….” Yet another much-needed West Hawaii project is about to bite the dust. So my question is (and has been for a few decades now) how and when did Kona become Hawaii County’s stepchild?
Kathryn Yasuda
Holualoa
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It’s not that simple
I find the rant of John Sucke in the Feb. 22 WHT referring to the “rant” (not so) of Mikie Kerr on Feb. 16 to be lacking in the understanding of the issue raised by Mikie. The issue is not getting rid of two-stroke engines is a bad idea, it is in fact an excellent idea, the issue is that the plan to give loans to small business owners of landscaping businesses to buy battery versions of their two-stroke tools is not thought out at all by the Legislature.
I have four-stroke, two-stroke, and battery landscaping tools and each has their place. My lawn mower is four-stroke and I have a lot of lawn to mow and I am not sure if a battery mower would mow it all on one charge. When will the Legislature come for our four-stroke tools? I primarily use my battery tools and I have three batteries for them. I edge the lawns and then blow the debris onto the lawn to be either bagged or mulched by the mower. My edger and blower discharge all three batteries each time I mow the lawns, which is not an issue for me because I can fully charge them for the next time I need to use them.
How many batteries will landscaping businesses have to buy and keep charged for all their customers each day? Most times the batteries are more expensive than the tool itself. You cannot order batteries from the mainland because Li-ion (lithium-ion) batteries by themselves are illegal to ship by air. Try ordering them and you get the message “not shipped to Hawaii and Alaska.” I bought my Worx tools from Home Depot and a check of their website shows you cannot buy replacement batteries in the Kona or Hilo stores. Li-ion batteries are prone to catching fire so anyone having lots of them in/on a vehicle would need to be very careful that they are properly kept.
Two-stroke motors are lighter than four-stroke motors, which is why they are primarily used in tools that are hand held. All gasoline-powered chainsaws except for very large commercial ones are two- stroke. There are battery chainsaws but they are the smaller ones. Companies producing two-stroke tools are slowly bringing out four-stroke replacements. So while it is easy to say replace your two-stroke tools with battery ones there are practical issues to making it work.
Colin Luck
Waikoloa Village
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