All posts by Richard Ha

Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative

40+ Hawaii Politicians Say Let’s Explore Public Utility for Big Isle

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A Civil Beat article lists more than 40 politicians interested in exploring the idea of a utility cooperative or other options, rather than the proposed for-profit NextEra/Hawaiian Electric merger.

From Civil Beat:

State, County Lawmakers Want to Explore Public Utility Option for Hawaii

A diverse group of more than 40 elected officials wants more options on the table as the merger deal between NextEra and Hawaiian Electric is being considered.

By NATHAN EAGLE 
 

More than 40 state and county lawmakers united Thursday in a commitment to explore the potential of public utilities in Hawaii.

Their announcement comes as the Public Utilities Commission considers approving the proposed $4.3 billion sale of Hawaiian Electric Industries to Florida-based NextEra Energy.

…“Public utilities don’t need higher rates to make profits for shareholders, and as a result they tend to have significantly lower rates than for-profit utilities across the country,” state Rep. Chris Lee, who heads the House Energy and Environment Committee said at a news conference in the Capitol.

He was flanked by 20 other lawmakers who support looking at fundamentally changing the monopoly for-profit utility model that has served Hawaii for the past 100 years.

Among the supporters was Honolulu City Council Chair Ernie Martin, who said the county will be the biggest consumer of electricity in the state, even surpassing the military. Council members Ikaika Anderson and Kymberly Pine joined him.

House Minority Leader Beth Fukumoto Chang, along with fellow Republican Rep. Cynthia Thielen, also said the public utility option needs to be explored.

“As Republicans and Democrats, we have differences,” Fukumoto said. “But we can all agree that the skyrocketing cost of electricity is detrimental to local familites. Until NextEra provides a framework for customer savings, it would be irresponsible not to explore options like co-ops and other alternatives.”

Read the rest

Chris Lee also spoke about this on Hawaii Public Radio recently. Listen here (10:11):

Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative

Cost-Effective For Whom? Responding to NextEra

I cringed when I saw this morning’s Hawaii Tribune-Herald article NextEra Adviser: Co-ops Not Cost-Effective. Now NextEra, the company hoping to acquire Hawaii Electric Industries (HEI), has a Massachusetts-based spokesman speaking for it.

NextEra says it’s sensitive to Hawai‘i, but this spokesman is from Massachusetts. It’s exactly what many of us are wary of – mainland advisors with no idea of the complexity of the issues. The NextEra spokesman didn’t even seem to know that the Big Island has an abundance of natural resources quite different from what’s available on the mainland.

NextEra says if it purchases HEI in its proposed $4.3 billion deal, it would let us have an advisory board – but that doesn’t really mean anything. An advisory board wouldn’t have any power. It would be the same thing as a representative to Congress back in the Territorial days.

NextEra would be investor-owned, which means its goal would be to make money for it investors and shareholders. That would be the priority. If it benefits the Hawai‘i ratepayer at all, that would be incidental.

Contrast that with the co-op, which is non-profit and it is not taxed (that savings is returned to the ratepayers). Right there, even without making any other changes, a co-op already saves money compared to an investor-owned utility because it pays no taxes.

The co-op is not going to tell you exactly what it is going to do. We are going to set the framework so we and future generations will always be equipped to make decisions and do what is best as conditions change. There’s no way we can know now what the future holds.

Co-ops have a nine-member board of directors, with each member having a staggered term. Every year, three positions come up for election. This keeps it sensitive to what’s going on in the community. The co-op’s board structure is a self-correcting mechanism that is responsive to what the people are thinking as attitudes change over time. You don’t see that in a powerful company that’s located far away.

A company like NextEra tells you what it’s going to do and then locks it in – because that’s how it makes money for its investors. Not because it works for the local community, or saves money for ratepayers.

Keep in mind, it’s not the biggest or the strongest that survive; it’s the ones that can adapt to change. NextEra is by far the biggest (but so were the dinosaurs, and they’re not around anymore).

Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative is big enough (it will be part of a 900-member cooperative association with its own, healthy, financial institution) and it’s about adapting. It’s about doing what we have the opportunity to do for the Big Island right now – changing our energy utility to a cooperative model –  so we, and future generations, can adapt to changing conditions as needed, and survive and thrive.

Current Affairs, Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative

Community Listening Sessions: The PUC Wants To Hear

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This is probably the last chance in this generation to have a say in how our electric utility is run.

The PUC is going to travel around the state in September holding “community listening sessions.” They want to know what we think about the HEI/NextEra merger application.

Here on the Big Island, we want to ask the PUC to consider a co-op model, similar to the Kauai Island Energy Cooperative.

The reason I say it’s probably our only opportunity is because you have to have a willing seller to put such a plan into place, and in the absense of something earth-shattering, this probably won’t come up again in our lifetime. It’s speak up now, or miss our chance.

It’s definitely in our best interest to show up at these PUC meetings and ask them to consider our co-op model: the Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative. Otherwise we miss our chance to make a change for the better.

If you are not clear on what a co-op model would look like, it’s really very simple: We’re only suggesting a change in the business model of how the electric utility operates, and that means three essential differences from how things operate now.

Some people will say we don’t have enough qualified people. Well, let’s say we didn’t change any of the employees running Hawaiian Electric, but only changed the business model. There goes that argument. There is no argument.

Essentially, there would just be three differences.

1)    The co-op would be an investor-owned, non-profit utility that does not pay taxes, and the money we save would go straight back to the people.

2)    The co-op would be a non-profit model that existed to do what the people want. People would elect the board of directors, and if people were not happy with the board of directors, they could fire them by not electing them again.

3)    People always wonder if the co-op would have enough money. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, or NRECA, which is made up of 900 co-ops in the United States, owns its own finance company; its own bank. Its whole objective is to manage co-ops. That’s why they are called co-ops—they cooperate with each other. They have plenty of money.

It’s not any more complicated than that. The big question here is which business model will work best for the people in terms of managing our utility. This is not rocket science.

It’s important that we show up and speak up when the PUC asks us to. Attend the meetings next month — I’ll post when and where they are — and ask the PUC to consider the co-op. Ask them to consider what’s really best for the people of the Big Island.

Community, Hamakua Coast

Hurricane Ignacio Update: Sunday 2:45 p.m.

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Update, 8:45 p.m.:

Civil Defense, Young Brothers and everyone lifted the Tropical Storm watch. We dodged the bullet again. Thanks, everyone!

***

It’s been quite a hurricane season already this year!

Right now we are watching Ignacio. At 2:45 p.m. today, Hawaii County Civil Defense announced that Hurricane Ignacio was posing an “anticipated reduced threat.” It’s still a Category 3 hurricane, currently with sustained winds of 115 miles per hour and higher gusts, and right now it’s about 380 miles east of Hilo moving 12 miles per hour to the northwest. They say it’s gradually weakening.

Everything indicates, too, that it’s moving more to the north of the islands now and will move parallel to the Hamakua coast. This is good, but what worries me is the size of the hurricane. As it moves along its path, spinning counterclockwise, its winds affect us on the Hamakua coast first. This is a big coastline up alongside a mountain, so it operates like a valley. The winds come from the north and are forced up against the slopes of the mountain. The energy doesn’t go over the top of the mountain, but runs down the slope and is concentrated along the Hamakua coast from the north to the south.

That’s why we’re still a bit concerned about this one. That’s good news that it’s weakening, but its winds are still 115 miles per hour and it only takes 55 mph winds to flatten a banana tree.

So they can say what they way to say, but at the moment those winds are traveling at 100-something miles per hour, so am I going to go catch a plan to Honolulu because I’m so sure nothing’s going to happen here? I don’t think so!

But we’ve secured everything at the farm that needs to be secured. So we’ll wait and see.

Take care everyone. The update from Hawaii County Civil Defense is here:

This is a Hurricane information update for Sunday August 30th at 2:45PM.

As of 2:00 PM this afternoon Hurricane Ignacio was continuing on a northwest track at 12 miles per hour and remains a category 3 hurricane. Ignacio was located approximately 380 miles east of Hilo and recording sustained winds of 115 miles per hour with higher gusts. Hurricane force winds extend outwards from the center up to 30 miles and tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 160 miles.

Although the National Weather Service Tropical Storm Watch for Hawaii Island remains in effect, the present track and gradual weakening of Ignacio is presenting with an anticipated reduced threat to Hawaii Island. Based on the anticipated and improved forecast outlook, evacuation centers will not be opened at this time. The Civil Defense Agency will continue to maintain close communication with the National Weather Service and monitor the system. 

All DOE public schools and private schools will be open tomorrow.

In addition all government offices will be open for normal business. 

The High Surf Warning issued for the east facing shores of Hawaii Island will remain in effect through 6:00PM Tuesday evening. Surf heights are expected to increase today and build to possibly 15 to 20 feet. Residents in low lying coastal areas and boat owners are advised to take necessary precautions. 

Please monitor your local radio broadcast for additional updates.

Hawaiian Role Models, History, Science

Kalakaua at Lick Observatory

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Did you know that Kalakaua was a true astronomy buff? He sailed across the ocean and rode a stagecoach up to the Lick Observatory outside San Jose.

My friend Peter Matlock, who just visited Lick Observatory, sent me this account of his visit:

My wife and I were recently at the University of California’s Lick Observatory, built outside San Jose back in 1880. 

For all those invoking the monarchy as they protest at the new leading location for astronomy, it might be useful to remind them that one of the first visitors to Lick, and an evident supporter, was King Kalakaua.

When Kalakaua made the trip in the 1880s, there was a single lane dirt road and it took 4 to 5 hours to travel by stagecoach from San Jose—and this after the voyage to get from Hawai`i to San Jose in the first place.

It still takes a high sense of dedication to and appreciation for the science of astronomy to make the trip to the Lick Observatory. Today it’s an hour drive and an elevation gain of over 4,200 feet from San Jose up a twisty narrow mountain road (365 turns, many hairpins)—often with a cliff on one side and a sheer drop-off on the other (and generally no guard rails).

I thought you might like to see some pictures I took there, as well.

IMG_3268

When the Lick Observatory  was built, it had the then-largest refracting and reflecting telescopes in the world.

IMG_0952
 
This facility was the leading astronomy facility at the end of the 19th century and has a long tradition of scientific innovations and discoveries. These include the almost immediate discovery of the fifth moon of Jupiter, use of photography and spectroscopy to record data and revolutionize our ability to probe and understand the universe, development of adaptive optics technology to improve resolution of astronomical images in real time, and Lick’s newest telescope—the Automated Planet Finder to discover planets outside our solar system.
The Lick Observatory continues to be a pioneer facility in astronomy.  
Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative, Lowering Electric Rates

Cheaper Electricity: The Need Hasn’t Changed

Every so often I’m going to repost something here that I feel is still significant.

This article, which I submitted to the Big Island Chronicle and ran in April 2014, talks about some of the important principles behind why we formed the Big Island Community Coalition. It still applies.

***

A Call For Cheaper Electricity

Here is the single most important need facing Hawai‘i today. Everything else radiates from it:

We need cheaper electricity.

It can be done. Recently the Big Island Community Coalition, along with others, helped stop some fairly significant electricity rate hikes from showing up on everybody’s HELCO bills.

And we are very lucky to have resources here, such as geothermal energy, that we can use to generate much cheaper electricity.

Here’s why this is so important:

• We need enough food to eat, and we need to grow it here, instead of relying on it coming to us from somewhere else.

Food security – having enough food to eat, right here where we live – is truly the bottom line. We live in the middle of an ocean, we import more than 80 percent of what we eat, and sometimes there are natural or other disasters and shipping disruptions. This makes a lot of us a little nervous.

• To grow our food here, we need for our farmers to make a decent living: “If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm.”

The price of oil, and of petroleum byproducts like fertilizers and many other farming products, keeps going up, which raises farmers’ costs. They cannot pass on all these higher costs, and they lose money.

We use oil for 70 percent of our electricity here in Hawai‘i, whereas on the mainland they use oil for only 2 percent of theirs—so when the cost of oil increases, anything here that requires electricity to produce is less competitive. And farmers in Hawai‘i also pay four times as much for electricity as do their mainland competition, which puts them at an even bigger competitive disadvantage. Fewer young people are going into farming and this will impact our food security even further.

HELCO needs to be a major driver in reducing the cost of electricity. We believe that HELCO is fully capable of providing us with reliable and less costly electrical power, and ask that the PUC reviews its directives to and agreements with HELCO. Its directives should now be that HELCO’s primary objective should be making significant reductions in the real cost of reliable electric power to Hawai‘i Island residents.

At the same time, we ask that HELCO be given the power to break out of its current planning mode in order to find the most practicable means of achieving this end. We will support a long-range plan that realistically drives down our prices to ensure the viability of our local businesses and the survivability of our families. All considerations should be on the table, including power sources (i.e., oil, natural gas, geothermal, solar, biomass, etc.), changes in transmission policy including standby charges, and retaining currently operating power plants.

This is not “us” vs. “them.” We are all responsible for creating the political will to get it done.

Rising electricity costs act like a giant regressive tax: the people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder get hurt first, and hardest. If our energy costs are lower – and we can absolutely make that happen – our farmers can keep their prices down, food will be cheaper, and consumers will have more money left over at the end of the month. This is good for our people, and for our economy.

We have good resources here and we need to maximize them. Geothermal and other options for cheaper for energy. We also have the University of Hawai‘i, the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, the Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center and others that help our farmers.

To learn more about achieving cheaper electricity rates, consider joining the Big Island Community Coalition (bigislandcommunitycoalition.org; there’s no cost). We send out an occasional email with information on what we’re doing to get electricity costs down, and how people can help.

Remember the bottom line: every one of us needs to call for cheaper electricity, and this will directly and positively impact our food security.

Peak Oil

Shale Gas: Should We Take Their Word For It?

Do we really want to bet the Big Island’s future on the Energy Information Agency’s projections? It’s much more prudent to hedge our bets. Have a look at what people are saying about recent projections.

From the Post Carbon Institute:

Shale Gas Reality Check

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released its Annual Energy Outlook 2015. How have their projections and assumptions changed over the last year, and how does it hold up to scrutiny against up-to-date production data from key shale gas and tight oil plays?

In 2014, Post Carbon Institute and David Hughes published the most thorough independent analysis of U.S. shale gas and tight oil production ever conducted, and now that analysis has been updated to assess the most current thinking from the EIA. 

The update shows that the EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2015 reference case suffers from even greater optimism than the previous year—raising what were already highly questionable projections for cumulative shale gas production through 2040 by nine percent…. Read the rest

This recent Los Angeles Times article is one example of some of the reality:

U.S. officials cut estimate of recoverable Monterey Shale oil by 96%

By Louis Sahagun

Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California’s vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national “black gold mine” of petroleum.

Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said…. Read the rest

Steve Horn, Research Fellow with DeSmogBlog, also wrote about the EIA’s projects. This article, Drilling Deeper: New Report Casts Doubt on Fracking Production Numbers, appeared in the Huffington Post:

The report’s findings differ vastly from the forward-looking projections published by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), a statistical sub-unit of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

…”The Department of Energy’s forecasts–the ones everyone is relying on to guide our energy policy and planning–are overly optimistic based on what the actual well data are telling us,” Hughes — a geoscientist who formerly analyzed energy resources for over three decades for the Geological Survey of Canada — said in a press release about the reporting’s findings. 

“By asking the right questions you soon realize that if the future of U.S. oil and natural gas production depends on resources in the country’s deep shale deposits…we are in for a big disappointment in the longer term….” Read the rest

Current Affairs, Geothermal, Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative, Lowering Electric Rates, Mauna Kea, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability

Is Our Culture Falling Backward?

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This editorial ran in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald today. In case you didn’t see it, I’ll run what we sent them here.

***

The purpose of the Big Island Community Coalition is to work towards reduced electrical energy costs on the Island of Hawaii – where we pay up to four times the national average for our power.  We are particularly sensitive to electric power rates as very high rates serve essentially as a regressive tax on our population while greatly reducing the probability of generating jobs in any sector that is dependent on electricity.

There are occasions when events are so alarming that groups such as ours feel compelled to move beyond our primary task.  This is such a time.

We have observed with increasing alarm as our community has taken steps that inexorably blunt the forward movement of our economy and even move us backwards.  These include:

  1. Anti-Geothermal activists encouraged County government to ban nighttime drilling, effectively stopping expansion of a major source of renewable and inexpensive electric power beyond already-existing permits.This action was taken despite the existing plant meeting all applicable noise standards.  It appears that government officials took this action without first going to the site to verify that the noise was disruptive.  Once they did go to the site, some years later, government found that the noise was less than other environmental sounds (i.e., coqui frogs) and essentially no more than typical background noise.
  2. Anti-GMO activists lobbied to stop any new GMO products from being grown on the island – despite the fact that the vast majority of scientific, peer-reviewed studies found such products to be as safe, and in some cases more nutritious, as their non-GMO counterparts.  Legislation even prohibited GMO flowers – not consumed by anyone – from being grown on the island.  Thus family farmers lost the most effective new tools needed to reduce pesticide and herbicide usage while increasing productivity needed to keep their farms competitive.
  3. Now we have anti-Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) activists taking steps to stop construction of the most advanced telescope in the world.  If successful in stopping TMT, despite its sponsors following every legal requirement over a seven-year period, we will lose our world leading advantage in understanding the universe.

All of these actions share similar characteristics:

  • The arguments used to justify such actions are consistently anti-scientific.
  • “Anti” groups often obscure the lack of scientific evidence to support their position by using emotional pleas intended to incite fear.
  • The only “win” for many of these groups is to completely stop, thereby making them completely unwilling to consider any facts that refute their position or to make any reasonable compromise.
  • Long-term consequences are significant both culturally and economically.

Cultures that survive and thrive embrace new technologies carefully, thoughtfully and steadily.  Cultures and economies that thrive are innovative beccause they generate ideas and solutions, solve problems and take calculated but careful risks.

Cultures that fall backwards are those that fear advancement, fear change and cling to a mythicized view of yesteryear.  The net result is loss of their brightest and most hard working youth.  Those youth that remain find fewer and fewer jobs – those jobs having greatly diminished economic value and lower wages.  The downward spiral becomes inexorable.

As we look to tomorrow, we need to ask ourselves whether we wish to give our children the exciting and invigorating job market typified by Silicon Valley or a job market that is much closer to the poorer regions of third world countries.  It is up to us to point one way or another.  Driving TMT out will be one more major step to cultural and economic poverty.

Signed,

Big Island Community Coalition

Richard Ha, President,

David DeLuz Jr., Rockne Freitas, Michelle Galimba, Wallace Ishibashi, Noe Kalipi, H.R “Monty” Richards, William Walter.

History, Mauna Kea, Where We Live

10,000 Hours and a Mountain

Editor Rory Flynn wrote a really interesting editorial in the June 2015 edition of Farmers and Friends.

He talks about Malcolm Gladwell’s theory (from his book Outliers) that 10,000 hours of practice, plus determination, helps some people develop excellence in their field. He cites concert violinists, the Beatles, Bill Gates, and Hawai‘i’s Kolten Wong.

And then Flynn adds to the equation the importance of place.

He takes us through a really interesting look at what the Hawaiian islands’ geography has meant in the past – to Polynesian explorers, 18th-century British explorers, Americans, Chinese, and others, and what opportunities and livelihoods have been generated here from all those interactions.

And he writes about what advantage geography offers Hawai‘i today, Mauna Kea being one incredible advantage.

“It beckons to a fascinating cohort of 10,000-hour people – accomplished astronomers from around the world. This is where the natural resource of a mountain summit 2-1⁄2 miles high intersects with the excellence of people at the top of their game.”

There’s a lot more. Really good article; I recommend it.

It’s easy to forget all the people and opportunities and livelihoods that were here before. Like the people who came before us, we have amazing resources and we should use them in the smartest way we can.

Read Rory Flynn’s article.

Mauna Kea, Water

Checking in with UH Geologist on the Aquifer

There’s been so much talk about the Big Island’s aquifer lately, with the Thirty Meter Telescope about to start construction on Mauna Kea, that I thought I’d repost this March 2010 blog post.

Spoiler alert: We don’t need to worry. The aquifer is not in any danger.

This post is about research Don Thomas, a geologist and volcanologist at the University of Hawaii has been doing. He’s learned that the island has a tremendous amount of fresh water — much more than we realized in the past.

I asked Don what they’ve learned in the five years since then, and he told me this:

We did start the drilling program and we found high level water in the first test hole. Based on the results of the first hole, the regional water table appears to be standing at an elevation of ~4600′ above sea level in the central Saddle region.  That elevation of the water table is more than adequate to allow fresh water to displace seawater to 10,000′ below sea level (and a good deal deeper if there is adequate permeability in the rocks underlying the island).  That test hole also found that significant water bodies can be present as “perched” aquifers – where low permeability layers can intercept rainfall recharge and hold it at much higher elevations than we had generally assumed. 

My 2010 blog post:

FRESH WATER BELOW SEA LEVEL

 RICHARD HA 

Richard Ha writes:

Don Thomas is a geologist and volcanologist at the UH Manoa and UH Hilo. Talking to him is so interesting; it’s kind of like an Indiana Jones novel. He is quiet and unassuming but the stuff he talks about just blows me away.

One day, he mentioned to me that he was looking for fresh water for the military at Pohakuloa. He told me about this neat instrument that can look down and see the electroconductivity of rock.

He told me that dry rocks have a certain signature and wet rocks a different one. He said that salty wet rocks and hot rocks have signatures that are hard to distinguish from one another. So one could locate heat zones?

Hmmm, I thought—maybe we can find hot geothermal zones?

Don just drops these kinds of info. I had no idea that geology could be so fascinating.

From Don’s email to me:

We’ve always assumed that the understanding of groundwater in Hawaii was pretty well established.  The old timers, the guys I learned from when I was a student at UH, did a really fantastic job at interpreting the geology and groundwater hydrology. But, they didn’t have any data to tell them what was going on deep below sea level.

With our deep borehole, we found that some assumptions that were made about the flow of water below sea level was much different from the assumptions made by the earlier hydrologists.  The most significant finding was that freshwater was found much farther below sea level than anyone had expected.

For water to be that deep, it meant that seawater had to have been forced out by much higher pressure freshwater than was expected.  In order for those pressures to occur, it meant that freshwater was piled up much higher inside Mauna Kea than we had assumed.  To prove that, we’ll need to drill a hole from a much higher elevation – in the Saddle.

But, because drilling is pretty expensive, I teamed up with some folks from the mainland who are experts in a type of measurement that can “look” downward into the ground and determine the electrical resistance of the rocks at various depths below the surface.  Dry rocks are pretty poor electrical conductors; when they get wet with fresh water, they are better conductors; and when they are wet with sea water, they are even more conductive.

That exploration method is pretty expensive itself – but we were able to make measurements at about thirty stations across the Saddle – with the data we were able to collect, we were able to identify a couple of locations where the conductivity of the ground was similar to that of fresh water saturated rock at about 3000′ above sea level.

That doesn’t guarantee that we will find water there – it’s like in the detective stories – the conductivity of the rocks is only “circumstantial evidence” – it’s possible that other geologic conditions are responsible for the conductivity.  The only way we can prove the presence of water at that elevation will be to drill into one of those zones.  But, if there is water there, it will mean that we have a pretty large resource stored inside the island.

It’s also important to realize that another of the findings of the deep hole was that the local conditions – where ever you are on the island – will exert a strong control over where groundwater flows.  So the conditions in Kona, whatever they are, will likewise have an impact on the water.

It’s just a guess, but my guess is that there is a lot more water stored on the Kona side of Mauna Loa than we have generally expected based on the relatively thin groundwater lens found near the coast.  I’d bet that there are buried formations that are controlling groundwater flow – similar to the ones we found in Hilo – that may be forcing fresh water to discharge from that are deep below sea level.  But, again, we don’t the necessary geological data to be able to prove that.

Richard again:

This really captures my imagination. It points out the value of education and science in a very practical way. Combine that with getting HELCO to use geothermal as base power—we can get that water at a reasonable cost.

This article predicts that the wet side of the island will get wetter and the dry side drier. If this is the case, then Don’s efforts could be the basis for solving our long-term problems.

I want the people to know the role Don has played and is still playing for the Big Island people’s benefit!