Cultural sensitivity ADVERTISING Cultural sensitivity It is really ironic that the County of Hawaii, state and feds are “culturally sensitive” all of a sudden to the “diversion ideas,” whatever they may be, because they would desecrate the Goddess Pele. Would
Cultural sensitivity
It is really ironic that the County of Hawaii, state and feds are “culturally sensitive” all of a sudden to the “diversion ideas,” whatever they may be, because they would desecrate the Goddess Pele. Would it be disrespectful to the Hawaiian people that they were referring to?
In 1983, during our contested case hearing defending the traditional beliefs of Pele against the proposed 500 megawatts of geothermal in Kahaualea on Campbell land, that was the birth of Pu‘u ‘O‘o, right on the drill site being proposed.
That was a clear sign that geothermal was already a concept of desecration, and we both continued our presence for years afterward to raise those concerns and consciousness, until present, to Wao Kele O Puna.
For all of you Hawaiians who thought that the idea of geothermal was a “gift” and “royalties” from Pele, “go to Puna and collect!”
Ignorance is not an excuse for desecration.
Palikapu Dedman
President, Pele Defense Fund
Bomb the vent
Herbert G. Dorsey III (Your Views, Sept. 6) should be applauded for out-of-the-box thinking! His (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) idea that we could possibly divert the flow of lava from the Pu‘u ‘O‘o vent toward the uninhabited west or southwest, by aerial bombardment of the vent by the almighty U.S. Air Force, is simply brilliant!
It may actually work. Similar strategies are used in mining. However, in order to do this, we need the blessings of the Hawaiian kupuna, as well as an act of Congress.
Unfortunately, as of today, there is no single voice or organization that reflects the values or the wishes of Hawaiians and can speak for them with a unified voice.
Regardless of what happens to Goddess Pele’s desires in the future, it is high time (and yet another reminder) that Railroad Avenue needs to be converted into a highway to ease traffic congestion, if nothing else.
Pradeepta Chowdhury
Hilo
A fragile system
HELCO and PGV admitted that that keeping PGV running at 70 percent during the storm was to provide stable power, knowing the storm would invariably knock down the minimum of two trees requiring PGV to vent, one for each of their main lines. While that scenario didn’t appear to bother them at all, the approaching lava now has HELCO very concerned about their power grid.
The March 13, 2013, event where PGV’s emergency venting gassed out the neighborhood was human-induced, which should have been an indication as to the fragility of their system, because it only required a tree-trimming and a poorly written and executed computer program, which was hopefully rewritten so it wouldn’t do that again.
Dave Kisor
Pahoa
