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LETTERS for the Oct. 14 issue

By Staff | Oct 15, 2021

Upgrade Maui’s infrastructure

(The following letter was sent to county officials regarding the proposed Pulelehua project.)

So much care and monitoring must be done in order to approve such a huge development for West Maui. Some 301 acres of homes and shops, etc., will change the face of our community and commit huge demands on our old infrastructure and community resources.

We must develop in increments, not approve a huge 301 acres of development. Whatever happened to ag lots? Two-acre ag lots with some real affordable housing. The wastewater treated and returned to irrigate. Kahana Ridge is little California, and now we’ll have Tijuana?!

In the first place, the county is still noncompliant with the Clean Water Act. The mayor keeps spending tax money on courts… it’s like three times since the Supreme Court ruling and still pending in local courts for “some clarification.” Come on — spend money on pipes! Pump that wastewater into the foothills and reforest. Encourage sustainable ag. Grow textile hemp; monkeypod and kukui, even sandalwood and ulu! There’s tons of native trees and fruit that would grow.

Haven’t we learned that over-development only causes grave problems?!

Sure, give land for a school but let our tax money build it? Sure, promise to build a potable water system — where? mauka of the airport? — but in the meantime drill two wells north/east of Kahana Ridge. Promise to recycle all the wastewater that this development creates at the Lahaina facility back to irrigate the landscape.

How do we know what is returned? How do we monitor such a thing? I surely doubt all the wastewater will be recycled and that the majority will end up in the ocean.

For my 1,000-square-foot ohana, I had to put in a two-tank septic system with a 25-foot x 35-foot leach field. That’s what it takes to be approved on an ag lot.

Our beautiful Maui needs to be upgraded for the 21st Century. Our oceans pristine; our reefs healthy with limu and fisheries free from sewage. Our main roads off of the coastline and our schools financed and improved with good pay for teachers. Not to mention a hospital!

No, Sirs, we should not approve this huge development until the county infrastructure is up to speed LEGALLY and compliant with the Greater Law of the Land: The Clean Water Act!

LINDA LYERLY, Kahana

Teach students about civics and laws

The American electorate has a problem. Voters don’t know much about the law. For example, 50 years ago, every citizen knew injury lawyers to be “ambulance chasers.”

Today, after decades of dumbing down, an injury law firm on TV announces, “If you’re injured, your lawyer will come to you, whether you’re at home or in the hospital.”

“Really, they do that?”

Yes, Elmer, lawyers are still chasing ambulances in America. And just like 50 years ago, they “don’t get paid until you do.”

What they don’t say in the ad is that law firms still snatch one third of your settlement pot like an old lady’s purse, and they want you to feel grateful for it.

In fact, the question must be asked, does the average American know much of anything at all about everyday civil or criminal law? Nope. And constitutional law? Don’t even know how to spell it.

The root problem here is our school systems don’t teach civics and law-related education anymore. Why? Corporations don’t want the citizenry to know much. Easier to exploit them.

We need to liberate schools from the curriculum clutches of the 1 percent class and take back our legal brain power.

KIMBALL SHINKOSKEY, Woods Cross, Utah

The U.S. Postal Service is not a business

Corporate ideologues never cease blathering that government programs should be run like a business.

Really? What businesses would they choose? Pharmaceutical profiteers? Big Oil? Wall Street money manipulators? High-tech billionaires? Airline price-gougers?

The good news is that the great majority of people aren’t buying this corporatist blather. Instead, by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans stunned smug right-wing privatizers by specifically declaring in a poll last year that our U.S. Postal Service should not be “run like a business.”

Indeed, an overwhelming majority, including half of Republicans, say mail delivery should be run as a “public service.”

In fact, having proven that this nearly 250-year-old federal agency can consistently and efficiently deliver to 161 million homes and businesses day after day, it’s time to let the agency’s trusted, decentralized, well-trained workforce provide even more services for our communities.

How about “postal banking?”

Yes, the existing network of some 31,000 post offices in metro neighborhoods and small towns across America are perfectly situated and able to provide basic banking services to the one-out-of-four of us who don’t have or can’t afford bank accounts. The giant banking chains ignore these millions, leaving them at the mercy of check-cashing exploiters and payday loan sharks.

The Post Office can offer simple, honest banking, including small-dollar checking and savings accounts, very-low-interest consumer loans, low-fee debit cards, etc.

The goal of postal banking is not to maximize corporate profits, but public service. Moreover, there’s nothing new about this. Our post offices served as banks for millions of us until 1967, when Wall Street profiteers got their enablers in Congress to kill the competition.

We The People own this phenomenal public asset. To enable it to work even better for us, go to AGrandAlliance.org.

JIM HIGHTOWER, Otherwords.org