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Those who have been waging a campaign to stop cane burning on Maui were practically euphoric Wednesday, following the announcement that sugar would be phasing out of production.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Karen Chun, a lung disease sufferer and leader of Stop Cane Burning. “I’m really optimistic about the health of our island.”
THE END OF AN ERA
1870: Samuel Thomas Alexander and Henry Perrine Baldwin plant their first sugarcane crop on their newly established Alexander and Baldwin plantation below Makawao, Maui. Their company will eventually become one of Hawaii’s Big Five dominant firms.
1878: Claus Spreckels of San Francisco, Calif., founded Hawaiian Commercial Co. (predecessor to Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co.) with a factory in Spreckelsville, Maui.
1878: The Hamakua Ditch is completed, a 17-mile irrigation system of tunnels, ditches, siphons, flumes and reservoirs built to provide water for over 3,000 acres of sugarcane belonging to A&B as well as several neighboring plantations.
1898: A&B gains a controlling interest in HC&S.
1918: War and scarcity of fossil fuel results in HC&S embarking on the production of “etherized” alcohol, known today as ethanol, from waste molasses to operate its tractors.
1948: HC&S merges with Maui Agricultural Co., making HC&S the largest sugar producer in the United States.
1950: HC&S replaces the railroad as the main sugarcane transportation system with tournahaulers, the largest motor vehicles in Hawaii at the time, to carry harvested cane from the field to the plantation’s two factories.
1962: HC&S merges with Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. and becomes a wholly owned division of the company.
1974-1999: HC&S installs drip-irrigation throughout the plantation at a cost of $30 million.
Jan. 6, 2016: A&B says it will cease sugar production this year, ending 146 years of operations in Maui.
Source: HC&S |
In a move to force an end to cane burning on Maui, Stop Cane Burning filed suit against the state Department of Health in July claiming that the regulatory system that allows open-air agricultural burning is unconstitutional. An Environmental Court hearing to consider a preliminary injunction to stop the practice is scheduled for Feb. 17.
While economics are largely to blame for the fate of the 36,000-acre plantation, Chun said the lawsuit and a growing number of residents who object to the burning helped nudge A&B to move in a new direction.
“It’s amazing how this community came together,” agreed Brad Edwards, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “People from all walks of life were pushing for (cane burning to end). There really was an expanding web of people who were negatively affected.”
Rob Parsons, the county’s environmental coordinator, said cane burning was the No. 1 environmental issue during his nine years on the job, with more than 1,000 complaints coming to his office annually over the last three years.
There have been a number of campaigns on Maui to search for cane-burning alternatives since the 1990s, and Parsons said the drumbeat of complaints grew louder as residential development encroached on the cane fields and more people than ever moved to areas downwind of the plantation.
Parsons praised A&B for its plan to transform its plantation into a diversified agricultural operation. While Maui will take a hit economically in the short term, he said, it will benefit in the long run with an agricultural industry not so reliant on one crop.
But Albert Perez, executive director of the Maui Tomorrow Foundation, said he wouldn’t welcome any expansion of seed-growing companies into the former sugar fields.
“That would be least desirable,” he said, adding that companies such as Monsanto would bring even more pesticides and chemicals to Maui. “Those are chemical companies masquerading as food companies.”
Perez said he’d like to see alternative crops such as hemp and breadfruit take root in Maui’s Central Valley.
Chun, of Stop Cane Burning, urged A&B to take care of its laid-off employees by taking the $30 million it would have lost this year and using it for retraining and education.
“With 675 workers, they could give each worker $44,000 for educational and living expenses while they find new jobs,” she said.
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