OTEC preferable to Big Wind

Thanks to Mike Bond for his excellent summation of the Big Wind project on Lanai and Molokai (“Big Wind project needs to be killed before it kills our pocketbooks,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, July 3).

Colonizing large portions of these Hawaiian last frontiers with rich histories and industrializing them with hundreds of wind turbines makes no sense to anyone besides a few wealthy landowners. What we really need to invest in now for Hawaii’s sustainable future is Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). The process derives energy from the temperature differential of cold, deep seawater and sun-warmed surface water. This cold water is sent to Hawaii by God from Antarctica and takes 200 years or so to arrive. The energy from OTEC is constant and much preferable to wind power, which is very expensive, intermittent and unpredictable.

Enough already with the neighbor island wind scam. Let’s spend our taxpayer money on an energy solution that works.

Charles H. Palumbo
Honolulu

Preserve our agricultural land

We import around 90 percent of our food. We need to grow more produce in Hawaii. We have limited water for growing produce on Oahu.

Now about 1,554 acres, “a big chunk of Oahu’s most productive and actively farmed land” (“Hoopili gets a second chance,” Star Advertiser, July 1) is about to be planted  with 11,750 homes.

What is wrong with this picture?

If we need 11,750 homes, there must be somewhere else on Oahu that they could be built, creating needed jobs and housing, without reducing our productive farm lands.

Bill Quinlan
Velzyland

Criminal justice priorities skewed

I’ve seen three news items recently that have left me scratching my head about our criminal justice system.

Laurie Temple wrote about how 60 percent of drug offenders in Hawaii are busted for non-violent crimes such as possession (“The failed drug war: Time to change tactics,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, June 17).

More recently, a drug bust was reported in which the 25 pounds of marijuana found would likely get the offenders 20 years in prison. 

And then on July 3 we learned about a convicted sex offender — whose first conviction was for sexually assaulting minors in 1995 — being sentenced to 10 years in prison for another sexual assault. Given the previous example, does that sound like the punishment fits the crime, especially for a repeat offender?

Whether marijuana should be legalized is a topic for other letters, but if our policymakers are supposed to be protecting us through the laws they pass, then we have some serious thinking to do about the way we exercise the fundamental principle of justice.

John Cheever
Honolulu

Hawaiian law fails Hawaiians

Here are a few reasons why Hawaiian nationals and supporters of a free Hawaii are adamantly opposed to Act 195:

>> The act would heartlessly prolong the 118-year violation of the sovereignty of the Hawaiian kingdom government, territories and her people.

>> Instead of undoing the wrongs and returning Hawaii’s freedom, Act 195 creates another U.S. puppet government in order to strengthen the U.S. stranglehold on the Hawaiian people and their lands.

>> The dictates of Act 195 run contrary to any notion of reconciliation as called for in the Apology Resolution of 1993.

>> Act 195 represents a form of ethnocide and continued violation of the right to self-determination and mandates for decolonization as stipulated in the United Nations Charter (to which the U.S. is a founding party).

Hawaiian nationals demand justice, not lopsided, self-serving, meaningless platitudes and schemes like Act 195.

Leon Siu
Aiea