You think it’s wet on Kauai? Try the Big Bog

If a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Well, yes — especially if there is a recording device there that can be played back later to prove it.

And so it is that the Big Bog on Maui went unrecognized for years as being the true wettest spot in Hawaii, based on annual rainfall, instead of Kauai’s Mount Waialeale, which had held that title seemingly forever because it had a rain gauge up there to record its annual wetness while the Big Bog, on Maui’s eastern slope above Hana, did not.

That changed in 1992, and now, with data from both sites available for analysis, the Big Bog showed an average of 402 inches of rainfall a year versus 394 for Mount Waialeale.

Get online and get heard

It’s tough for regular folks to get their voices heard in a government increasingly fueled by big campaign spenders.

Voter Owned Hawaii, an advocacy group that championed a public-financing pilot project for the Hawaii County Council races, knows this all too well. House Bill 2700, which proposes to make some fixes — imperative because of reapportionment — is stalled.

Meanwhile, the Voter Owned folks have forged some new weaponry in the Hawaii Policy Portal (hawaiipolicyportal.org), a free Web tool that enables groups to organize their own public-interest campaigns. Users can create emails for testimony, petitions and such, all online.

Note: The home page indicates that only nonprofits qualify. But for now, the only condition is that the cause be consistent with the Earth Charter Initiative (see earthcharterinaction.org).