Is Maui or Hawaii Immune to Oil Spills like BP or Chevron?

This is a topic I hate to even get into, especially with my two grand Children in the post below innocently eating their Mango and enjoying life. We in Hawaii are not immune to all these disasters and maybe even more prone if a Hurricane comes to town or a Tsunami hits.

I was talking one day with some contractors that were digging close to K-Mart by the Dairy Road intersection and they told me that they hit the brackish water table after only a few feet and then had to pump water to do their work. The thing that was most disturbing is that they say it had a strong odor of petroleum products such as gas and oil.

With our tanks located next to Kahului Harbor and pipes run underground to fill the tanks from the ships, how likely is it that either there are leaky tanks or leaky pipes already discharging there stores into our brackish water system.

In todays Sunday Maui News there was a story after over a month of dealing with the BP oil spill, about a leak in a pipe owned by Chevron. This pipe located in Utah, near Salt Lake City spilled 50 gallons per minute of crude oil into a Red Butte creek. It had flowed as far as Jordan River and into the City's Liberty Park Pond. They claim it was only 400 to 500 barrels total, but we all know how up front BP was about their oil spill.

Apparently "only" 150 duck and geese were affected. Around 75% were Canadian Geese. They plan to clean them all up, so there's not much to worry about.

It seems to me that if a ship, pipe or tank of any oil or gas were to leak into the ocean off Kanaha, Kanaha Wildlife Refuge or the Harbor, we would have a pretty big clean up and even further losses to our already dwindling supply of marine life in these areas. Don't worry a good shower should clean up the wind and kite surfers. They may need new rigs and all the action could help "stimulate" the economy, if the State and County were able to get reimbursed for their efforts.

I wonder how much the latest Pali fire cost in total for our already hard hit State and County financial system.
Probably just have to tax the remaining workers to make up for it.

Like I said, I hate to delve into these things and apparently no one does until it's too late. I want my Grand Children to have a chance to see Maui as it is. They will never see it as I did, but what's left needs to be protected.

Mango Season Hits Maui

My neighbors tree that hangs over my yard was a source of literally buckets full of mangoes last year. Even though the mangoes looked like babies on the tree, after weed eating around the tree we harvested nearly a half of a 5 gallon bucketful.

My grand children made short work of all the ripe one and took a sack home that should ripen in a day or so. It won't be long before I'll be carrying buckets full up from the tree to eat and freeze and try to give away.

High End Condos, Maintenance Fees and Sustanability

As I read the Sunday May 23, 2010 edition of the Maui News about the dilemma's that high end condo owners are facing with foreclosures as one aspect, but Condo Maintenance fees being a big part of it.

They talk about monthly maintenance fees of around $1000.00 per month. This seems crazy to me, but apparently it didn't to many that bought these places for more than they are worth now.

The first thing that comes to my mind is that I remember growing up and going camping in the areas that now hold all these high end developments. As it was then and surrounding these places, it's a total dry land area. So to create then and then landscape them and dress them out to look tropical with water sucking vegetation seems like one of the big problems.

Perhaps if the landscaping was converted to plants or even no plants to minimize the water usage, they could not only help preserve our precious commodity of water, but drastically reduce their cost of the maintenance fees. I'm sure beyond other amenities such as gyms, pools and spas, the landscaping has to be a major portion of the cost.

I live in the sun drenched, windy central valley and while I accept that the lawn, which is very small anyways, will ultimately dry up seasonally and then come back in the rainy season, I find that my automatic sprinklers system only requires about 4 minutes a day of water and set for about 4:30am to prevent evaporation. So it seems that it is possible to make even small changes and still have a pretty nice landscape. My neighbors can spend an hour and usually more in the late afternoon with the garden hose watering their lawn, which is not much bigger than mine and yet their lawn in most cases is no greener than mine and in many cases is actually less green.

Just some of those things that make you scratch your head and wonder why this isn't apparent to others that should be thinking seriously about these things.