Though Deep Green Resistance is skeptical of the ability of citizens to petition decision makers to make decisions in the interest of the people and the aina, we share this petition as a quick way to voice your opposition to a blatant conflict of interest on the Hawai’i House Agriculture Committee:
In some good news, a significant amount of water will be returned to Wailuku River and Waikapū Stream on Maui. After a long court battle, two companies diverting the waters have agreed to restore up to 12.9 mgd to the two water ways. It was here in Wailuku and Waikapū that the first sugar plantations on Maui began draining the streams more than 150 years ago. In a sense, today’s restoration of flow brings us full circle to where the private diversions of stream flows and deprivation of Native Hawaiian communities and stream, wetland, and nearshore ecosystems began. ...
People who want to protect our moana nui for everyone, including Hawai‘i, need to be heard in regard to Obama’s proposed PRIMNM expansion. The Town Hall discussion will be held on August 11 at the Ala Moana Hotel, Carnation Room, 410 Atkinson Drive Honolulu, from 5:00 - 7:00 pm. Even if you can’t attend the Town Hall meeting, you can send comments to PRI@noaa.gov, deadline is August 15. This notice reposted from an email sent out by KAHEA: The Hawaii-Environmental Alliance. ...
Please add your opposition to this proposed project. Instead of finding ways to break our addiction to international commerce and start meeting our needs from the aina, this threatens to lock our county into mandatory long-term generation of trash. And as usual, the proposal calls for this source of air pollution to be sited near an already vulnerable, poor Native Hawaiian community. If possible, please also submit testimony to the County Council, either in person Friday, July 18th, or via email to counciltestimony@co.hawaii.hi.us (Email must be received by noon, Thursday July 17th.)
Although national and even state level elections are generally so controlled by big money that they don’t offer us much leverage for intervention, we can often have some influence over local politics. Though local jurisdictions are often constrained by state and national laws specifically designed to prevent communities from defending themselves against corporate interests, a lot of important decisions do happen at this level. (And more and more localities are turning to CELDF style radical legal approaches to assert the rights of community and environment over the “rights” of corporations.) ...
The Hawai’i Sustainable Community Alliance has put a lot of effort over the past few years into drafting, introducing, and lobbying for a bill to “enable innovators and sustainable pioneers to practice and test ways of living that are ecological and sustainable” in Hawaii. The bill passed through 6 committee hearings, and normally would have proceeded automatically to a final hearing. Senator Malama Solomon, who generally seems opposed to sustainability and supportive of destructive practices like industrial agriculture and geothermal, used her position as Chairperson of the Senate Conference Committee to deny the bill a hearing. ...
Passing this on from Puna Pono Alliance: This year’s geothermal legislation needs your help now, one last time. Please send an email (see below) and ask your friends to do the same. The immediate need for these emails ends this week (please do not send emails after April 26th.) Representatives Chris Lee and Cindy Evans along with their committees on Energy and Environmental Protection and Water and Land made appropriate changes to Senate Bill 2663 (now referred to as SB2663 SD2 HD2.) They not only cleaned up the Senate version of the bill, but they also provided for contested cases in geothermal permitting and a ban on fracking (with a sunset of 10 years.) Representative Sylvia Luke and her Finance committee then also approved the favorably amended legislation. ...