COMING HOME TO ROOST

COMING HOME TO ROOST: It never fails to amaze us how the level of satisfaction of a “we told you so” moment is inversely proportional to the time elapsed.

Nevertheless it’s another somewhat empty cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face victory today as "Earthjustice" is finally going to sue KIUC for it’s diligent lack of action in protecting endangered Hawaiian petrel and Newell’s shearwater, according to an article in today’s local newspaper.

As the article reports, according to a press release:

(Earthjustice attorney David) Henkin said a “series of recommendations” — such as lowering power lines, attaching lines to bridges, switching from a vertical array of wires to a “traditional” T configuration and planting trees which shield lines — provided to Kaua`i Electric in 1995 have yet to be taken up by KIUC.

And surprise-surprise- KIUC’s response has been to file for permits to continue to kill birds rather than acting on the recommendations.

But whether through the cost of complying with the law or the “$50,000... that each violation of seabird take is subject to” it’s going to cost co-op members a pretty penny.

The irksome part is that we shouldn’t have to be paying for it.

It all harkens back to the original purchase from Kaua`i Electric and the price paid which, even after it was lowered once was still quite obviously as much as twice what it was worth.

And one of the liabilities that the “nitpickers” predicted would come back to bite us in the ass was that very 1995 list of unfollowed recommendations.

As a matter of fact it was at that point that the people fighting for a reduced price were first called “nitpickers” by then Mayor Maryanne Kusaka who had been busy flip-flopping her Republican butt on the purchase because the original board was comprised of Democratic machine honchos and whatever they wanted she didn’t.

The original purchasing board and their slick-talking honcho Gregg Gardiner and his stooge Walt Barnes simply ignored the all research, facts and figures presented by the about a dozen members of the public including the “birds liability” and the facts about members’ potential liability for the cleanup of the toxic waste dump underneath the `Ele`ele power plant, as PNN reported in 2002.

Stay tuned- there are plenty of other little surprises-on-the-rug to come as KIUC continues the be the gift that keeps on taking. As some said at the time of the pig-in-a-poke, “elephant?- what elephant?” purchase, they should have paid us to take KE off their hands.