Welcome to paradise. Now let's destroy it. Maui residents have apparently reached their breaking point on exploitation by corporations.
On Sunday, residents sick (literally) of the missionary company Alexander & Baldwin burning sugarcane 250 days per year hired an attorney and began fund-raising to pay for litigation seeking an end to burning.
Alexander & Baldwin's HC&S division burns 35,000 acres of sugarcane every two years. The Department of Health (DoH) (which angry residents call the Dept of UNhealth) issues a yearly burn permit that leaves regulation in the hands of the plantation.
This practice results in some creative reporting on the part of HC&S.
For instance, on May 26, 2015 the weather report forecasted an inversion layer which would pin the smoke at ground level and trap it for a significant time.
Residents called DoH warning that burning should be cancelled for the following day. HC&S's burn permit requires that they check meteorological conditions and refrain from burning during inversion layers.
DoH did nothing. HC&S burned anyway. The result was heavy, lingering smoke over Kihei, choking the elementary school. One student was hospitalized and treated for 3 days for breathing problems, 2 others (not confirmed) were also reported to have been hospitalized. Some parents brought their children to school and turned around and brought them home.
HC&S spokesperson Hilary Bingham left voicemail saying there was no smoke, "only odor" which resulted in this photo making the rounds on Facebook.
In 2013 the nonprofit
Maui Tomorrow Foundation created the CleanAirMaui app that enables residents and visitors to report smoke at ground level. Prior to that, HC&S and DoH had been claiming that there were no complaints about smoke.
In the last year, 1757 complaints were made. You can view photos and descriptions at CleanAirForKeiki.org/showcomplaints.php
This could be partially due to the DoH staffer on Maui who is in charge of (not) calling no-burn days greeting complaints with, "If you make this complaint, you will put 800 people out of work."
Residents pointed out that his words constituted a real conflict of interest and asked whether he was working for the state or for the plantation.
HC&S pulls out this "800 jobs" argument every time someone tries to regulate their pollution. When the EPA strengthened coal-fired boiler pollution standards, HC&S persuaded then House representative, Colleen Hanabusa, to vote against the law.
However HC&S has never backed up that 800 number nor disclosed how many of these are their foreign field workers. Residents guess (without any real data) that the majority of these 800 jobs are from workers imported from other countries and crowded together in Haliimaile plantation houses.
One would think that growing and burning sugarcane would have a net zero effect on climate change. After all, the cane sequesters CO2 while growing and the fire just releases that back into the atmosphere. Turns out, though, the soot generated in the smoke has a big impact so agricultural burning has a net damaging effect on climate change.
Residents have created the StopCaneBurning.org website and a facebook page. In three days, they've collected $5,885 for their legal fight.
Comments taken from reports to Department of Health. Maui has extremely high electric prices so most residents do not have air conditioning. They depend on open windows during the night to cool their homes and to make sleeping bearable. HC&S begins burning as early as 4am.
A side-effect of the smoke is that residents end up disconnecting their smoke alarms which go off daily.
A sampling of the 1700+ complaints filed in the last year
5:00am a large cane burn fire, red in the sky, with huge black cloud building above it, already blowing west across north Kihei. Closing windows & alerting friends & neighbors to do the same. Likely toxic black plastic pcb field irrigation hose ash rain to fall on my neighborhood soon, as does often. Beginning to rain black ash at 5:28am
Smoke from the morning burn filled my home at 6:15am, I closed up all the windows as quickly as possible. Burning eyes and throat. I also have asthma which is aggravated with the smoke.
Smoke at ground level. In the house.
ANY ash is excessive ash and individuals have to clean it up, not the company that created it. Clean clothes on the line, patios and lanais - all must be swept or washed again each morning.
Kupuna started coughing around 5:30 rest of us 6:30. This is almost daily!
Smoke odor is filling my apartment as I wake for work. No sign of large plume outside. it must have been an early burn. Woke up w acute asthma and teary eyes.
Starting my day with a cane burn headache! The smoke is in the air and my house.
I love spending my day off cleaning, to wake the next day and find ash all over my things. Not as bad as the smoke that fills my house but still not nice!
Was woken up again by smoke in my bedroom at 6:30am. Closed the windows to avoid breathing the smoke. HC&S should grow some good food for the people of the island on instead of nasty cane.
It seems I am having to clean an excessive amount of ash every other day...that is if I can clean it up. Two days 8n a row this time. And it isn't just the clean up it ia the illness my son an I wake up with every time they burn. Poisoning my family and I can not be this legal!!!
This is highly toxic and is causing everyone in our neighborhood to suffer. Enough is enough
Thick smoke hung in the valley all day! Sneezing and itchy eyes from morning till night.
Choking smoke smoke detectors in apt went off early this morning.
Ground smoke in North Kihei at 9:30 am Dec 8
Driving down the hill this morning
Woke again to acrid smoke filling the house. Massive headache along with sore throat and dry mouth. Our 6 month old kitten is gasping for air today. Breathing is raspy and this is after taking her to the vet last week after 4 days of continuous burns.
today is the picture of the "Bad Burn" example on your website. it looks like LA in the 1960's. it is not a good day to burn cain. it is dangerous can't breath, had to evacuate my home and go to north shore of island.
Drove through a cloud of smoke from the cane fields at 8:45 am. I had to roll up my windows
Smoke burning nostrils and lungs in kihei
Choking smoke
Smoke on ground - affecting breathing. Terrible!
Once again there is smoke at ground level. I can smell it inside my car. This makes 5 days of smoke in the last week alone.
Smoke smell and brown colored air lingering in the air on our street. Neighbors and I are coughing. Please stop
So smokey. Can hardly see the mountain. Hard to breathe
Smoke everywhere. Very hard to breathe. Hard to see. Eyes burning.
All over the ground at the site of the burn. And a big dark brown cloud blocking the sun. I hope you have seen the over 1100 miserable complaint comments mostly from people in Kihei that are sick or can't breathe and have black smoke residue all over their homes and yards. Just isn't right.
Heavy smoke odor permeating the entire house. My eyes are burning and watering.
Stepped out of my home this morning and couldn't stop sneezing. Drove to work in wailuku and it got worse. Big black cloud overhead. Allergy symptoms all day. Had to send an employee home because of a reaction to the smoke (headache
Heavy smoke and ash at Molokini bird and marine preserve
when will the paid government officials protect the citizens of Maui?
Burned on a rainy and no wind day. Think smoke in kihei and wailea. Even the weather report is showing smoke today.
1:26 PM PT: People ask, "What happens if they stop burning?"
Answer: They use mechanical harvesting like the rest of the world. There is a combine that HC&S can use which cuts, strips leaves, chunks and loads into a truck that is fast and efficient. HC&S has 2 of these but A&B isn't giving them the capital to buy any more because they know that sugar's days are numbered due to it being a worldwide commodity and competition from areas with lower taxes, land prices, labor prices, fuel prices and water prices.
For the 60% of the land that HC&S says they can't harvest with the combines, they many times now harvest with their same antique equipment (knock down and put in rows with a cat, pick up with a crane and truck off to the mill)
So the end of burning does not mean the end of cane.
As long as HC&S gets to bank their land and water in anticipation of the economy allowing them to develop, they'll still grow cane even though they don't make a profit on it.
Another Question: Won't they just pave it over if sugar operations stop?
Answer: If we had a government that was not controlled by HC&S parent company A&B no. Because they couldn't get the zoning changed.
But reality is that politicians fall all over themselves to do whatever A&B asks so this is no bar to development.
And that is why the sugar operation has NO EFFECT on the pace of development - A&B is already converting fields to development as fast as (or faster than) the economy can absorb it.
Farm cane, don't farm cane. Entirely irrelevant to the pace that A&B develops.