Heco customers should
pay for what they get

All Oahu residential households pay the same electrical utility rate. But all Oahu residential households are not treated equally by the politicians, the Public Utilities Commission and Hawaiian Electric.

Why should the residential households of East Oahu be subsidized by the rest of us? Same electrical rate begets same electrical service. If East Oahu residents want underground power lines, let them pay for them. If the powers that be cannot see the logic of this, then all electric power lines should be buried.

Ted Farm
Ewa Beach

Big Island is especially
vulnerable to fallout

It is important for the community to know why we sued to stop the launch of the Cassini Project:

This country has launched 24 devices carrying nuclear material into space. Three of these met with catastrophic failures. That's a failure rate of 12.5 percent!

Can any of us believe NASA? Prior to its worst nuclear catastrophe, it said the odds of a failure were less than one in a million. That rocket, carrying the Transit 5BN-3 satellite with a SNAP-9A plutonium generator, burned up in the atmosphere, spread plutonium all around the world, and contributed to who knows how many cancer deaths.

NASA said the chances of Challenger blowing up were one in 100,000, and we all watched that disaster on TV.

There is no reason NASA can't use solar power for this probe, except that it enjoys sleeping with the nuclear industry.

More plutonium fallout descends on our island than any other place on the planet. A 1973 report, "Global Inventory Distribution of Fallout Plutonium" (Nature, Vol. 241), found that of soil samples taken worldwide, those in the Papaikou area on the Big Island had a higher concentration of plutonium fallout than anywhere else on Earth. The geography, wind and rain patterns of the Big Island make it the most vulnerable.

Julie Jacobson
Tim Mann
Co-Chairpersons
The Big Island Green Party

Human lives are being
gambled on Cassini

We are told that the probability of having plutonium dust spread over the Earth by an accident to Cassini is only one in a million. Is that good enough, when the results would be the death of billions of people from lung cancer?

In other words, to gain that scientific knowledge, the risk of death to billions of people is worth it? I don't see any worthwhile risk/benefit ratio. We are simply taking a chance.

But when we gamble (take a chance), we don't let the risk of loss stop us. We spin the wheel, shoot the dice or pull the handle in the confident hope that we will win.

Ted Chernin

A study on exotic fishes?
Most of them are dead!

We now have a study to look at the impact of the introduction of exotic species of fish on Hawaiian reefs. Good. Please do not overlook the effect that the exotic species, man, has had on Hawaiian reefs.

Man has fished, netted, speared, dumped on, collected from and trampled Hawaiian reefs into oblivion. Underwater diving magazines describe the Hawaiian reefs as "picked clean."

I can't remember seeing a dive magazine recommending Hawaii as a dive site to visit. There is nothing to see.

Personally, I would like to see some "exotic species" of fish of just about any kind at all on our dead reefs. I suspect that it will take 10-15 years of intensive reef conservation and protection, which is unlikely, before this study on "exotic species" can get off the ground. Good luck.

De Miller
(Via the Internet)

Banning of land mines
is deserving of Peace Prize

Your Oct. 11 editorial on the Nobel Peace prize concludes that "it would not be the right thing to do" for the United States to sign the treaty banning anti-personnel land mines because mines are needed in Korea.

Landmines in Korea are indeed a threat to North Korean soldiers, but they are also a threat to South Korean and American soldiers, as illustrated by the report that a land mine explosion in the DMZ on Oct. 11 killed one South Korean soldier and injured five others.

A July 29 New York Times article cited a recent report based on U.S. Army documents that nearly 60,000 U.S. casualties in Vietnam were due to mines made in the U.S. or made with U.S. components. This is one of the reasons that 60 U.S. senators, including every Vietnam combat veteran in the Senate, support the Leahy-Hagel bill that would ban new U.S. deployments of anti-personnel land mines after 1999.

Even if anti-personnel land mines are militarily useful in some circumstances, most victims are civilians. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the agreement by over 90 countries to a treaty banning such mines are cogent statements of what is the right thing to do.

Michael Jones
Kaneohe

Somebody has got to deal
with overabundance of cats

Regarding your Oct. 13 article on cats and poisoning, I have a neighbor who also feeds stray cats. The cats are all over the place. They fight at night, wake me up, urinate and defecate in my yard (the stench is unbearable), and no health care is provided for the felines.

When approached by me and questioned, my neighbor's response was, "Oh, they aren't MY cats."

I'm just wondering what possesses some people to feed the cats, adding to the already rampant population. These individuals are sick, in my opinion.

When there's no help from the Hawaiian Humane Society (as well as other organizations) to educate these people about the consequences of their actions, what are we supposed to do but take it upon ourselves to combat the problem?

Keith Steadman
Ewa Beach
(Via the Internet)

City's complaint office
often results in action

As a chronic complainer in Hawaii for 10 years, I have always found someone at the other end of the line at the city Office of Information and Complaint. What's more, I don't get just lip service; I get action.

For example, a work order was issued and a defective exercise station at Kapiolani Park was fixed within five days. Noise and radiation branch personnel were dispatched to the dark, smelly corners of Kona Street in the early-dawn hours to issue citations to a refuse company that consistently picks up trash between 5-5:30 a.m.

The mayor's complaint office works. If it can't resolve your problem, it will give you a name and number of an agency that can help. It will not direct you to the infuriating government section of the phone book. That's another one of my complaints.

William Bonzo

Courts are handing out
inequitable sentencing

I am growing increasingly concerned by the random and capricious manner in which our courts here are passing out punishment. I see that a man received a 15-month sentence for bringing a foreign prostitute here to work for him. And yet Carl Ritchie is serving 10 years for running a lap dance operation on Kauai.

Then we have the 15-weekend sentence handed down to a hit-and-run driver for killing a child just past infancy. We will never know if he was drunk or not, and he had the audacity to claim in his defense that he could not have rendered aid because the child died instantly, and that it was the parents' fault for leaving the boy in the car unattended.

We want justice for all, not law for all! Remember the sanctity of life when you see it abused by arbitrary rulings, and remember that people always get hurt.

Bob Beach
(Via the Internet)

Media want to take away
right to bear firearms

Your typical liberal editorial chastised Governor Wilson's veto of another new gun ban as abandoning his moderate position ("Handgun safety, Oct. 16). By labeling your position as moderate, you label anyone who disagrees with you as a radical.

The promotion of the decimation of a constitutional right is the radical position. This would be equally true if it was the right of free speech or, for that matter, the right of freedom of the press instead of the right to bear arms that you were intent on obliterating.

Those in the media who hide behind the First Amendment continuously demonstrate contempt for the rights of others.

Douglas R. Neil

---

Bishop Estate Archive

---

Want to write a letter to the editor? Let all Star-Bulletin readers know what you think. Please keep your letter to about 200 words. You can send it by e-mail to letters@starbulletin.com or you can fill in the online form for a faster response. Or print it and mail it to: Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802. Or fax it to: 523-8509. Always be sure to include your daytime phone number.