What effects will Superferry have? EIS will tell us

THE LINGLE administration's refusal to acknowledge the need of an environmental impact statement for the pending Superferry operation is both outrageous and irresponsible.

The county councils of Maui, the Big Island and Kauai have all been adamant in their request that the state of Hawaii requires an EIS prior to the start of the Superferry operations. Many if not most of the neighbor island state legislators have indicated their support for an EIS requirement and thousands of individuals have made it abundantly clear that they believe an EIS should be mandatory.

Yet, the Lingle administration continues to turn a deaf ear to these requests allowing the developer to plow ahead, offering the community only hollow statements equivalent to "trust us, we're working on it."

The governor's office continues to try to spin the issue as one of fairness with representatives from the Department of Transportation stating: "No other carrier is or has been required to undertake an EIS as a condition for engaging in maritime activity."

The reality is that no other carrier will have the "super impacts" that the Superferry will have on our neighbor islands. In addition, the financing of the Superferry construction is being guaranteed by the federal government and the state taxpayers are funding an additional $40 million in harbor improvements in support of the Superferry operations. The broad, long-term and significant impacts of the Superferry operations combined with its extensive reliance of public funding should translate to a higher level of public accountability. But unfortunately our state administration has chosen to put the needs of this particular business over the needs of neighbor island residents.

Requiring an EIS does not translate into opposing the Superferry operation; it is simply the responsible thing to do. An EIS is merely a disclosure document and its purpose is to clearly and impartially point out what impacts will occur as a result of the Superferry's operations. At the present time, we know there will be impacts on traffic, on crime, on the entry of invasive species, on whale survival rates, on existing public recreational facilities and on our harbors. However we do not know the extent of those impacts, what plan might be in place to deal with those impacts and who is going to pay for the mitigation of those impacts. One would think that those people in positions of administrative authority in our state would want to know this. One would think that that if the intent of the state administration were to look out for the best interests of the residents of Hawaii, requiring an EIS would be the prudent and responsible course of action.

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