Hamakua veneer venture answers critics
HILO » Tradewinds Forest Products LLC hopes to start producing wood veneer on the Hamakua Coast for plywood and lumber products by January 2008, company President Don Bryan told a Hawaii County Council committee yesterday.
Bryan said he spoke to the county body to give an update on the eight-year-old project and to answer "misinformation."
He plans the veneer mill on the site of a former sugar mill at Ookala, 30 miles north of Hilo. The veneer, thin sheets of wood used to make finish products elsewhere, would be produced from trees on 8,000 acres of state forest south of Hilo and 3,800 acres of private land closer to the proposed mill.
The proposal has met with heated resistance from a majority of the 89 households in the village.
Bryan said he had submitted a request to the state Department of Health for an air quality permit that would have to be approved by Jan. 15 for him to meet a construction timetable.
He said he is committed to the Ookala site because any other mill site with existing industrial zoning would have the same problem of neighbors nearby. And the long-term future of a forest industry will be in Hamakua, he said, not Hilo.
The mill would be a few hundred yards from homes, leading to worries about noise, truck traffic and pollution from the mill.
Susie Collins, a leading opponent, told Council members her purpose is to "oust" Tradewinds by filing a lawsuit if necessary.
"He reminds me of a good car salesman," said opponent Walter Ita. "The majority of Ookala residents are not buying."
But Isaac Fiesta of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union said the community needs mill jobs, as some residents now have to work two jobs, and commute two hours to them.
Bryan began working on the project in 1999, when the state asked for proposals to create a forest products industry based on 50-year-old nonnative trees in the Waiakea forest south of Hilo.
Bryan said he had suffered numerous delays in getting financing because of the "widely held perception that Hawaii is an extraordinarily difficult place to do business."
He now has 12 investors, he said, chief among them Rockland Capital Energy Investments LLC -- raising Collins' suspicion that the real intent was to make money on a power plant attached to the mill.
Bryan said the 5.5-megawatt plan would produce 2 megawatts of excess power that could be sold to the Hawaii Electric Light Co.
Puna Geothermal Venture, by comparison, produces 30 megawatts.