Newsmaker
Monday, August 11, 1997
Name: Clyde Morita
Age: 53
Position: Outreach coordinator, joint Ala Wai Canal Watershed Project
Education: University of California, Berkeley
Hobbies: Golf, beach
Clyde Morita remembers his parents picking up litter at Nuuanu Pali when he was a youth "so the friends they took there would see only beauty and not man's trash." Cleaning up the Ala Wai
"That must have rubbed off on me," said Morita, who has made a career of fighting pollution.
As coordinator of the community-based Ala Wai Canal Watershed Improvement Project, Morita's present target is the water in Ala Wai Canal.
"Hawaii is my home, and we have such an incredible and beautiful 'aina that I'm committed to work with people to have the kind of neighborhoods and communities that our children's children can be proud of," Morita says.
He worked earlier as an air pollution engineer with the state Department of Health and an air pollution control engineer with the U.S. Public Health Service.
From 1977 to 1995, he specialized in litter control with the state and later did independent environmental management consulting until July 21. He then rejoined the state Health Department as an independent contractor to coordinate the community-based Ala Wai Canal Watershed Improvement Project. He'll be working with many of some 150,000 people who live, recreate or work in the Ala Wai watershed, and they'll seek a consensus of goals and projects to improve it, he said.
"The ultimate goal is the long-term improvement and beautification of all of the streams flowing into the Ala Wai Canal."
A $650,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant and state money will fund projects involving volunteers and technical people to create a community worth living in, Morita said.
As a civil engineering student, he gravitated to environmental engineering when he saw technical aspects had to be combined with social aspects to get people to work out solutions.
"I found it much more fascinating than building roads or buildings," he said. "This is about building and maintaining communities."
Harold Morse, Star-Bulletin
