WHAT a fight! It's Hawaiian Electric's biggest community donnybrook in quite a few years. Some see it as good guys vs. bad guys. I see good people on both sides. Public debate over
replacing power lineThe issue: A proposed new power line up Manoa Valley's eastern slope from the vicinity of the Hawaiian Studies Center to St. Louis Heights, across the ridge and down into Palolo.
An existing 2.3-mile line with 19 poles defines the route. But Heco wants to replace the present 40- to 65-foot poles with giants that are 80 to 114 feet so it can transmit 138-KV of power over the route versus 46-KV now. The number of poles won't change, but their visibility will -- and there's the biggest rub.
Heco says it needs this new power "freeway" (my term) to link two existing 138-KV "freeways" from its power plants in Leeward Oahu to a complete circuit that will make it possible to deliver power to most of urban Honolulu from two different directions. My analogy is with the existing highways that allow access to Hawaii Kai and the southeastern part of Oahu from either downtown or Windward Oahu.
Sounds pretty good to me, even if the company almost has to boast about its past blackouts to demonstrate the need for alternate access.
I have line drawings from the foes of these big new poles that make make them look pretty awful. But I have photo representations made for Heco that show the higher green-painted towers blending into the background except for a couple at the top of the ridge. Heco says the most visible from any one spot will be six from Manoa, fewer from other angles. It says these will be far less intrusive than they seem in the line drawings of the foes.
In a community whose economic future in tourism depends in part on protecting our environment, is this a wise decision? Or should Heco be made to add $5 to $6 to the typical residential electrical bill annually to put the most offensive part of the line underground? Or be told to not build it at all?
To help form our opinions, my wife and I drove on H-3 into Windward Oahu past poles like those Heco proposes for the Kamoku-Manoa-St. Louis Heights-Palolo route.
She votes to bury. I think Heco may have a case, since the few poles seen from H-3 are much closer to the viewer than the controversial 19 will be to the overwhelming majority of people. As Heco suggests, they may be hard to spot from a distance and seem no worse than an occasional protrusion from the distant greenery.
In the end this question will be for the Public Utilities Commission to decide, perhaps not until the year 2000 rolls in. Under a 1997 state law, PUC must consider such factors as safety, conservation area impact, economic impacts -- as with tourism and public sentiment.
BEFORE that happens the Department of Land and Natural Resources will have to take a stand because conservation lands are involved. But DLNR can't act until a final Environmental Impact Statement is submitted by Heco.
That, in turn, won't happen until after an Aug. 7 deadline for comments on the preliminary EIS now up for public review. Those are apt to be heard most loudly and clearly at a public meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. next Tuesday. It's at Ala Wai Elementary School, 503 Kamoku St., not far from the Kamoku power sub-station that will be the downtown terminus of the line over the hill to the Pukele sub-station in Palolo Valley.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.