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Dig This
Friday, February 23, 2001
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Rick Schriewer, center, is working on plans to expand a
hydroponic farming system at Waiawa Community
Correctional Facility. Derek Caseres, right,
helped build the pilot project.
THE Waiawa Community Correctional Facility specializes in rehabilitating drug offenders, but there's another kind of rehabilitation going on at the central Oahu site. Planting a true
bed of lettuceLast week, prisoners harvested lettuce raised in unused bunk beds bought years ago to furnish tents that were intended to house prisoners.
Gov. Ben Cayetano dedicated the Waiawa tent city five years ago in an effort to address prison overcrowding. Fire code concerns derailed the project in 1998, before it was ever occupied. The tents, which cost $150,000 to erect, were left to rot.
Nearly a year ago we ran a story about the hydroponic gardening classes taught by Tony Pasquariello of Kahala Hydroponics.
Four months ago, a student sat in Pasquariello's class with an ambitious plan; to research bringing hydroponic farming to Waiawa.
Milton Sato had hired on as farm manager at the minimum security facility a year and a half ago. A curiosity about hydroponics and a goal to increase lettuce production at the prison led him to Pasquariello's door.
A hydroponic kit went home with Sato after class, and his lettuce growing experiment was a success. He returned to Pasquariello to discuss a system for Waiawa.
Sato already had the tent site in mind when he conceived the idea. The cement foundations presented a clean, flat surface on which to build the project.
But it was Pasquariello who saw the bunks as growing trays.
To save money, the bunks were used to support the network of PVC pipe that houses the growing medium and serves as a conduit for the water and fertilizer.
"The bunks are rotting, but it's solid oak, so it'll last a long time," said Pasquariello.
It was just the kind of economizing Sato needed to get the project off the ground.
"(Pasquariello) was one of the few contractors who was willing to work with whatever we had," he said.
It cost about $5,000 to set up the pilot project, which takes up half of one tent. It will yield 2,000 heads of lettuce, 500 per week over a four-week rotation.
Pasquariello chose three types of lettuce for the project: ostinata, a green buttery lettuce; galactic, a curly, burgundy colored lettuce; and freckles, a type of romaine that is green with red freckles. They are hearty, warm-weather varieties that do well in Hawaii, he said.
The first crop was grown without pesticides and it took less than a gallon of water per head to bring each to maturity.
Sato uses a gallon of water or more per day, per head to grow lettuce on the prison's two-acre dirt farm, he said.
All the produce grown on prison grounds is consumed there, with the vast majority of food still being imported.
Lettuce costs the prison 62 to 65 cents a pound wholesale, said Sato. The hydroponic project has produced its crop for about 21 cents per head, including power, materials and fertilizer. Each head weighs about two-thirds of a pound, making the hydroponic lettuce about half as expensive as wholesale lettuce.
"Our big thing is trying to keep the cost down and trying to make it as efficient as possible," said Sato.
Comparing costs on the traditional farm with those of the hydroponic farm is more difficult, said Sato. There is a clear water savings and the hydroponic farm is less labor intensive. Also, pests are more of a problem on the traditional farm, though he minimizes spraying, said Sato.
The prison consumes about 630 pounds of lettuce a week, which is why Sato started with that crop. His primary goal is to produce all the lettuce the facility requires, but he'd also like to experiment with crops like tomatoes, cucumbers and Asian cabbages.
Fifteen inmates helped build the system and work to maintain it.
Alan Uitu has worked at both the hydroponic site and the prison's farm. He prefers the former.
"It's pretty cool, better than the regular farm, you get all dirty," he said.
Other inmates have asked Pasquariello for help setting up systems of their own upon their release.
"With my help and what they learned here, maybe they will set up something like this," he said.
"We're trying to get some more money so we can teach the inmates so they don't get out and go back to stealing cars and doing the stuff they got in trouble for."
Warden J. Phillip Tumminello also would like to see the program grow.
"It's fantastic," he said. "It saves the taxpayers money and it gives the inmates something productive to do."
Gardening Calendar in Do It Electric!
Stephanie Kendrick's gardening column runs Fridays in Today.
You can write her at the Star-Bulletin, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu 96802
or email skendrick@starbulletin.com
