Recycling water
is smart thinkingThe issue: The water agency is proposing
to recycle sewage for non-drinking uses.
AS OAHU'S WATER demands continue to increase, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply sensibly is looking for ways to recycle used supplies and should proceed with proposals to convert sewage plants into reclamation facilities. Recent droughts and calls for conservation have heightened public awareness about the finite amount of water here, but even without short-term shortages, using water a second time is smart.The board wants to expand reclamation efforts beyond the Honouliuli facility it bought last year. The plant recycles 12 million gallons of wastewater daily, converting it to irrigation and industrial uses. The board is selling nearly all of that and has more potential customers. Another 26 million gallons of sewage from Honouliuli, treated and pumped into the ocean, could be reclaimed.
Water experts estimate that in 10 years demand for water on Oahu will exceed the amount replenished by rain. Desalination -- removing salt from sea water -- is an option, but the process is expensive both in capital and production costs, consumes large amounts of energy and produces wastes that present environmental concerns. Neither large-scale catchment nor dam projects are yet feasible economically and environmentally. So recycling and conservation are the primary methods to assure water supplies.
Recycling water from sewage sounds distasteful, but the quality of reclaimed water is less costly for some industries to purify than natural supplies. There are environmental concerns about the effect of large-scale agricultural and landscape uses for the recycled product, chiefly runoff and the impact on aquifers, but studies have shown few hazards thus far.
The city spends millions of dollars just to cleanse sewage enough to safely release it into the ocean. With a little more investment, the sewage could be transformed into a salable resource instead of being flushed into the sea.
The board, being a semi-autonomous agency of the city, faces bureaucratic and jurisdictional hurdles before it can move ahead with water recycling. Health and environmental concerns as well as government-worker union issues will have to be evaluated.
However, with the state and city governments being among the biggest consumers of water, both should place priority on finding ways to recycle water and persuading other large users such as golf courses, power plants, hotels and farms to do the same.
Botched probe
may not have been
overtly racistThe issue: Justice Department
review hits investigation of scientist
Wen Ho Lee.
PUBLIC trust in the FBI has dropped another notch with the assessment that its investigation of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee was deeply flawed. Sharing the embarrassment is the Department of Energy, which provided the report that formed the basis for what is called the FBI's "slapdash" probe. The only redeeming aspect is the conclusion that "no evidence of racism" was found in the investigation, and even that is arguable.Lee's Chinese ancestry certainly was part of what made him a suspect in the investigation of the Chinese government's alleged theft of technology on the design of U.S. nuclear warheads from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The question is whether his ethnicity played an undue role in his being targeted as the main -- and too quickly sole -- suspect.
Lee, a Taiwanese-born naturalized U.S. citizen, was under investigation for three years for allegedly passing secrets to the Chinese. He spent nine months in jail until the government's case against him collapsed last September. He pleaded guilty to a single count of mishandling nuclear secrets and the government dropped the other 58 felony charges.
A review of the case by Randy Bellows, an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia, found that Department of Energy investigators, in accusing Lee, ignored a multitude of other possibilities. Those included the chance that the Chinese developed the technology or that other Energy Department employees were to blame. Bellows asserts that the FBI ignored other leads.
Bellows' review was partly disclosed as evidence in a defamation lawsuit against Lee by Notra S. Trulock III, a former Energy Department employee. Trulock denies that Lee was singled out because of his race, as Lee has alleged, and says at least six Caucasians and three Asian Americans were included in a list of suspects forwarded to the FBI.
While rejecting complaints that the Energy Department review was merely "a mechanism to summarily finger a Chinese American," Bellows stated that the department was "simply acknowledging the fact that the PRC (People's Republic of China) specifically targets ethnic Chinese for espionage purposes."
As pointed out in a column last week on the Commentary page by Frank Ching, a Hong Kong-based American writer, both the United States and China recruit ethnic Chinese as espionage agents. Whether the investigation of Lee resulted from undue racial profiling depends on the emphasis that investigators placed on that fact, an issue that may be difficult to resolve.
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, President
John Flanagan, publisher and editor in chief 529-4748; jflanagan@starbulletin.com
Frank Bridgewater, managing editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, assistant managing editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, assistant managing editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.com The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (USPS 249460) is published daily by
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