[ OUR OPINION ]
Kahoolawe clean-up
should continueKAHOOLAWE will be transferred officially from the Navy to the state tomorrow, but large segments of the island that once was called "Target Isle" will remain uncleared of explosives, shrapnel and other metal debris left by long use as a military training area.
THE ISSUE
The Navy will transfer Kahoolawe to the state tomorrow, saying it has fulfilled its clean-up obligations.
Governor Lingle as well as Hawaii's congressional representatives should try to persuade the federal government to fulfill its promise to clear all of the island even though a caveat in the conveyance document allows the Navy to leave portions in hazardous condition.
The $460 million allocated to remove what five decades of bombardment by rockets and other weapons wrought on the 11-mile-long island will have been exhausted by early next year when ordnance-clearing is scheduled to end.
The Navy says about 70 percent of the island's surface and 9 percent of its subsurface has been cleaned up. However, a 1994 memorandum of understanding calls for clearance of 100 percent of the surface and 30 percent of the subsurface. The Navy believes its work is adequate, pointing to another portion of the memo that says if it is unable to clean up everything, it doesn't have to.
Among the areas left uncleared are 17 of 27 cultural sites and about 2,600 acres of ravines and gullies the Navy regards as too dangerous for excavation. A coastal corridor around the island where the Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission had hoped to establish a safe perimeter trail, also remains in question. In addition, ordnance has been found in areas once deemed clear.
The Navy says that, while it will return to remove previously undetected unexploded ordnance, the state will now have to compete with other contaminated sites for clean-up money, which is limited and will not be a priority as the Bush administration focuses its efforts and funds on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This leaves the state, which itself has other funding demands, in a quandary. It cannot leave portions of Kahoolawe in unsafe condition and must assume a number of burdens, such as overseeing marine and coastal resources until the island can be conveyed to a sovereign Hawaiian entity, as called for by a 1993 state law.
Kahoolawe has a history of misuse even before becoming a training ground. Cattle and sheep ranching that began in the mid-19th century decimated its already sparse native dry forests.
While no one expects the Navy to restore Kahoolawe to pre-military conditions, the federal government is obligated to at least remove the bombs and bullets it rained on the island.
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Women won’t be safe
until law is strickenABORTION-RIGHTS advocates have no reason to celebrate almost instantaneous rulings in three courts blocking implementation of an abortion ban upon its being signed into law by President Bush. The new law essentially is a vehicle for asking the Supreme Court to dismantle Roe vs. Wade. The three rulings are merely the beginning of the road back to the high court. Women will not feel assured of protection until the high court rejects the government's appeals in those cases.
THE ISSUE
Three federal judges has issued orders that keep the new law banning partial-birth abortions from taking effect.
The new law's ban against so-called "partial birth" abortions is intended to pertain to fewer than one-fifth of 1 percent of abortions performed in the country. It is aimed at prohibiting a procedure that doctors call intact dilation and extraction, or intact D&X, which is performed in second-trimester pregnancies beyond 18 to 20 weeks when the fetus has grown too large to easily fit through the woman's cervix.
However, loose wording may have the effect of banning a procedure that Barry Raff of Planned Parenthood of Hawaii, in a column last Thursday on the opposite page, called "the most common method" of abortion, dilation and evacuation, in ending pregnancies after 12 to 13 weeks.
In any event, the new law is clearly unconstitutional, according to a Supreme Court ruling only three years ago, when it held that any abortion ban must make an exception to provide for the woman's health. That ruling, by a 5-to-4 vote, struck down a Nebraska state law that was similar to the law enacted last month by Congress. The new law does not provide for such an exception, instead containing the unfounded assertion that the prohibited procedures are "never necessary to preserve the health of the woman."
Three U.S. district judges -- Richard Casey in New York, Phyllis Hamilton in San Francisco and Richard Kopf in Omaha -- swiftly issued restraining orders because of the law's failure to provide that exception. Each judge found it likely that the Supreme Court will overturn the law, based on its previous decision.
None of the judges accepted the unfounded claim that women are endangered by being denied the procedure. Judge Casey noted in his order that a government lawyer admitted at a hearing that the medical community is divided over the issue and that Congress did not reach a consensus.
