$70 million will fill a lot of potholes

Kudos to the Star-Bulletin for an excellent article ("Hole lot of trouble," March 6) on Mayor Mufi Hannemann's declared war on potholes and plans to make smoother the streets of Honolulu.

The story correctly points out that the mayor has put $30 million in next year's budget for contract repaving, and that in the current budget, there is $40 million.

What the article didn't mention is that none of the $40 million was ever spent, and that the Hannemann administration, therefore, plans to spend the money budgeted both last year and this year on road repaving -- a total of $70 million.

Hawaii has better choices than nuclear

In response to Paul M. Gundlach's March 10 letter advocating nuclear power plants, all I have to say is that there are better options for this place than nuclear. We have the sun, geothermal, wind, ocean; we have so many options yet to be explored, why should we go back to such a harmful source of power? We've seen what happens to nuclear power plants: Either they are compromised, resulting in endless health and environmental problems, or they operate well enough, resulting in a radioactive burden of waste and nowhere to stash it. What would we do with the spent fuel? Dump it in the ocean? Or maybe just ship it to some poor developing country?

Nuclear is not the way for the islands when there are so many unexplored paths.

Owners should pay fines for ditched cars

As visitor John Snyder points out (Letters, March 11), abandoned cars are a hideous eyesore.

If not bad enough when abandoned, within days they are stripped of tires, parts, and the windshields are smashed, making the wreck look even worse.

Here on Maui, abandoned cars occur weekly. However, they are usually removed in about two weeks.

I hope the Department of Motor Vehicles charges the ID from the dash/engine block, to the last registered owner, all towing fees plus imposes stiff fines.

This information, entered into a nationwide database, should make people think twice before dumping their cars.

Arctic refuge awaits Senate budget vote

A Senate budget vote tomorrow might carve up America's grandest wildlife refuge. Only Exxon Mobil still funds the Arctic Power lobby to try to lease the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but 16 years after their huge oil spill, Exxon yet has not paid $7 billion in damages a jury awarded to all Alaska fishermen with livelihoods its oil devastated when they ruined 1,300 miles of coastline. With 400 spills every year in the 95 percent of the northern coast already open, the Academy of Science documents harms of drilling to caribou, polar bears and migratory birds.

Still, President Bush wants Congress to include leasing no less than 200,000 acres of the public's refuge to Big Oil, while claiming the footprint will be only 2,000 acres! Such fuzzy math and disdain for science will doom the last wild 5 percent of America's north coast.

Hawaii Senators Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye can defend existing subsistence rights, rather than allow this risky drilling. We point to science, Native Alaskan elders and Democratic Party resolutions, all showing that oil industrialization of this wildlife refuge would not be safe.

Soldiers can't tell who their enemies are

We need to leave Iraq as soon as feasible and let the Iraqi people decide their future. Let us not be there to make decisions for them lest we have more of our troops killed. There is no way to distinguish between the Islamic moderates and extremists, similar to the Vietnam era. There was no way to determine who the Vietcong were as they toiled their fields during the day and attacked the U.S. soldiers at night.

This is a futile and useless effort to be a peace maker on the part of the United States in a very difficult situation.

Toshio Chinen
Pearl City