It’s a ‘land grab’
It’s a ‘land grab’
What is the real issue behind the blocking of Thirty Meter Telescope? It is just another land grab.
If yet more land is passed from state hands, it will be developed without regard to the environment or affordable housing. How many homeless Hawaiians live in Prince Kuhio Plaza?
State land is MY land, YOUR land and it belongs to ALL the people of Hawaii. I have a great respect for Hawaiian culture. I have no respect for manipulative land-grabbers.
Before you risk arrest, remember: When someone stirs your emotions, they are trying to disengage your reasoning. Look to the money.
G. O’Connor
Ola‘a
No to TMT
This is in response to Mr. Roy Gal’s letter to the Tribune-Herald (July 1), in which he asserts opponents of Thirty Meter Telescope’s potentially negative environmental and other impacts are spreading “misinformation,” and that our concerns are not valid.
Mr. Gal, I’m writing to let you know that in Hawaii, everything is connected. We who are born and raised here in the islands know that what happens in the mauka (mountains), ends up in the makai (seashore).
The ‘aina IS our culture, our life source, our water source.
It insults our intelligence that you would claim our water source atop Mauna Kea is so minimal it won’t affect our water supply downslope. I’m not a hydrologist, but I do know the water cycle, which includes precipitation from the top of a mountain, into the rock and soil, and into the aquifers and rivers below.
Hilo is full of underground streams that flow into the ocean after being in volcanic rock for many, many years. The impacts of putting acres of concrete at the top of the mountain will be far-reaching, even without much precipitation, and could mess up the hydrologic cycle by blocking rain and snowfall from seeping into the ground, turning it to muddy runoff, not to mention the impact of toxic chemical leaching.
The water atop Mauna Kea is so pristine, and is why most Hawaiians of old never went there, to the wao akua, or place of the gods.
The waters of Kane flow from these places, keeping the areas below healthy as the wai returns to the kai.
Hawaiians pray, like many other cultures, to our deities atop the mountain for many reasons, and this is one of them.
Mr. Gal, I’m sorry, but sometimes “aloha” means saying “no.”
A‘ole TMT.
Shana W. Logan
Hilo