Roundabout of doom
Roundabout of doom
Some are questioning the future of Pahoa after the roundabout because they are afraid it will scare away the tourists — this being a tourist town.
It’s my understanding that anyone going to the Pahoa Marketplace from Pahoa town will have to use the roundabout, giving cause to wonder how much business there will be lost as a result of this questionable traffic pattern.
Some merchants still are recovering from Tropical Storm Iselle and the lava, so for them, this could be the coup de grace. Since this will undoubtedly be a disaster for the local economy, will Pahoa qualify for federal disaster assistance? Instead of a state of emergency, it would be an emergency of the state!
Unless the plan is to destroy Puna’s resistance to the creeping industrial menace. I wouldn’t put it past them. What’s more, the state Department of Transportation won’t bother to consider our concerns until 2017, but when you consider all of those meetings were just to give the community the impression they had a say in the process, will our concerns matter?
They could have widened the mauka end of Kahakai Boulevard and put in a couple of lights, but roundabouts are moneymakers, and they want to plop these things down all over the place. Do we need a roundabout in Pahoa? No. Were less expensive, more practical solutions offered? Yes. Did they listen? They might have heard, but those suggestions didn’t register with them, as they did not coincide with their fixed plan of attack.
As Thorstein Veblen wrote in “The Theory of the Leisure Class”: “Institutions are products of past process, are adapted to past circumstances, and are therefore never in full accord with the requirements of the present.”
Such is an institution called government.
Dave Kisor
Pahoa
Samurai and dengue
In the time of the samurai, two warriors are eyeing each other over dinner. Yoshi-san draws his sword and cuts a mosquito in two. Oto Chubei smiles at the nice cut. Moments later, Oto Chubei draws his sword and stops midair, and the mosquito flies off. Yoshi-san says, “You missed.” Oto Chubei says, “He flew off, but he will never be a father.” Yoshi-san bought the drinks.
It’s time to use every biological means available to lower mosquito populations. Insecticides have hidden consequences, but Florida researchers talked about sterile males to lead to unproductive unions. Then, Australia scientists talked of a virus-infected mosquito to pass it around. Try everything!
Dengue is terrible, but now there’s Zika virus. Out of control in South America, Zika is guilty by proximity of hundreds of birth defects.
With Brazil hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics, the ingredients for a major disaster are falling into place.
Do whatever it takes. Financing this effort could come from the tourism sector because they will be out of business should Hawaii become a hotbed of dengue and Zika.
Unzan T. H. Pfennig
Hilo