Stealing Puna?
I have had this feeling since the eruption that the county was trying to steal lower Puna from the residents and give it over to industry, like Puna Geothermal Venture, and now the latest story proves my point (“Purgatory in Puna,” Tribune-Herald, March 10).
It is obvious to any reasonably intelligent person that the county is doing everything it can to NOT open Highway 132, Pohoiki Road, Leilani Avenue and Highway 137 from Pohoiki to Waa Waa.
The mayor says he doesn’t understand why anyone would want to move back to Vacationland or Kapoho, but that is his sense of privilege speaking because that was his vacation home there and not his residence, and he is wealthy enough that he could buy somewhere else.
The mayor does not seem to care any more about Puna residents and is not taking into account that all that lava lots are still owned by people, many of whom have no other land to call home.
The state and county, with their large landowner buddies, permitted Vacationland (and all our other lower Puna subdivisions) on the freshly cooling lava in 1960s-1970s. What is different now?
Nothing, except for the greedy county does not want to reopen our roads. Instead, they now want to waste more time and money studying the feasibility of how to take our property rights away.
What is really happening with these fabricated delays is the county (and state?) are positioning to try and condemn lower Puna, after making sure to declare a public emergency for a private for-profit, foreign-owned company, PGV (Israel and Japan), to gain access back to its land.
For some reason, the state, county and the University of Hawaii have had super desire for geothermal power since the ’80s, at least, and they have for decades been trying to solicit more geothermal development and industrialize our beautiful lower Puna, despite PGV’s terrible track record and multiple gassings of the neighborhood.
Our governments’ geothermal intent is easily proved by Googling “geothermal and Hawaii” and looking at the plethora of documents.
The county is showing it’s intent to not fix our roads and instead is scamming and giving preference to a business over human residents, which itself is easy to prove by looking at the actions of the county since the eruption.
The road to recovery begins with a road. Build the darn roads, and the people will recover. Stop wasting time and money studying everything, and just DO IT! Please!
Sara Steiner
Pahoa