Irresponsible cartoon re: Black Sand Beach
Responsible journalism is a phrase that most of us want and believe in. Unfortunately, Gary Hoff’s cartoon last Sunday was both irresponsible and beneath the quality of journalism at the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. The cartoon was blatantly wrong and quite simply, unfair. The Trib needs to do better.
Our partners at Black Sand Beach LLC are committed to community, culture and conservation. We are committed to do what’s pono.
Punaluu Village was originally developed by C. Brewer in the 1970s, and the entire complex is zoned around a resort concept. That said, we are not building a resort. We are focused on creating a community centered around health and wellness that will serve both residents and visitors alike.
We spent the last three years listening to the community and downsized the project from the previous owners’ plan of building 2,900 units to a much smaller concept of 225 units located about 1/4 mile from the shoreline. We’ve already spent over a million dollars to upgrade the area’s infrastructure including the water and wastewater systems that serves the existing condominiums, golf estates and the public beach park facilities.
We recognize that some in the community don’t want anything to happen in Punaluu Village. Leave it as it is. We don’t think that it’s pono. Past decades of neglect and “leaving things as is” have proven otherwise.
We’re trying to do the right thing.
We’ve committed to move all commercial activities off the shoreline, protect Native Hawaiian gathering and fishing rights, restore Kawaihuokauila Pond, work to limit or eliminate tour buses at the beach, establish a Shoreline Conservation Management Area, and to create a community-led and community-driven foundation to manage and steward the conservation areas and wahi pana (sacred sites).
Unfortunately, Hoff’s cartoon contributes to the spread of misinformation by inaccurately suggesting that we’re displacing the honu and harming the environment when in fact, we’re actively protecting the honu.
Eva Liu
Principal, Black Sand Beach LLC
Nothing new about presidents lying
When I read the article, “Oval Office corruption,” in the May 15 Tribune-Herald, I had to chuckle and had a deja vu moment when former President Donald Trump maintained under oath that he never had sex with porn star Stormy Daniels.
A president lying to the people is nothing new. I remember back in the past when a former president, even with damning physical evidence, lied to the American public and vehemently said, “I did not have any sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
So, for this occasion, let’s all light up a cigar, buy a new dress for your part-time lover (if you have one), and keep on watching and enjoying this sideshow joke of a trial, while Trump and his dingbat attorneys continue to commit perjury to the courts.
Puff away, y’all.
Prentiss Moreno
Hilo