Sitting outside Council Chambers in the late afternoon, Councilmember Shane Sinenci expressed disappointment. It was a rare moment for the usually cheerful councilmember, who hours prior was hopeful of passing a resolution out of the Environmental, Agricultural, and Cultural Preservation Committee he chairs. The resolution, as currently written, would require Mayor Victorino’s administration to conduct […]
Water Is a Verb: Maui Tomorrow hosts award-winning author of “Cows Save the Planet,” Judith Schwartz
We live in an unimaginable era of climate roulette. Scientific predictions of Earth-changing impacts – severe storms, sea level rise, glacial melting, drought-induced wildfires, and more – are already tangible in our lifetimes, and loom ominously for tomorrow’s generations. A number of well-read authors have helped sound the clarion regarding human impacts on the planet, […]
Massive Alexander and Baldwin Agricultural Land Sale Finalized: ‘Conventional’ growing plans announced for most of the former sugar cane fields
Alexander and Baldwin today announced the sale of some 41,000 acres of Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company land – an action first reported last month by MauiTime. The land was sold for $262 million to Mahi Pono, LLC – a farming venture between California-based agriculture group Pomona Farming, LLC, and Canadian pension investment managers Public […]
Talking affordable housing, seawalls and sustainable ag with Albert Perez, 3 years after he took over Maui Tomorrow
Three years ago this month Albert Perez took over as Executive Director of the Maui Tomorrow Foundation. He helped found the organization in 1989, stayed a few years, then moved to the mainland, where he spent much of his time until 2015. I chatted with Perez not long after he took over Maui Tomorrow, and […]
2017 MauiTime Year In Review
It’s been a helluva year, and that’s not a good thing. For the United States, the watchwords for 2017 have been violence and hatred–against women, African-Americans, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals and basically everyone who isn’t a straight white male. You don’t have to be a master at reading the room to know that greed and ignorance […]
New Maui County tourism plan calls for more visitors, infrastructure, international flights and reef protection
So the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development (OED) just released their new Maui County Tourism Industry Strategic Plan (TISP) for 2017-2026. It’s a 10-year plan that, at least on paper, is supposed to guide the visitor in the county. “This strategic plan addresses the pillars of a healthy tourism economy that must be of benefit […]
Looking at Alexander and Baldwin’s crop maps in East Maui contested case hearing
There was a pretty interesting story on the state Commission on Water Resource Management contested case hearing involving Alexander & Baldwin’s thirst for East Maui water in The Maui News on Saturday, Feb. 11. Though the company’s subsidiary Hawaii Commercial & Sugar (HC&S) no longer grows sugar and wants to transition to “diversified agriculture,” the […]
MauiTime 2016 Year In Review
Even without the election of Republican Donald Trump to be President of the United States, this was a monstrous year. We’ve had to deal with job losses, outrageous giveaways to big business and just a general slide away from democratic protections and open government assurances. We like to think of Hawaii (and Maui especially) as […]
Maui County Environmental Coordinator responds to recent MauiTime story on Olowalu seawall demonstrations
Editor’s note: Maui County Environmental Coordinator Rob Parsons, a longtime contributor to MauiTime, felt that our recent cover story on anti-seawall activists in Olowalu left out others who helped stop the road project. Here are his thoughts: I was glad to see MauiTime featured the story on how activists helped the DOT rethink a project for […]
Haleakala National Park releases new flyer on new sunrise reservation system
I’ve mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again: there are people alive today who remember a time when they could drive up to the summit of Haleakala National Park and watch the sunrise without anyone else being around. Albert Perez, the executive director of Maui Tomorrow, told me that years ago, he used to do […]
UPDATED: Maui Nui Marine Resource Council hosting all-day workshop on Kihei water quality
Sorry for the last-minute notice (shows what happens when I don’t check my messages over the weekend) but TODAY (May 2, 2016), the Maui Nui Marine Resource Council is putting on an all-day workshop on Kihei water quality over at the Humpback Whale Sanctuary. According to organizers, the workshop is a follow-up to MauiTime‘s Mar. 16 story […]
CORRECTED: The radical plan to keep Maui green forever
[NOTE: This story originally reported that the SHAKA movement itself was behind the Maui Community Organic Farmland Initiative. That is actually not the case, though three of the five citizens who created the measure and are pushing for its passage worked to push for SHAKA’s recent anti-GMO initiative. The five citizens who created the Farmland Initiative […]
Maui Tomorrow releases new report on island’s farming future
Maui Tomorrow has release a new report on how create more agricultural jobs while still providing effective and environmentally responsible stewardship of the land, states an Apr. 11 news release from the nonprofit organization. Titled Malama Aina: A conversation about Maui’s Farming Future, the 52-page report from Permaculture Design International LLC bills itself as “the […]
The County of Maui is already in hot water over sewage in the ocean off West Maui, but a new study says that the Kihei coast is far worse
The County of Maui’s violation of the Clean Water Act by discharging millions of gallons of wastewater into injection wells in West Maui is widely known. The judge’s ruling came in 2014, two years after environmental organizations filed suit, alleging that the injection wells were significantly harming coral reefs in the Lahaina area–most notably, at […]
As the sun sets on Maui sugar, we ask what the closing of A&B’s plantation means for us
Like most reporters in Hawaii, in the hour or so after Alexander & Baldwin’s Jan. 6 announcement that they would shut down their Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar (HC&S) mill in Pu‘unene by the end of this year, I watched with growing fascination as my email inbox quickly filled with statements from public officials wanting to […]
2015 MauiTime Year In Review
Well, another year’s in the books. On the whole, 2015 wasn’t any more disastrous or violent than any other recent year, I suppose (we did get a new Star Wars film out of it), though at times it certainly seemed otherwise. Murder rates have risen in many large American cities, and a series of horrific […]