The deadly Lahaina fire is transforming the way wildfire is viewed in Hawai`i. Life of the Land spend the past year reviewing fire mitigation approaches and regulatory policies in Hawai`i, California, Oregon, Australia, and elsewhere. Life of the Land asserts that...
Pearl Harbor is contaminated. The military, the regulators, and the community know it. But the military has defined part of it to be contamination free using curious logic. The military asserts that the Pearl Harbor watershed covers 20% of Oahu, that industrial,...
The Hawaiian Electric Companies needs a pot of money on hand because they spend money for fuel, operations and capital expenditures before they are reimbursed through ratepayer bills. Therein lies a problem. HECO`s credit rating dropped to junk bond status following...
Hu Honua`s long-running tree-burning fiasco has entered its 17th year. Hu Honua Bioenergy LLC was incorporated on April 8, 2008, to burn trees to generate electricity to be sold to Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) subsidiary Hawaii Electric Light Company (HELCO)....
I was in a suburb of New York City to spend time with my father during his final week of life. Early on the morning of August 9, in the space of two minutes, I learned of his death and of the Maui fires. Two emotionally intense events. It is critical that the...
The 2018 Paradise fire in California and the 2023 Lahaina fire had much in common. The utility detected faults on the transmission line. Shortly thereafter, fire erupted in an area suffering from drought, high winds, low humidity, and available fuel in the form...