Sign-Waving in Front of Department of Health Building Hilo
When: Friday, February 1, 2019 at 4 p.m.
Where: Department of Health, 1582 Hawaii Belt Rd., Hilo (Next to Coqui’s Hideaway)
Hū Honua will irreversibly destroy Hāmākua and North Hilo’s resources and affect the quality of life forever. Our water is being threatened by a company that has already illegally polluted our waterways through chemical discharges. And we are facing a climate crisis — burning trees that will release immense amounts of carbon into our atmosphere is not only irresponsible but the wrong path forward for Hawaii’s clean energy future.
We will be sign-Waving in front of DOH Clean Water Branch in Hilo to call on DOH to not give Hū Honua a free pass by accepting their permits for wastewater discharge and injection wells.
BURNED Screenings
More showings to come.
If you are interested in hosting a screening, please e-mail us at malamahamakua@gmail.com
This film couldn’t be more timely as the Hamakua Community questions the viability and impacts of Hu Honua Wood Burning Facility in Pepe’ekeo. Here, the dangerous greenwashing of a destructive and exploitive industry exposed:
BURNED: Are Trees the New Coal?
A film by Alan Dater and Lisa Merton
“This film elicited a powerful and passionate response from our audience this year with many saying they had no idea about this issue and its devastating impacts. BURNED reveals the shocking destruction of our forests for fuel and the resultant rise in carbon emissions that exceed those of coal-burning.”
Audience Choice Award, American Conservation Film Festival Committee
BURNED tells the little-known story of the accelerating destruction of our forests for fuel, and probes the policy loopholes, huge subsidies, and blatant green washing of the burgeoning biomass electric power industry.
BURNED is a feature-length documentary, which takes an unwavering look at the latest electric power industry solution to climate change. The film tells the story of how woody biomass has become the fossil-fuel industry’s renewable, green savior, and of the people and parties who are both fighting against and promoting its adoption and use.
Through interviews with activists, experts, and citizens, along with verité-style footage shot across the U.S. and in the EU and UK, the film interweaves the science of climate change, the escalating energy-policy disputes, the dynamics of forest ecology, the biomass industry practices, the conflict between jobs and trees, and the actions of activists and citizens who are working to protect their own health, their communities, the forest, and the planet’s climate. Woven together, the various stories present an intimate and visceral account of what is at this moment in time a critical, yet mostly unknown, national and international controversy.
MALAMA HAMAKUA
Here on the Big Island local community and environmental groups are concerned with the opening of Hu Honua Wood Burning facility in Pepe’ekeo, fearing it has misrepresented it’s environmental impacts and intent for area residents. Five groups have requested Dept. of Health contested case hearings about the project, including Pepeekeo Shoreline Fishing Committee, Surfrider Foundation, Life of the Land, Sierra Club, and local resident Claudia Rohr.Residents cite concern that Hu Honua has neither conducted an Environmental Assessment (EA) or an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Community members are calling for this basic environmental oversight of the facility which proposes to spew 300,000 tons a year of Greenhouse Gas emissions from their smokestack, which is significantly greater than coal per megawatt hour of electricity produced. The facility also proposes to clearcut some 20,000 acres of trees in it’s first 8 years. It will withdraw 21 million gallons of water per day from the Hakalau aquifer, add chemicals and heat and reinject into the Aquifer at 88 degrees F. Water usage for the entire Hamakua Coastline from Waipio to Wailuku rivers is 17 million gallons per day. Hu Honua and Department of Health have modeled that it will take 50 days average before the discharge water reaches the ocean. At 20 million gallons per day injection, it is easy to compute that 1 billion gallons of this polluted water will be mixing into the Hakalau Aquifer.
Meanwhile in Waimea, a solar farm with battery storage is expected to be operational by 2022 at a proposed 11cents per kWh compared to Hu Honua’s 21 cents, while other solar and wind projects for the island are being reviewed as well.