The sinking of the Hawaii Superferry will soon be 4 years old. Are we ready to try again?
It was a visionary idea that would have given us logistics we never had before. For a modest fare you could take your car, family, pets and produce to another island. Small businesses and farmers could go to market for a fraction of the cost by plane or barge. And you could lavish your soul on endless vistas of ocean and sky.
But for loading, Superferry required state ramps. This triggered an environmental impact statement under our Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Hawaii Environmental Protection Act.
Linda Lingle exempted Superferry from the EIS, but the Supreme Court invalidated that exemption. Superferry launched anyway, and soon a Maui judge enjoined it from operating without an EIS.
The Legislature adopted a bill allowing "large capacity ferry vessels" to operate before the requisite EIS was done. Lingle signed it into law, but in March 2009 the Supreme Court invalidated that, too.
The decision dealt a mortal blow to Superferry. The steamship service of the 19th century was over, the Seaflite of the 1970s was gone, now Superferry was in irons, doomed to go down like lead.
After eight years of raising capital, building ferries and dealing with bureaucracy and activism, Superferry gave up. It shut down, let its 300 employees go, filed bankruptcy and sold the ferries. The body count included thousands of local riders, farmers and businesses.
Wall Street took a bath. Local efforts to buy the ferries back failed. Legislative attempts to create a ferry authority and provide tax and harbor fee incentives also failed. The silence has been deafening. In the wake of Dan Inouye’s death, new funding won’t be easy.
The ocean, for us, is like breathing, and the need for a ferry is just as pressing as before. But so are the pitfalls. If we take another try, how can we be sure it wouldn’t meet the same fate? The sharp edges are still out there, and the silent majority is still silent.
Can we start again? Joe Souki has a record of supporting ferry legislation, so maybe his is a time for rapprochement. First, we need to understand what made Superferry such a pariah. Then we need to do hooponopono and fashion a publicly owned solution.
The challenge is not with the people who would take a ferry from Oahu to the neighbor islands. It’s with the people on the neighbor islands who like being remote and don’t want people from Oahu to come around, as in this year’s Molokai Blockade.
In the war on Superferry, so many questionable arguments were spun that you wondered what the real problem was.
For example:
» You can’t go from Oahu to Maui without injuring whales. Of course we can. All kinds of ships do it every day. We do have the technology.
» You can’t make the trip without bringing invasive species. If that’s true, what are we doing about the planes, cruise ships and barges?
» Superferry should be punished for Linda Lingle’s transgressions. In fact, we’re punishing the whole state.
» The neighbor islands should not have the burden of unrestricted visitors from Oahu. But it’s OK if they fly and pay for rental cars.
» The vehicles from Oahu will result in traffic congestion on the neighbor islands. So what about the rental cars?
» A ferry will bring drugs and homeless to the neighbor islands. Am I my brother’s keeper?
» People from Oahu will take rocks, opihi and other neighbor island resources back with them. That’s not persuasive.
» Superferry was a scheme by the Navy to use a private ferry for military purposes. Where did that come from?
» Superferry wasn’t feasible. Actually, Superferry ran like a clock, but no enterprise can survive if it must spend all its time struggling with activists and lawsuits.
» It used fossil fuel. Well, so does the rest of our marine fleet. Should we sink them, too?
And for these reasons we would deny ferry service to the people of Hawaii? The common thread is an interisland NIMBY, calling for separatism, if not Balkanization, rather than statewide ohana.
The right discussion is not about building barriers; it’s about the fundamental relationship among the islands. Incredible as it seems, now 200 years after unification, we still need to unify.
The choices we make in transportation are of huge consequence. How can we achieve our potential if we can’t get around? We can’t afford to abandon opportunities that will bind and strengthen our state. That is, and must be, the policy of state government.
We’ve had enough rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. The New Year is a great time for starting again. What do you say, Joe?
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Jay Fidell, a longtime business lawyer, founded ThinkTech Hawaii, a digital media company that reports on Hawaii’s tech and energy sectors of the economy. Reach him at fidell@lava.net.
