COURTESY MAKAI ENGINEERING
Piping for deep sea water is shown off the Big Island. The city will connect its downtown municipal buildings to the planned system.
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Congratulations to the incredibly persistent team at the Honolulu Sea- water Air Conditioning (HSWAC) project on its completion of permitting requirements (“Officials move on seawater AC project,” Star-Advertiser, June 3).
I was associated with this effort for many years. The HSWAC project is perhaps the most environmentally beneficial project ever proposed in Hawaii. It had virtually unanimous support from all potentially concerned environmental, community and business groups.
Yet, it took 15 years to acquire the necessary permits. The roadblocks began with the bumbling incompetence of the planners and attorneys at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and were perpetuated by the imperious, indifferent and uncommunicative regulators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as enforced by their timid puppets at the Hawaii Department of Health Clean Water Branch.
This was an exceptionally egregious example of the murky bureaucratic swamp at its absolute worst.
George Krasnick
Kailua
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