Posted on 08/19/2023 11:39:14 AM PDT by thegagline
Access to water should be predicated on “conversations about equity,” according to the Hawaii official under fire for delaying access to water during the Maui wildfires.
M. Kaleo Manuel, former deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, waited for more than five hours to release water during the wildfires that devastated Maui, according to reports.
In a livestream debate hosted by the University of Hawaii last year, Manuel described water as a sacred god.
“Let water connect us and not divide us,” said Manuel, referring to water distribution on the island. “We can share it, but it requires true conversations about equity…How do we coexist with the resources we have?” A former Obama Foundation leader — part of a program by the former President’s non-profit to help participants with coaching and “practical skill building for social change” — Manuel said he considered water an important tool for social justice. *** Manuel was transferred to another position within the Department of Land and Natural Resources Wednesday, according to Honolulu Civil Beat, which first reported the story of the delay. ***
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Transferred? Why isnt he made topay restitution? His life would do.
Specifically, according to accounts of four people with knowledge of the situation, M. Kaleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management, initially balked at West Maui Land Co.’s requests for additional water to help prevent the fire from spreading to properties managed by the company.
However, Gov. Josh Green spoke candidly Monday during a press briefing about conflicts over water on Maui – although not the DLNR-West Maui Land Co. incident directly – and encouraged news media to explore the issue. The conflicts are rooted in the diversion of water by large plantations, which starved downstream users from a resource essential for Native Hawaiian agriculture, particularly the traditional practice of growing taro or kalo.
But the governor said conflicts over water are being reshaped in an age of climate change and wildfires. Now the conflict includes opponents who do not want water to be used to fight fires, the governor said.
“One thing that people need to understand especially those from far away is that there’s been a great deal of water conflict on Maui for many years,” Green said. “It’s important that we’re honest about this. People have been fighting against the release of water to fight fires. I’ll leave that to you to explore.”
“We have a difficult time on Maui and other rural areas getting enough water for houses, for our people, for any response,” Green added. “But it’s important we start being honest. There are currently people still fighting in our state giving us water access to fight and prepare for fires even as more storms arise.”
Green said the state is in the midst of a “comprehensive review” by Attorney General Anne Lopez of decisions made before and during the firefighting efforts.
“There will be multiple reviews at every level,” he said.
In 2022, two Maui senators, Gil Keith-Agaran and Lynne DeCoite, introduced a measure to push DLNR to allow fresh water to be used to fight fires and pointed to West Maui as being particularly vulnerable.
The bill noted that “in 2019, West Maui suffered from an active fire season in which wildfires scorched twenty-five thousand acres of land.” It would have required DLNR to “cooperate with the counties and reservoir owners to develop protocols and agreements for the use of reservoir waters for fire safety purposes.”
Specifically, the measure said, “The protocols and agreements shall address the emergency use of reservoir waters for prevention, control, and extinguishment of fires while taking into account the various competing uses of reservoir waters.”
The bill died without a hearing.
Babylon Bee or reality, you decide?!?
...psychopath voters stuck on stupid?
“Equity” means racing to embrace the lowest common denominator and in the process, destroying anything and everything that is good and great.
Exactly.
“Transferred? Why isnt he made topay restitution? His life would do.”
I’m sure he is a big proponent of equal outcomes.
This moron is what passes for a college graduate these days. Stalin did a poorer job of indoctrination than our schools and our media have done.
DESALINATION PLANTS! Maui is surrounded by the Pacific! There is no excuse for a water shortage. Ditto for California. If I were a leader of Arizona or Nevada I'd sue California for stealing water from the desert states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
“An estimate in 2018 found that “18,426 desalination plants are in operation in over 150 countries. They produce 87 million cubic meters of clean water each day and supply over 300 million people.”[7]: 24 The energy intensity has improved: It is now about 3 kWh/m3 (in 2018), down by a factor of 10 from 20-30 kWh/m3 in 1970.[7]: 24 Nevertheless, desalination represented about 25% of the energy consumed by the water sector in 2016.[7]: 24 ”
“There are now about 21,000 desalination plants in operation around the globe. The biggest ones are in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The world's largest desalination plant is located in Saudi Arabia (Ras Al-Khair Power and Desalination Plant) with a capacity of 1,401,000 cubic meters per day.[31]”
One of the MINIONS FROM THE WEF.
THIS IS BLOODY UNBELIEVABLE!!!
Let them come see him en masse, once they’re done burying their dead and finding shelter.
“Let water connect us and not divide us,” forced entertaining of mental illness and the death it causes
I think I'm going to be sick.....
Incompetence, my a$$.
But idiocy sounds much more palatable than greed, doesn’t it?
Why in God’s name is anybody accepting this excuse at face value?
This is something I would expect to hear from someone wearing a straight jacket in a padded room
Who knows? But even if it was “ONLY” high winds and downed power poles, the staggering chain of incompetence that led to the disaster seems too much to be sheer coincidence.
The woketardist version of the quartermasters at Pearl Harbor Day who refused to issue weapons and ammo without authorization or proper paperwork even while the Japanese attack was at its height, Japanese aircraft were clearly bombing and strafing things, American vehicles were being destroyed and their co-workers were dying. Nope, gotta stick to the Holy Rules.
They’re surrounded by water, why can’t that be used?
Just what, exactly, does “equity” have with the decision to fight a wildfire in a densely populated area?!
Manuel needs to be sent to prison. He is a mass murderer. Water is not a “god”, bozo. You killed a lot of people. More than a thousand AR-15s.
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