Open Letter to the Editor of West Hawaii Today

The following is what I wrote to the editor of West Hawaii Today, November 12, 2010, prompted by biased or incompetent reporting, by West Hawaii Today’s Reporter, November 11, 2010, in a front-page article, "Proposed processing plant placement panned", on the WasteStream meeting.

I waited until now, because WHT's editor promised to get back to me by the end of this week, in response to my letter to him; he has not done so.  For me the week ended yesterday, Saturday November 20, 2010.

"Dear Reed,

First let me thank you for trying to cover this story, and for placing it on your 'Front-page'.  However, when I asked you (WHT) to cover this meeting, I was hoping you would send a reporter of the caliber of a Jason Armstrong, perhaps with a cameraman, or a reporter, who knows also how to take pictures.  What we got was either a biased or lazy individual, who took the easy way out.  Instead of reporting on a three hours meeting, the reporter picked on one of two residents (out of 15 to 20 who spoke on the issues), who pointed out that  property values will go down about 25%, while ignoring the many residents who spoke of the real issues involving health risks, air pollution, including disease carrying rodent population expansion, safety of school children walking HWY 270 to and from school, heavy noisy truck traffic, site location too close to homes, potential complete long road closure, of the only road in and out, due to a major truck accident, preventing emergency vehicles reaching for example, potential heart attack victims, and/or home fires.  Also, the noise created by the waste facility itself were commented upon by residents, etc., etc.

Peter Klika is not the spokesperson for the 'Against' movement, he never announced himself as such, and while he is a member of our working group, he simply expressed his own opinion.  This movement was founded by myself, and not even I chose to officially speak for others in our movement.  Each resident or member of our working group expressed his or her own opinion during the comment period of the meeting, which this reporter almost entirely ignored, save for Peter Klika's comments who was 1 out of over 125 residents in attendance, and 1 out of 15 to 20 residents speaking their mind during the comment period.

Despite the fact that WasteStream said gasification is off the table, one of their sympathizers  (Waste Stream's adviser on gasification, apparently), got up to speak, with the blessing of WasteStream no doubt, with whom he sat before and during the meeting, trying to lecture the residents on the benefits of this process, and how harmless it really is.  It is my firm belief that this individual is the equivalent of Rasputin, and he is the source of this outdated idea of the gasification process, by WasteStream, that most of America has long realized to be a dangerous and uneconomical process, and have therefore discarded it a long time ago.  Very few if any of these gasification plants are still in operation [in] the USA.  Your reporter said nothing about that. Internationally known expert Dr. Paul Connett, Professor of chemistry at St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, who studied gasification for 14 years, has nothing good to say about this toxic process.  I, in fact, cited this expert in my rebuttal of the claim by 'Rasbutin' that this process was entirely safe and harmless.  Your reporter said nothing about that, all this reporter did was to echo the words of WasteStream's Bob Martin.  As an aside, this reporter even got Martin' s name wrong, he is known as Bob Martin, and not Rob Martin.

Gasification was, and appears to be still the dream process of WasteStream, yet your reporter said plans for gasification have been scrapped.  What a stretch of imagination.  This is not what we got out of this meeting, the majority of residents do not believe anything coming out of WasteStream, who have lost all credibility, brought on by their bizarre handling of the entire public relations effort, and their illogical site selection, which violates two criteria stipulated in 2008 by the County, and published that year in 'The Kohala Mountain News'.  In fact, your reporter quotes Martin as saying, “If gasification ever happens in North Kohala, it will be somewhere else”.  What does this tell us?  It does not tell us that the plan for gasification has been scrapped as reported by your reporter.

I could have written 90 percent of this reporter's story, if one could call it that, without ever leaving my office.  All this reporter did  is regurgitate WasteStream's published propaganda, almost verbatim.  It really is a nice Infomercial for the benefit of WasteStream, that, this so called reporter, finished up with.  This reporter made the residents of Ainakea look as if they were only worried about their property values.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  If this reporter had listened to what the overwhelming majority of residents were saying, a different and true story would have been told.  This reporter referred to a few questions that were asked, and said nothing about the serious official comments made by Ainakea, and other local residents.  WasteStream appeared less than prepared, in too many instances, they could not provide answers to simple questions, like "how far from the ocean will the waste facility be?"  Not even the County representatives, in attendance, could help WasteStream's Bob Martin on this one.   In the headline, "Proposed processing plant placement panned."  I bet you any amount of money, very few if anybody will understand what this reporter was trying to say.  I checked with several persons, including degreed individuals, and nobody could tell exactly what it supposed to mean in this headline.  Looking in Webster's dictionary all definitions of "panned" fail to fit into this statement.  This reporter was evidently writing for two parties WasteStream and herself.

Your reporter unfairly painted the wrong picture of what motivates the vast majority of local residents in rejecting this choice of location.  Moreover, we had a show of hands in favor of this project, and nobody in the audience raised their hand.  Then another show of hands was asked for to show who was against this project, and all hands went up.  Odd as it may seem, your reporter did not report on this important show of hands by the 125 residents at the meeting.  If that is not blatant bias, than I do not know what bias is.  Deliberate under-reporting is as bad as making up a story out of thin air.  These show of hands were a crucial event, at that meeting, that a good reporter should never miss to report on.

I give you an opportunity to rectify these serious omissions, by printing this letter to the editor, and let your readers, including your many Ainakea readers, have the benefit of learning the real and most important concerns of the residents of Ainakea, and assure them that the true facts are important to your paper.

Thank you and Aloha,

Frank"