Superferry Plan Raises Environmental Questions
With all the economic and political questions swirling around the Hawaii Superferry, it’s easy to forget that some of the biggest issues that plagued the inter-island boat system the first time around were environmental in nature.
Governor hopeful Mufi Hannemann breathed life into the proposal — and the heated debate about its viability — on Monday when he made its revival part of his 10-point economic plan. His principal Democratic rival, former Rep. Neil Abercrombie, also favors the ferry but says it won’t fix Hawaii’s economic woes all by itself. Republican candidate James “Duke” Aiona was second in command in the Lingle administration that went to extraordinary lengths to make the Superferry possible in the first place.
So it seems that no matter who ends up in Washington Place after November’s election, the Superferry could get another look. But whether the ferry gets any more than a cursory glance will depend on a number of factors, not least of which will be environmental issues.
“The foremost one in my mind has been the possibility of spreading invasive species among the different islands,” Sierra Club Hawaii Chapter Director Robert Harris said Tuesday. “It would be a dire consequence if you had a pest travel from island to island that devastated the agricultural crops or wiped out some of our natural habitat.”
He pointed to each island’s unique form of the banana plant as being just one species that could be at risk, and said a “measure twice, cut once” policy could prevent the spread of species like the coqui frog.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t have a Superferry,” Harris said. “The principal focus really is the environmental review.”
The ferry system was rushed into place without an environmental impact statement, after the Legislature at the urging of Gov. Linda Lingle passed a special law exempting it from normal environmental review rules. They did that because a Maui judge ruled in 2007 that Hawaii’s environmental laws require that an environmental assessment be conducted before the ferry could set sail.
Company officials maintained that being forced to conduct a full environmental impact statement would be a death blow to the fledgling operation. A less-stringent review was required by Act 2 — a law passed in special session specifically for the Superferry.
The Hawaii Supreme Court ruled in March 2009 that Act 2 was unconstitutional. The ferry stopped operations almost immediately and declared bankruptcy in June 2009. In July of last year, the Hawaii Department of Transportation suspended its work on the environmental review, announcing that about $500,000 of work was still needed to complete the final version. Department of Transportation spokeswoman Tammy Mori said Tuesday that it would take between six months and one year to finish from this point if it were to be revived.
The questions that would be asked of the state’s next governor were first posed almost a decade ago. If a review is done and done well this time, it will give members of the community, particularly on the neighbor islands, an opportunity to voice their concerns. At the end of a stringent environmental review process, a large-scale ferry would be “hopefully a better one than the one they originally proposed,” Harris said.
Other potential environmental impacts of a high-speed inter-island ferry could be felt by endangered humpback whales. Federal governmental agencies would be consulted about efforts to avoid such scenarios — for example, the installation of sonar onboard. An incidental take permit would be needed if a ferry operator wanted to avoid massive penalties for unintentionally impacting endangered species like the whales.
Could a company — even one with the cooperation of the Hannemann, Abercrombie or Aiona administration — satisfy all these arduous environmental regulations while remaining economically viable? It’s far to early to tell.
DISCUSSION Can the Hawaii Superferry, if revived, satisfy the state’s environmental laws? Join the conversation and learn more about the Hawaii governor’s race and environmental impact statements.
