SMOKING AND INCINERATORS

How can a county council that has just banned cigarette smoking be considering incineration as a garbage processing option?  The last thing we need in Hawaii is another source of air pollution.

While it’s easy to believe that we don’t have pollution issues out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the reality is that what we affectionately call “Vog” is partly composed of car exhaust, smoke from cane fires and sugar processing.  I’d hate to see Maui County add an incinerator to this list.

Call it waste-to-energy, plasma arc or H-power; they all amount to the same thing.  The proposition is that by simply buying the right technology, Maui County can turn its garbage into electricity, while helping extend the landfills.  Who wouldn’t want one?

The truth is that incinerators are notoriously expensive and yield only small amounts of electricity.  Worse, they destroy non-renewable resources like aluminum while pouring dioxin and other toxins into the air and soil.

A better alternative for processing our garbage would be to divert the large percentage of organic materials and turn it into compost.  That compost would be well used on Maui’s crops and gardens to reduce our dependency on imported compost and chemical fertilizers.

The current Mayor and County Council are disturbingly open to garbage incineration despite a previous ruling not to consider it.  I’m hoping our future Mayor and County Council are able to resist the siren song of the incinerator manufacturers and have the guts to say “No!”

Camille Armantrout