EDITORIAL
Turn off the lights on Wa'ahila power line
Right from the get-go, Hawaiian Electric's proposal for a 138,000-volt power line along Manoa's scenic Wa'ahila Ridge faced an uphill battle.
It was hard to find anyone who liked the idea. It was doomed to be unpopular.
Yet HECO lobbied hard for a hard-to-get conservation land use permit despite the fact that it was never entirely clear that the high-voltage power line was needed at all.
So we're not surprised — or sorry — that the Board of Land and Natural Resources gave HECO's proposed Wa'ahila power line the thumbs down.
"This project has significant impacts which cannot be sufficiently mitigated," the board said in a 68-page decision.
Now, HECO must decide whether to appeal the decision to the land board or to Circuit Court. HECO spokesman Chuck Freedman said an appeal is "highly unlikely."
We hope that's the case. It's time to get past this controversy and on to bigger issues.
No amount of vegetation and camouflage paint could disguise the blight of the proposed power line, which the board says would be "clearly visible to tens of thousands of residents and visitors from a wide area of Honolulu."
Judging from the reaction to the proposed line, it's clear that residents are fed up with the tangle of overhead power lines that mar our magnificent vistas.
According to some estimates, HECO spent more than $13 million to get approval for the project, which it said was crucial to ensuring a "ring of reliability" for O'ahu's power system. That money came from the company's stockholders, but ratepayers might be asked to foot the bill to recover the loss.
The environmental group Life of the Land intends to challenge any move by HECO to saddle the customers with the bill.
The Wa'ahila power line was intended to link the Pukele substation in upper Palolo Valley to the Kamoku substation in McCully.
HECO maintained the high-voltage line was needed to guarantee service to more than half its customers and prevent major power outages. Environmentalists and native Hawaiians complained bitterly that the power lines would spoil a highly visible, scenic and spiritually significant ridge.
Meanwhile, Mayor Jeremy Harris declared he would never allow the overhead lines to be constructed.
Nonetheless, HECO moved forward.
In February, retired Circuit Judge E. John McConnell, who was appointed by the state to assess the project, recommended that the board reject HECO's application.
Essentially, McConnell found that improvements made to the electrical system in recent years made a repeat of a huge 1987 Super Bowl Sunday blackout unlikely.
Four months later, the land board's rejection doesn't bode well for the project's future. It's doubtful that any new development will persuade the board to reverse its decision, and our guess is that the odds aren't much better in Circuit Court.
Besides, instead of expanding our dependence on fossil fuels, we'd like to see more resources committed to developing alternative energy, boosting reliability by reducing dependence on a lengthy grid fed by distant power sources and by paying more attention to undergrounding our utilities.
We want what's best for our environment, and a high-voltage power line along Wa'ahila Ridge simpy didn't fit the bill.
