Posted on: Saturday, February 22, 2003

EDITORIAL
State tardy in dealing with weed infestation

We have always been big fans of the notion that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. For instance, preventive maintenance is far cheaper than waiting until things break down, and preventive medicine is a whole lot cheaper than intensive care.

So we're all ears when critics begin saying the state was negligent in not responding to Salvinia molesta infestations much earlier. There's simply no doubt that squirting a little herbicide on the weed's earliest manifestation would have been far easier and cheaper than the huge, floating backhoe that is feeding tons of salvinia to a fleet of trucks at Lake Wilson.

Indeed, the weed's appearance in Kailua's Ka'elepulu Pond, now called Enchanted Lake, apparently was nipped in the bud with little difficulty.

But blaming the Department of Land and Natural Resources for failing to get on top of the problem sooner may be too easy. Much of that department's responsibility involves preventive care for the state's environment, while enduring its share of budget cuts in recent years.

The department is, if you will, poking its fingers in a number of holes in the dike, but lawmakers have taken away some of its fingers. When we underfund this department, the savings are illusory. When we fail to pay for preventive care, we end up paying for expensive crises later.