EDITORIAL
HECO plans must address need, wants

Hawaiian Electric Co., clearly burned from its effort to put power lines on Wa'ahila Ridge, has come back with a new power "reliability" proposal that takes strong lessons from the Wa'ahila experience.

Chief among them is the importance of bringing the community along with the power company in its planning and thinking process.

A close second is the company's recognition that the community has shown a strong preference for underground utility lines.

This is all to the good and signals much greater chances for a successful outcome this time around. But major challenges remain.

The company says it is considering three alternative routings of a new power line to bring increased reliability to customers in East O'ahu. Each would be underground.

A series of public meetings, followed up with as many independently facilitated gatherings as needed, will be held before the utility moves ahead in its decision-making.

HECO Senior Vice President Robbie Alm says this process — akin in many ways to the process used to build a successful political campaign — is something new for the utility.

What Hawaiian Electric will have to understand as this moves forward is that public response cannot, nor should it, be limited to the pros and cons of the various routing options.

The first task is to convince the public that another power line is needed in the first place. Hawaiian Electric mounts a fairly compelling case on this.

But the Wa'ahila Ridge controversy, while primarily over the aesthetic and environmental issues, also generated serious skepticism about the need for a new power line at all.

It may be that some of the skeptics got to that point in their thinking primarily because they opposed Wa'ahila. They wanted something to argue against the ridgeline proposal, and if that argument was the lack of need for a new line, they would use it.

But others became genuinely convinced that there was no compelling need to boost reliability of service in that area; or that, if indeed there was a need, there were other ways to meet it. In short, the fierce community opposition to the ridge proposal did serious damage to the underlying "need" argument.

So, as Hawaiian Electric moves forward, it must face squarely the fact that many have concluded there is no need for this project at all. That is, technology and time may have presented us with other options to what is by now a mature power distribution system.

The community outreach approach is great. But it must deal with these underlying questions and concerns if it is to have any hope of success.