POLLUTION SOLUTION IS LONG OVERDUE

A year-and-a-half back, my published proposal to finally solve the Ala Wai Canal's decades-old pollution problem with a bisecting wall and gates to let the daily high tides bring fresh sea water up one side and flush the water out the other side was met with resounding silence.

OK, it admittedly was real complicated, using two moving parts.

So now, it's time to move on to Plan B, this time using three moving parts.

In and near the canal are those huge 4-feet-diameter bypass pipes used in the Waikiki sewage upgrade project. They could be recycled to run underwater from several hundred yards offshore beyond Magic Island and sight unseen up the bottom to the canal to the Kapahulu end.

Two neutral-buoyancy water gates at the Ala Moana bridge could be angled to slowly close with incoming high tide, forcing the some 20 million gallons of sea water to instead flow through the underwater pipe and come out unseen at the upper end of the canal.

The third moving part would be a big flapper valve at the Kapahulu end of the pipe, forced open by the incoming sea water and dropping closed as the receding tide reopens both water gates at the Ala Moana bridge.

This means the roughly 120 million-gallon canal water column that now just moves back and forth only about one-fifth the canal length with each turn of the tide would be displaced every six days, soon turning the stagnant canal into a marine life habitat popular with locals and visitors alike. 

Perhaps the responsible parties — the  Army Corps of Engineers, state Department of Land and Natural Resources, the city, the Waikiki Improvement Association, the Hawai'i Tourism Authority — would now like to propose their long overdue solutions. Or will there just be decades more of silence?

CHRYSLER

BANKRUPTCY FILING REFLECTS LARGER PICTURE

If the filing for bankruptcy protection by Chrysler has a familiar ring to it, it's because so much of the auto companies' undoing bears too close a similarity to the U.S. economy as a whole.

From corporate mismanagement to union protectionism to constant government mandates, these once dominant companies are being smothered. Congress is now fully engaged in the sort of proclamations-from-on-high approach that seeks to overcome the gravity pull of market economics. This has never worked, but there are some things generations need to learn the hard way.

FUNDS, BUREAUCRACY

UNTIL DOE IS REDUCED MONEY WON'T HELP

I read with interest the back and forth between the DOE and the governor how $90 million meant for the DOE will supposedly have a negative impact on the DOE if it is deferred until a later time. If I thought for one second that deferral of those funds would somehow result in negative impacts on the eduction of our children, I would be totally against it.

However, having watched test scores for our children make little to no progress over the past decade, and in most cases, actually decline, I am inclined to support budget deficit reduction first. Until the bureaucracy of the DOE is reduced, throwing more money at the problem will fix absolutely nothing.

STATE BUDGET, TAXES

COWARDLY LEADERS NEED TO BE REMOVED

I'm so frustrated I don't know what to do. It's not as if the world is ending, but it sometimes feels that way. I work more than 50 hours a week running a small business, trying to pay rent and keep my staff employed. It is my responsibility to these people that drives me everyday. Their lives depend on me running a successful operation.

Comparatively our state and city services are vastly oversized and inefficient. Burdened with a unionized labor force unwilling to make compromises and cuts that the private sector has already done to survive. Our elected officials have no vision or courage to do something different. Their solution: just raise taxes. There are many lessons to learn in this global recession; take a look at large corporate cutbacks. Even unionized shops like GM forged ahead with concessions from labor because without them there will be NO jobs. Why can't we do the same thing here?

Our politicians are cowards. They do not belong in office if they cannot come up with better solutions than just raising taxes! I urge The Advertiser to publish the names of every legislator and council member that voted to raise taxes on the front page of the paper right before the next election, because people have short memories. "Change" as Obama promised, lies in doing something new and that would include getting rid of all the dead weight we have at the Capitol. If I have to struggle to survive, the state can stand alongside me and do the same.