HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0212.360 1996-1998 l ~LrltititE-~ - . .
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April 15, 1997
To: Chairman and Members or the Hawaii County Council
From: Julie Jacobson, Co-chair Hawaii County Green Party
POB 900
Kurtistown, H2, 96760
To Rhom It May Concern:
I am opposed to the proposed irradiation project that the mayor wants us buy
into to the tune of $2 million. 2 oppose this entire project because of its
catastrophic costs and impacts to those of us on the Big Island. The County
Council persons all clamor for economic data when testimony is given. If you
look at the basic economics of this project. it falls flat on its face.
Critiquing this project within the four pillars of the Green Party is
the best way to examine this folly. These four pillars include social justice,
ecological wisdom, grassroots democracy, and non-violence.
Social Justice
Whore is th® social justice of taxing us all, to put the vapor heat papaya
treatment facilities out of business? The required quantities of fruit to make
the plant profitable according to Isomedix are greater than 5 million pounds per
year. This would be at the expense of the vapor heat companies and employees or
taxpayers to pay for unused capacity. Why the rambutan growers should be re-
warded for planting something with no market does not make sense. Aill someone
give me S2 million for exercising bad judgement? The potential of a worldwide
boycott on Hawaiian agricultural products would impact all farmers on this is-
land. The Japanese consumer groups have already stated their intent to initiate
such a boycott if we start exporting irradiated produce. One councilperson I
spoke with stated that though they didn't want any of their own children to work
in an irradiation facility, if someone else's child was desperate enough to work
in a cancer causing facility backed with county funds, they had no problem with
that. That councilperson and others likened working in such a plant to eating
hamburgers, or driving a car.
9 Ecological Wisdom
This plant is a disaster waiting to happen. The fuel units (Cobalt 60) must be
stored up to 120 years before recharging within a nuclear reactor. Rho will
store the spent fuel? The nuclear industry is a Ponzi scheme of profits being
collected without any regard for ultimate long-term costs to be borne by the
public at large.
~ Grassroots Democracy
No site for this plant has been identi£i®d and it won't b® announced until prom-
ises and slick talk can beat down opposition. Did you vote in the last election
to give S2 million to a handful of farmers unwilling to do market research be-
fore planting their crops? How much did you vote to give away next year, $3
million? This plant is not expected to make money for at least two years, ac-
cording to the rosiest projections. (And of course, this doesn't measure the
true coats of operating a plant. Things are subsidized like infrastructure,
property taxes, fuel costs. There's gotta be a lot of things that aren't in
their economic projections.) Rho will benefit? This quantity of money could
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Presented
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help many diversified agricultural projects and broaden our tax base. Rambutan
growers say their local markets are saturated. Ask around this state and you`ll
find these farmers that are pushing irradiation have not exploited local market-
ing. Did you vote to give a handout to the mayor's friends? If so, why not
write him a check yourself and leave the rest of us poor folks alone.
D Non-Violence
Violence is inflicted on generations of people all over the world by the nuclear
industry. Aorkers every inch of the way from uranium mines to the workers at
the reactor treating the cobalt to the transportation and dockyard workers
bringing it to the plant in Hilo and back again to the storage site for the used
cobalt 60. The innocent residents that ingest the low level wastes at the
mines, near the reactor and storage facilities, and where the uses irradiator is
brought to on this island. Ahen water soluble Cesium 137 is substituted for the
Cobalt 60, spills of this waste will seep into the groundwater of surrounding
ocean to give us all a legacy of cancer, suffering and death.
Sinc,~-'erp~ly, /
'7'..., ~~e-.~'V~
Julie Jacobson