Maui needs nature crews

Maui News Editorial
Thursday, March 07, 2002

The Emergency Environmental Workforce, like the Civilian Conservation Corps of the Great Depression era, is doing work that needs to be done on Maui.

The CCC, like the EEW, put young Mauians to work at a time when there were few jobs on the island. More importantly, the CCC worked to improve the environment and enjoyment of the environment. The CCC crews planted many of the trees that have helped hold the soil on the slopes of Haleakala. Granted, the species of trees planted could have been better chosen but environmental sensibilities were not so finely tuned in those days.

In the immediate days after Sept. 11, the Emergency Environmental Workforce supplied meaningful, reasonably paid work for the unemployed. The environmental workforce crews went after mosquito breeding places to fight the spread of dengue fever. They also removed thousands of miconia plants, the same plant that has destroyed Tahiti's native forests, and other alien plant pests.

Almost as important as the work done is the satisfaction workers felt from the kind of work they were doing. "It benefits me, but it also benefits the land," said Ettatani Kailikini, one of the EEW employees. "We're saving the native plants and making the place clean. It just feels good."

The county administration should be congratulated for being willing to put $100,000 — a modest amount — into keeping the workforce working. State funding runs out March 15 and the governor won't extend it. Even if the Legislature appropriates more, as it should, the money would not be available until July 1.

The environmental workforce is a program that is up and running, supplying 54 workers meaningful, if back-breaking, jobs. As pointed out by program originator Sen. J. Kalani English, ending the workforce most likely will mean putting the workers on unemployment, costing the state nearly as much as having them working.

Maui and the state of Hawaii need a permanent environmental workforce that can respond to the latest of an ongoing list of threats to the island's beauty and health. If the state won't make the workforce permanent, the county should.

Return to Sen. English Home Page - KalaniEnglish.com

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