Musings: Rich Ironies

There's so much rich irony in the lawsuit that Kawailoa Development — owner of the Grand Hyatt and Poipu Bay Golf Course — has filed against Hawaii Dairy Farms.

There's the irony of a 600-room luxury hotel and 18-hole golf course — a resort property that has its own tremendous environmental impacts — positioning itself in the role of environmental protector.

There's the irony of a resort that pollutes in so many ways — catering to a steady stream of visitors arriving by carbon-producing aircraft, consuming immense amounts of energy and fresh water, generating mountains of trash, pumping thousands of cars onto overcrowded roadways and producing millions of gallons of sewage — now claiming it relies on a “pristine surrounding environment in order to attract and maintain its business.”

There's the irony of a resort that regularly applies untold quantities of restricted use pesticides to its guest rooms, landscaping and golf course claiming that any discharge and pollution from the dairy would “diminish the quality and value” of its properties and “pose a health risk” to its guests and employees.

There's the irony of an oceanfront resort, with its chlorinated pool and lagoon, its sewage treatment plant in the tsunami zone and its aforementioned heavily-herbicided grounds and golf course, claiming the dairy poses an unacceptable threat to groundwater and the sea.

There's the irony of a resort that applies restricted use pesticides to its landscaping and links, thus creating a possible pathway for these toxins to enter the groundwater, using the ever-popular fear-mongering tactics to imply the dairy's waste will contaminate groundwater and cause fatal blood disorders in babies. 

There's the irony of a golf course that applies fertilizer, with its nitrogens, to its ever-green oceanfront links claiming the dairy's nitrogens will harm waterways and fish.

There's the irony of a brightly-lit oceanfront resort directly in the flight path of Newell's shearwaters, a resort that sits on a once-wild coastline frequented by monk seals and turtles, claiming that it's worried about “harm to endangered species.”

There's the irony of a resort that took over Mahaulepu coastal land many of us hoped would be turned into a park using the National Park Service's rationale for making Mahaulepu into a park as ammunition in its lawsuit against the dairy.

There's the irony of a resort that uses tons of imported food fighting an agricultural use that is trying to increase local food production.

There's the irony of a law firm that argued the Hawaii Superferry did not need to conduct an environmental assessment now arguing that a dairy on ag land must conduct an EA.

There's the irony of groups like Sierra Club, Malama Mahaulepu and Surfrider — groups that used to oppose golf courses and resorts on ag land — aligning themselves with the tourist industry and against agriculture on ag land.

Oh, and let's not forget the irony of Myles Shibata, the longtime chief operating officer of Kawailoa, working also as president of Grove Farm Land Corp. [Correction:  The appointment was made in 2006, not the week before the complaint was filed.]

There's the supreme irony of a non-ag use in the ag district seeking to stop an agricultural use on acreage that has been designated in perpetuity as important agricultural land (IAL).

Then there's my personal favorite: the irony of Grove Farm, hungry for cash, reclassifying ag land so it could sell it for the Hyatt, now seeing its first IAL tenant being sued by the monster it created.

Hmmm….