I write this letter and I ask God to give me the wisdom and ability to tell the world the sad thing that's happening to our sacred island.
Today, March 13, 2008, the trade winds returned and with them came a sight that hurt me deep down inside. The corporate giant that farms thousands of acres on Molokai was pumping water into the air to irrigate dry fields (their kind of weed control) in several places across the island.
This is being done even after manager Ray Foster stated publicly that this type of irrigation would no longer be used.
Then there was the bulldozer. For miles along Maunaloa highway a wall of dirt is being built up with topsoil removed from the fields. (In our tropical zone around the world, 90 percent of the nutrients are in the top three to five inches). Removing the topsoil requires large amounts of fertilizer to bring the fertility back.
This unnatural condition throws off the balance of nature and in turn causes more insect problems, which in turn cause the need for more pesticides. Then there is the loose powdery soil blowing into the atmosphere. At one or two places along the highway you can look toward the ocean and see the vast expanse of powdery soil (many thousands of acres Palaau side) making dust into the atmosphere. It takes millions of tons of dust to color the sky yellow brown like I saw in the distance. It is a war on the environment and pollution like I've never seen in my lifetime.
What effect does this have on the people down wind on the west side of Molokai? And, yes, does this vast atmospheric cloud go as far as Honolulu? The answer is yes! Does their dust with many years of accumulated pesticides and herbicides effect our reef? The answer is yes!
This kind of farming is a constant wearing down, constant changing of the way nature works. It's a constant pollution and a constant wearing down of our health. And why? For money, for jobs, for ethanol?
I know I'm not alone in observing these things. It's time for all of us to speak up and speak out.
John Wordin
Kaualapu'u
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