New year mission: clean up the water

Hawai'i saw no tsunami or hurricane strikes, but the year 2008 was filled with reminders of our fragility.

(Image: Muddy water on a resort beach, without many visitors swimming.)

The annual year-end tourism bump is tempered by visitors disgusted by muddy water off many of the islands, along with reports of sewage spills in many areas. We count on repeat visitors. Will they be back?

Meanwhile, the economic slump across the world continues to trash the Islands' economy.

Molokai Ranch closed its doors and laid off nearly all its workers. The landline phone company, Hawaiian Telecom, filed for bankruptcy. Norwegian Cruise Lines withdrew all but one ship from the Islands' waters.

One of the two airlines that have dominated Hawai'i skies for most of the last century failed, and a new diversity entered the market, with Hawaiian, Go!, Mokulele and Island Air all providing statewide service.

A single lightning strike knocked out the Honolulu grid for hours, reminding of the risks of a centralized utility grid.

Rainstorms several times flooded homes across the state, and caused repeated sewage spills—a Third World eventuality that just keeps happening.

And what of the future?

There's lots to worry about. We can't deal effectively with all our challenges, but let's suggest one approach.

Today's Wall Street argues for this: Protect your assets.

One big asset, in a state dependent on tourism, and in which many residents use the ocean for recreation and food: clean, blue water.

One significant good-idea initiative: Keep the water clean.

How?

One: Take aggressive measures to reduce soil erosion that turns waters brown with every heavy rain. It's hard work. It may affect flexibility in agriculture and construction operations. But the entire community is damaged by inaction. More attention to this may also reduce the flow of pesticides and nutrients into nearshore waters.

Two: Harden sewage systems to reduce the likelihood of spills to the ocean. The reasons for this are obvious.

Three: Every big rain is accompanied by a pulse of coastal debris, as water bottles, plastic bags, diapers, and other trash wash from the streets into streams and then into the sea. We must enact and enforce effective programs to further cut down illegal dumping and littering, particularly near streams and coastlines. Launch efforts to intercept debris before it gets to the ocean. Keep the trash off the beaches.

It will take a multidisciplinary approach that involves many agencies. Among them, the state Department of Agriculture (ag runoff), county construction inspectors (construction runoff), federal EPA (coastal pollution), Department of Land and Natural Resources (erosion from public forest lands), county wastewater offices (sewage spills), and private property owners.

An argument could be made for some kind of coordinated response, perhaps a statewide water czar with an extraordinary portfolio capable of enforcing action.

©2008 Jan TenBruggencate

HECO/Sensus smart meters, smarter than they look

When Hawaiian Electric and Sensus Metering Systems announced a plan to put “smart” meters all over O'ahu, Maui and Hawai'i, Hawai'i media outlets missed or underplayed the significant piece of this scheme.

The new meters are way smarter than they at first appear.

Sure, they're wireless, meaning the electric company can get billing information without having to send its meter readers out in cars. Just 19 towers scattered around the islands will be able to monitor the meters.

But the communication won't be just one way.

“This is an enabling technology. It's going to give the utility and the customers more options,” said HECO's Darren Pai.

The proposal to put the “FlexNet wireless smart grid solution” meters in place requires state Public Utilities Commission approval, and any changes in service and rates will also require approvals. But its capabilities appear to be remarkable.

The utility can check on its grid any time. It can reconnect disconnected services remotely. It can diagnose trouble spots far more quickly and efficiently, thus improving reliability for the consumer.

The new meters can be provided with upgrades via the wireless system of their firmware—the programs that run their electronics.

For consumers, there is the potential of much greater control over electrical use and the power bill.

As an example, Hawaiian Electric could establish different rates at different times. With higher rates during peak hours, and low rates when use is low, the utility could shift demand—and reduce the need for new power plants.

For the consumer, being able to shift water heating, ice-making, electric car charging and other high-demand uses to cheaper times means savings.

Example: If you have an electric-backup solar water heater, and the family finishes showering at 7 p.m., the water heater is going to turn on to provide you with hot water in the morning. But that will be near the peak utility electrical use—the big generators will be operating near capacity. There would be no downside to shifting the heating a few hours later, and you could help shift the utility's peak and reduce your bills as well.

In the nearly impenetrable words of the press release from Hawaiian Electric and Sensus: “These features will support new pricing and demand-response initiatives to help customers manage their own electricity use by taking advantage of various pricing options, and programs designed to enhance energy conservation efforts.”

That kind of flexibility is also key for the implementation of large-scale renewable energy efforts. It could be used to shift load to times when intermittent renewables are available—when the sun's shining for solar, when the trades are blowing for windpower, when the swells are significant for wave power.

HECO's Energy Solutions Vice President Karl Stahlkopf said the deployment of the smart meters will help achieve the goals of the state's Hawai'i Clean Energy Initiative, helping encourage expanded use of renewable energy.

For more on Sensus and its Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), see www.sensus.com/.

©2008 Jan TenBruggencate

Lehua rat eradication launches in January

Government officials will begin the restoration of little Lehua Island's natural habitat early in January, after several years of planning.

The rabbits that ate off much of the island's native vegetation have already been removed, and the next step will be control of rats, which have been eating seeds, live plants and birds.

(Image: Lehua from the air. Credit: NASA image via Google Earth.)

A supplemental environmental assessment for the project was completed earlier this year. (See our previous post at http://raisingislands.blogspot.com/search?q=lehua.) One of its recommendations was the timing of the predator control for a time when bird populations on the island are lowest.

The rat control project will employ the aerial distribution of a rodenticide, diphacinone.

The same compound was used for the removal of rats from Mōkapu Island off Molokai, and it displayed low toxicity to native birds and marine life. Diphacinone has been used worldwide for the removal of invasive rodents from island habitats. At Lehua, followup testing will be performed to determine whether there is any residue in either land or marine species.

“Rats are known to have eliminated many seabird species from islands around the world by eating bird eggs and preying on live birds,” said an announcement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Wildlife officials hope that once the rats are gone, some of the native vegetation will return naturally, but they also propose a plant restoration project, in which species known or believed to have occurred on the island will be planted.

Lehua Island is a 310-acre tuff cone, similar in shape to better-known Molokini off Maui. It lies less than a mile off the north end of Ni'ihau and is about 20 miles from the west side of Kaua'i. Sixteen species of seabirds nest there, although the number may have been higher before the rats and rabbits.

For more information on the project, call Chris Swenson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at 808-792-9400 or Thomas Kaiakapu, Department of Land and Natural Resources at 808-274-3443.

©2008 Jan TenBruggencate

Old scope, sexy new applications: sizing up planets

The University of Hawai'i's 2.2-meter telescope is older than nearly half of Hawai'i's population, and it's a fraction of the size of newer scopes, but it's still doing good science.

In part, you can thank for that the cutting edge instrumentation that's being bolted on to the aging mirror.

(Image: UH 2.2-meter telescope dome on Mauna Kea. Credit: Karen Teramura.)

The telescope's latest claim to fame: it was used to measure the exact size of a planet that orbits around a star in our Milky Way that is 300 light years from Earth. The star is called WASP-10.

The telescope was built in 1970, making it 38 years old. Median age of Hawai'i's population in the 2000 census was 39.7. And among the newest telescopes, the twin Kecks are each 10 meters across and the Subaru and Gemini are both in the 8-plus range.

In its most recent publicized feat, the UH 2.2-meter scope was fitted with a camera that can measure light so accurately, the scientific team says, that it could “detect the passage of a moth in front of a lit window from a distance of 1,000 miles.”

By measuring how much the light from a distant star dims when a planet passed in front of it, the device could be used to determine the diameter of the planet

The research was done by a UH Institute for Astronomy team led by astronomer John Johnson. He worked with astronomer Joshua Winn of MIT, MIT graduate student Joshua Carter, and Georgia Institute of Technology student Nicole Cabrera.

The camera, designed by Institute astronomer John Tonry, is amusingly named OPTIC, for Orthogonal Parallel Transfer Imaging Camera. The camera is a digital model similar to your home digital, but stupendously more powerful.

Not long ago, astronomers had no way to detect or measure the existence of planets around stars other than our Sun.

More recently, they've been unable to detect anything but the most massive planets around distant stars.

For measuring stars the size of our Earth, OPTIC can't quite do that, but it hints at the possibility.

"This new detector design is really going to change the way we study planets. It's the killer app for planet transits," Winn said.

For now, the research team announced it was able to use OPTIC to measure a Jupiter-sized planet around WASP-10. Using other techniques, the mass of the planet, itself known as WASP-10b, had been calculated. When OPTIC measured its diameter, astronomers were able to calculate its density.
In the world of astronomy, this is real sexy stuff. A paper on the discovery is to be printed in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

For more information: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/JohnsonDec08/.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate

Big, beautiful, disease resistant, long shelf life--what's not to like?

Researchers at the University of Hawai'i's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources are cheering a new arrival, an impressive newly bred anthurium that shows great market potential.

(Image: The new Mauna Loa anthurium, held by Harold Tanouye of Green Point Nurseries. Credit: Green Point Nurseries.)

The new bloom, named Mauna Loa, is a huge thing, 10 inches long, and green at the margins with a glossy white interior. Growers figure they can get up to six flowers per stem annually from it, and that it is resistant to problem plant diseases like anthracnose and bacterial blight.

It has a vase life of nearly two months.

The flower was entered by Green Point Nurseries of Hilo in the Other Cut Flowers category in the Society of American Florists' 2008 Outstanding Varieties Competition, and it won a red ribbon.

The flower was developed in the University of Hawai'i's anthurium research program from a small white “obake” anthurium by Heidi Kuehnle, Haruyuki Kamemoto, Tessie Amore, John Kunisaki, Joanne Lichty and Janice Uchida. It originated in 1987 from “Tropic Ice,” a small white obake previously released by the college.

“Obake” is a Japanese word for supernatural beings, and in Hawai'i is normally translated to mean “ghost.”

The Mauna Loa is in a class of obake anthuriums that include the large pure white Mauna Kea, and the small white Tropic Ice, from which the Mauna Loa was bred.

The anthurium research program, established by Kamemoto in 1950, has produced more than 40 new varieties since 1963. Anthuriums are now the state's top cut flower, with annual sales approaching $5 million in 2007.

For more detail see http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/NPH-A-2.pdf.

© 2008 Jan W. TenBruggencate