1X
Only the first 35 minutes of this broadcast survive. Hawaiian Electric Company's proposal to complete a southern electricity transmission corridor on Oahu was the subject of a July 1997 Price of Paradise discussion in which company representatives and community critics took sharply differing positions. Chuck Freedman, a Hawaiian Electric executive, and Kerstan J. Wong, the project manager for the proposed line, explained that a 1980s island-wide blackout had prompted studies recommending a redundant transmission route for reliability, and that a draft environmental impact statement due in autumn 1997 would assess overhead and underground routing options, costs, electromagnetic health effects, and property-value impacts. Henry Curtis, executive director of Life of the Land, disputed the company's demand projections, noted that Hawaiian Electric had installed underground lines on fewer than 100 feet of its existing transmission infrastructure, and proposed solar generation as an alternative. Kat Brady, assistant executive director of Life of the Land, described community opposition crossing socioeconomic lines and argued for routing any new line underground along the H-1 highway corridor. The concrete question is whether the proposed line is needed, and if so, whether it should run overhead or underground.
Transcript
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Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
