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February 20, 2003
Obvious Too
A local lake is being smothered by the uncontrolled growth of a common fish tank plant called salvinia molesta. The plant, probably brought to Hawai'i to decorate someone's pond or aquarium eventually was released into the wild, including the 300-acre Lake Wilson sometime in 1999. When first seen there, it was a very small patch and was quickly identified by wildlife officials and fishermen.
Said fishermen called for an immediate attack on the weed, using herbicide, before it spread. Unfortunately, government by crisis indicated that nothing should be done because other things had higher priority. In either case, it was just a small infestation so why bother with it now?
Four years later and the lake now looks like a table top smooth golf course (see some pictures here). Only the "greens" are made of salvinia, not grass. The entire surface of the lake is literally covered in this weed. Fish are dying due to lack of air, the lake can not be used because boats can not navigate through this mess, and in fact the lake was closed to public use yesterday.
One estimate is it will take 50,000 dump truck loads to clear the lake. The problem is, salvina spreads through fragmentation. That is, bits of it break off and a new plant grows from each bit. It then doubles in size every two to eight days. Hence, to rid the lake of this pest, you must either get every single piece of it out, introduce an alien species of weevil that feeds on the plants, use herbicides, or a combination of all.
Had this been done when the weed was first identified in the lake, we could have saved the millions of dollars it will cost to get rid of it now. But then, that would have been too obvious.
Open for business. At least, that's how the new Republican governor wants to portray our state. But the governor is in the curious position of reducing a tax credit for high tech business development. First, I should say there is very little evidence that using the tax system is an efficient way of altering business behavior. That is, businesses usually will do whatever they do despite the tax code, not because of it.
Having said that, when government makes changes to the tax code, by giving away money to companies in the hope of attracting more activity here, you would think the law would be written such that the cost of the tax credit would be less than the benefits (i.e., income taxes) generated by the hoped for new business.
But then, that would have been too obvious.
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