Comments on Deep Ocean Water resource potential for Oahu
by the Honorable Jeremy Harris, Mayor
City and County of Honolulu

It's a pleasure to be here today to be able to share my perspective on the happenings today. You know, we are blessed to live in one of the most beautiful and most wonderful places in all the world. But if you look back over the last 30-40 years, it's clear that we have made some mistakes. We have relied too much on one industry - the tourism industry - and all the problems that go along with that: the social problems, the low income jobs, the population growth problems as we attract more residents here, and all the rest. We have also made mistakes by not controlling our urban growth - we have sprawled across our agricultural lands, an if left unchecked of course, we will lose what is most special about Hawaii. We have in many ways degraded our environment. I think if we are all honest with each other and take pause and reflect, we realize that the quality of life that we enjoy here today is diminished over what it was 30 or 40 years ago.

And so our challenge I think is to try to find ways to regain that quality of life and preserve what we have, and enhance what we have, so that when we turn over this island and this world to our children, and their children, it is a better place and the quality of life is enhanced. So, how do we do that? Well, one of the things we have to do is we have to change our economy. Instead of being the victims, or the beneficiaries, of events outside of our control--if the Japanese bubble economy blossoms, we prosper, if the bubble bursts, then we suffer--we need to decide what will be our economic future, and then we need to go out and create it. And the type of technological development we've seen here today is the type of expertise that we in Hawaii should represent to the world society.

When you look at some of the other problems that we confront, one of them of course involves land use. We have, as I said, allowed our population to spill out across our agricultural lands and our open spaces. What we're going to do now is to restrict that. We are going to focus all of the growth on the island to two places: to the primary urban center - the downtown area here, and to the second city in Kapolei. And only by doing that - only by demanding that the growth which occurs happens in these two areas - will we be able to create a critical mass of population and employment, and contain our infrastructure and the environmental problems that go with growth. And along with that of course will be the protection and the preservation of all our open space and our agricultural lands. And so, at the city level, the focus on the development of the second city is key. Coupled with that, in the next month or so, we'll be coming out with a new measure that will freeze in place - in perpetuity - agricultural lands on this island. We really have no diversified agricultural industry to speak of... The reason for that of course is because we've allowed speculation on our agricultural lands, and the value of that land then is based not on what crop you can grow, but instead on what potential urban development might rest 4 or 5 or 8 years in the future... And so what results of course is that it's virtually impossible for agriculturalists to purchase agricultural land and have an economically viable agricultural operation. And so we will freeze in place the agricultural designation on many of our agricultural lands so that their value will fully reflect the value for agricultural purposes. But then we have to face technological problems. How will we get the irrigation water necessary to irrigate these lands? How will we create the markets? And all the rest that goes with the development of an industry such as that... But that I think is where our future lies: focussing our growth in the second city - developing new economies that are appropriate to our culture, to our island, and to protect our environment - and preserving our agricultural lands so in the future we can in fact have an agricultural industry.

I think it's clear to probably all of you who are hearing this why I am so interested in the technology we've seen today - because it fits in perfectly with all those visions we have for our island's future. When we build the second city in Kapolei, we want it to be an environmentally sensitive community. We want it to be a community that is sustainable. And one way we can do that is to develop the new second city, and the new infrastructure, and the new civic center, and the new police stations, and all the other facilities in a way that minimizes our dependence of fossil fuels for energy production and that capitalizes on our environment... I think that developing, for instance--if I can get a proposal from Dr. Craven--a system like we saw today for providing the air conditioning systems for all the new municipal buildings and government facilities that will go up in Kapolei. This is something that deserves to be looked at. And as we look at ways for providing employment along the Waianae coast, we realize that it has to be employment that is appropriate for the culture, for the community, and for those neighborhoods... So, being able to use this technology to develop aquaculture operations, or agriculture operations in an area that has very many limitations for irrigation water, or to be able to provide chill facilities for local fishermen and refrigeration facilities for farmers that we hope we can develop... those are all benefits that I see as coming from the development of the potential we saw today.

So I'll leave you by saying that I'm very encouraged and that I've always been impressed with the resourcefulness and the intellect of the people involved here in this room. And now, I think it's our task is to take it from this stage to true implementation, and I can think of no better place than right here, for our island to be a model for the rest of the world and for the rest of Asia and the Pacific in the coming age of the next century. So thank you very much for including me.

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