Tag: rma

November 30, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Hawaii County considers wind farm for South Kohala

The Hawaii County Department of Water Supply is considering building a wind farm to power its South Kohala wells.

The department would lease about 80 acres of state land next to its Lalamilo wells and have a developer build the wind mills.

The project would create 50 construction jobs and three permanent jobs.

Department energy management analyst Julie Myhre says a wind farm built on the site in the mid-1980s has been decommissioned and the site has been cleaned up.

West Hawaii Today reported Monday the wind farm would save about $500,000 a year in electricity costs for the next 20 years.

A department spokeswoman says it’s too early to tell if the facility would generate excess energy to sell to Hawaii Electric Light Co.

Hawaii County considers wind farm for South Kohala – Hawaii News – Staradvertiser.com

November 25, 2010 Aquaculture, General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Kekaha farm owner has plans for much more than shrimp

WAIMEA — Blessed with some of the purest seawater in the world and sunny growing conditions, the owners of the Kekaha shrimp farm have big plans for their small operation.

Currently producing white shrimp mainly for local consumption and broodstock for export around the world, Sunrise Capital, owned by the Mainland-based Integrated Aquaculture International, has plans to eventually produce everything from kahala, moi, oysters, clams, seaweed, even algae to produce jet fuel.

That makes them, as Dr. Carl Berg of Lihu‘e says, a concentrated aquatic animal production facility, something Dr. George Chamberlain agrees with.

Chamberlain is a director of Integrated Aquaculture International and president of the Global Aquaculture Alliance (gaalliance.org), and conducted a two-hour informational meeting about the Kekaha aquaculture farm at the Waimea Theatre, just before a state Department of Health public hearing on the farm’s application for a permit necessary to discharge farm effluent into the ocean.

The DOH will either approve or deny the continuation of the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit, required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and monitored by DOH.

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