Tag: Movements and Resistance

Recent news reports that the military was considering returning to Vieques to conduct training has sparked renewed anger  in Puerto Rico.   Puerto Rico’s delegate to Congress, Pedro Pierluisi, has even come out against renewed military activity in Vieques, a 180 degree reversal of an earlier statement welcoming new military activity.  Here’s an article from the Navy Times.

Military draws anger with new look at Vieques

By Mike Melia – The Associated Press

Posted : Saturday Mar 21, 2009 9:23:55 EDT

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Six years after angry protesters chased the Navy out of Vieques, the U.S. military has provoked a new outcry by suggesting it could re-establish a presence on the tiny Puerto Rican island.

In testimony before a Senate committee this week, military leaders said the island once known for its bombing range is well placed to extend America’s reach in the Caribbean, potentially playing a role in airspace surveillance or fighting drug traffickers.

Activists and government officials in the U.S. territory say they are ready for another resistance fight. Protests against the bombing united islanders of all political stripes and the Navy’s departure in 2003 from Vieques was celebrated as a victory for Puerto Rico.

“We the Puerto Ricans fought for so many years to end the bombing and to have the land turned over to the people of Vieques. We are opposed to it being used for anything else, much less that it go back to the military,” Jose Paralitici, a veteran anti-Navy activist, said Thursday.

Puerto Rico’s delegate to Congress, Pedro Pierluisi, has issued a statement rejecting any military exercises on the island, backtracking on an earlier statement that the government was open to a military presence that did not involve more shelling.

The U.S. began war maneuvers on the island off Puerto Rico’s east coast in 1948 after buying 25,000 acres – about two-thirds of the island – to create the bombing range.

Two errant bombs killed a civilian security guard in 1999, sparking mass protests that also blamed the military for fouling the environment on the island of 9,000 people. Then-President George W. Bush announced in 2001 that the Navy would stop Vieques operations two years later.

The island has since placed new emphasis on tourism. A cleanup began in 2005 to clear thousands of unexploded rockets, cluster bombs and other munitions from the site of the former training range that is now a Fish and Wildlife Service refuge.

In the testimony Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Air Force Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., chief of the U.S. Northern Command, said the area could contribute to national defense “on a small basis.”

“We are looking to work with both the Navy and the National Guard to see how we might take advantage of some of the systems and equipment that is still in place in the Vieques area,” Renuart said.

A spokesman for the Northern Command, Canadian navy Lt. Desmond James, said he could not discuss the topic because a Senate request is pending for a more thorough answer.

The assessment was requested by Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who said at the hearing that several years have passed since “we lost the battle of Vieques.”

Existing facilities in Vieques could play a key role in missions including counterterrorism, anti-piracy and humanitarian assistance, he said Thursday.

With the loss of its training area, the Navy also closed the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station on the eastern coast of the Puerto Rican mainland, which employed 6,300 people. That left Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as the only U.S. naval base in the Caribbean.

Source: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/03/ap_vieques_testing_032009/

The authors of the Superferry Chronicles wrote this excellent analysis for the Hawaii Independent on the demise of the Hawai’i Superferry.  Their conclusion:  in the end, the Superferry won.  If we assume that the Superferry was meant to primarily be a proof of concept, then it accomplished its purpose.   Their venture was underwritten by Hawai’i residents to the tune of $40 million in harbor upgrades and by U.S. tax payers to the tune of a $140 million loan guarantee.

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http://www.thehawaiiindependent.com/opinion/2009/03/20/coup-de-superferry/

Coup de Superferry

Posted March 20th, 2009 in Opinion by Koohan Paik and Jerry Mander

When the Superferry set sail on its last roundtrip voyage across the channel between Honolulu and Maui, Oahu grieved. CEO Tom Fargo gave his swan-song statement as the ship pulled out of the harbor, announcing soberly that the company would seek contracts for its two boats elsewhere. Tearful passengers lamented the end of this “alternative mode of transportation” that enabled FedEx and Love’s Bakery to ply their wares on Maui. At Kahului Harbor, on Maui, a tugboat tributed the final run by spraying seawater skyward. The evening newscasts were filled with images of many of the 236 employees who had been laid off, victims of a seemingly unfair (and unanimous) state Supreme Court ruling. “It’s like a death,” uttered port utility operator Corrine Dutro-Ponce.

Superferry is the supposed “victim” in the latest ruling that determined that “Act 2,” the bill that Lingle and the Legislature rushed into law, was unconstitutional, on the grounds that it was custom-tailored for one company: Hawaii Superferry. It cannot continue to operate, unless it first conducts an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Economically speaking, this ruling gives the company a golden opportunity to cut their losses and bow out gracefully. Though Fargo and the media have been repeating like a mantra the phrase “over 250,000 customers” (as if this cumulative passenger count somehow justified the company’s existence), nonetheless, it has been operating at a loss since it arrived on our shores. According to figures presented in a March 18, 2009 Honolulu Advertiser story, for the three months of November through January, the company never attracted more than 25% capacity, far below the ridership necessary to break even. Figures revealed monthly at the Oversight Task Force meetings showed similar public disinterest in ridership.

In addition to staunching the fiscal hemmorhaging, the ruling enables the company to recoup more money through legal actions should they choose, now that Act 2 has been struck down. Act 2 had included a provision prohibiting the company from suing the state. Not only that, shutting down operations frees up the two vessels, which cost $180 million, to be leased or sold.

This, along with the cushy federal loan guarantee for $140 million issued by the U.S. Maritime Administration, leaves the departing company in much better financial shape than if they were to continue in Hawaii, running at a loss.

But the biggest coup of all for the Superferry corporation is that it got what it needed out of the deal: to prove the boat’s seaworthiness as a demo model in competition to build the Navy’s Joint High-Speed Vessel (JHSV). Austal USA, an investor in Superferry as well as its builder, won the contract worth $1.6 billion last September to build ten JHSVs.

That’s why conducting an EIS has been anathema to Superferry from the very start. Doing so would have kept the boat out of the water, and unable to prove itself against Austal USA’s competitors for the lucrative Navy contract.

That’s also very likely why Hawaii Superferry ignored Alan Lerchbacker, former CEO of Austal USA when he suggested to the company that it build a vessel smaller than 340 feet, concerned that the company would never break even on fuel costs. Lerchbacker was Austal USA’s outgoing CEO when he advised Hawaii Superferry in mid-2003, several months before the boatbuilder and Superferry sealed the deal in 2004 to build two 340-foot catamarans. A smaller vessel, as recommended by Lerchbacker, would not have been considered in the running for the JHSV contract. Cost-effectiveness as a civilian ferry ship did not seem to factor into the final decision. Building the largest high-speed aluminum-hulled catamaran in the United States seemed to be paramount, and certainly a premium in a competition for a Navy contract.

As it now stands from Superferry’s point of view, its job in Hawaii is pau already.

While the big winner in this fiasco is Hawaii Superferry, the losers are clearly the 236 workers who have lost their jobs during these rough economic times. If the company ever really cared about them, they would have done things right from the start, complied with state environmental law, conducted a proper EIS, and encouraged community participation in shaping what could have been a great public service.

Koohan Paik and Jerry Mander are the authors of The Superferry Chronicles: Hawaii’s Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism, and the Desecration of the Earth.

As the Hawaii Superferry sails off into the sunset for good, it seems that the military connections to the Superferry that activists railed against are finally coming to fruition, and getting the attention it deserves by major news outlets such as this article in the New York Times.

Thomas Fargo, HSF CEO and former Commander in Chief Pacific Command said in his Superferry swan song: “Certainly the military may very well want to lease this particular ship.”

Yet he says with a straight face a few minutes later: “We always get the question, ‘Was this designed as a military operation?’ ” he said. “That’s absolutely not true.”

Maybe he didn’t consult with his predecessors who told the Pacific Business News in 2004 that the Superferry business model consisted of three elements, one of which was to:

Seek defense business, hauling vehicles between islands at night for military exercises. The ferries are being built with specially reinforced vehicle decks especially for this, though the reinforcement also means that big rigs can be driven onto the ferries and it won’t matter in which lane they park.

A couple of pieces of the puzzle still don’t fit though.   What was the product of Sen. Inouye’s early (1997)  earmarks for a high speed ferry system and how does it relate to the HSF?  What was the source of funding for the $140 million MARAD loan guarantee to the HSF?  The fund for loan guarantees was not supported by the Bush Administration. Instead, Congress would appropriate funds for this purpose.   Did Lehman have any direct interest in the Joint High Speed Vessel contract that was awarded to Austal, thanks to the Superferry helping to jump start Austal USA?

March 22, 2009

A Hawaii Ferry Ends Its Choppy Ride

By CHRISTOPHER PALA

HONOLULU – The Hawaii Superferry made its final interisland voyage last week, capping a period marked by lawsuits, low ridership and suspicion that its ultimate purpose had more to do with military contracts than with connecting the Hawaiian islands.

On Monday, the State Supreme Court effectively grounded the vessel, the Alakai, when it struck down an act passed by the Legislature last year that exempted its operator, Hawaii Superferry Inc., from carrying out an environmental impact study. The company said it would not appeal the decision.

“We’re going to have to go out and find other employment for Alakai,” said the president of Hawaii Superferry, Thomas B. Fargo, a retired Navy admiral who once commanded American forces in the Pacific. “Certainly the military may very well want to lease this particular ship.”

The Marine Corps already leases a similar transport catamaran, the Westpac Express, in Okinawa, Japan.

A shipbuilding analyst in Florida, Tim Colton, said the company’s owner and chairman, John F. Lehman, a former Navy secretary, was well positioned to lease the Alakai and a just-finished sister ship to the Navy.

In its 19 months of sporadic operations, the Alakai – an $85 million, 350-foot aluminum catamaran that sliced through some of the world’s roughest seas at 40 miles per hour – is widely thought to have lost money for Hawaii Superferry. The passenger-vehicle ferry usually operated well below the 50 percent capacity that the company had designated as its break-even point. For much of the winter, it operated at about 25 percent capacity, according to figures released by the company.

Responding to a lawsuit filed by environmentalists, the State Supreme Court initially struck down a permit that the administration of Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, had granted Hawaii Superferry to operate its boats without an environmental assessment. After that ruling, Ms. Lingle persuaded the Legislature to pass the act exempting the company from the requirement.

Why the company chose to risk operating without an environmental review, which would have taken the better part of a year, has been the matter of debate across the state, with Mr. Lehman’s background leading to speculation that Hawaii Superferry was primarily hoping to prove itself to the United States military.

Nearly two years ago, a former chief executive officer of Austal USA, an Alabama shipyard that built the Alakai, was quoted in a local weekly, Pacific Business News, as saying the ship was too big for its market of 1.3 million people.

“I just worry about getting enough business to cover costs because of the sheer size of it,” said the executive, Alan Lerchbacker.

Mr. Lerchbacker said that he had suggested Hawaii Superferry order a 230-foot vessel but that the company instead ordered two 350-foot models. The Alakai traveled between Oahu and Maui; the second ferry, the Huakai, was completed last week and had been scheduled to link Oahu and the Big Island.

State Representative Hermina M. Morita, a Democrat and chairwoman of the Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection, said she never thought either ferry would be profitable.

“You look at the players involved,” Ms. Morita said. “You have to question their motives.”

In November, Austal USA was awarded a contract to build up to 10 military versions of the ferry.

Austal’s Australian unit had built scores of giant aluminum catamarans used as fast ferries around the world, but the United States requires that all ships sold to its armed forces must be domestically built.

Austal USA, with a shipyard in Mobile, Ala., was created in 2001. “They have managed to become a major player in a very short time,” said Robert Button, a naval analyst with the RAND Corporation.

Austal USA’s vice president for external affairs, Bill Pfister, said that while the company had built several smaller ships in Mobile, the construction of the two Hawaii ferries had helped it develop the work force and demonstrate the construction processes to bid credibly for a similar military version.

The contract calls for one ship for the Army, with an option for four more for the Army and five for the Navy, for a total of $1.6 billion.

“Building the Superferry was very helpful in demonstrating that we can build these ships in the United States as well as Australia,” Mr. Pfister said.

At a news conference on Thursday, Admiral Fargo denied that Hawaii Superferry had any military agenda.

“We always get the question, ‘Was this designed as a military operation?’ ” he said. “That’s absolutely not true.

“We certainly wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to appoint her with 836 first-class seats, to spend huge sums of money to establish service here in Hawaii if that was our goal, which was unmistakably to provide a regular, reliable commercial ferry service in these islands.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22ferry.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=superferry%20and%20christopher%20pala&st=cse

Superferry’s President addresses the future of the Alakai

Posted: March 19, 2009 06:00 PM

By Mari-Ela David

HONOLULU (KHNL) – What’s next for the Hawaii Superferry? President and CEO Tom Fargo says it doesn’t look like there’s a short-term solution, but says he intends to keep the Alakai in Hawaii.

As the Superferry sails away from its its year-long inter-island service as a passenger vessel, Fargo says the company must now look for other work for the Alakai.

“There are other ferry operations that would like to expand their service and certainly the military may very well want to lease this particular ship,” he said.

Since the beginning of their fight to block the Superferry from coming to Hawaii, opponents have said military use was always the intention.

As evidence, in 2007, they referenced a Pacific Business News article where Superferry Board Chair John Lehman said the ship will be used to transport stryker units.

“Lehman told PBN that this logistical plan will make it easier for soldiers to train when the stryker brigade comes to Hawaii,” Kauai Superferry activist, Andrea Noelani said at the time.

“And that’s absolutely not true. We certainly wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to paint the Alakai in the manner that we did, to appoint her with 836 first class seats,” said Fargo.

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, Fargo believes the Alakai will return.

“Our intention is not to dissolve Hawaii Superferry as an entity,” he said.

Whether or not that intention will stay afloat in the midst of legal turmoil, Fargo says the real tragedy is the loss of jobs.

“You’ve got 250 great people who are going to lose their jobs as a result, and there may be more secondary impacts and for no good reason,” Fargo said.

Fargo says they may hire back Superferry employees, if they find a company to use the Alakai.

Governor Linda Lingle will ask the State Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling, because it could threaten other legislation.

Source: http://www.khnl.com/global/story.asp?s=10040176

http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/news03.php?nt_id=27959&ct_id=1&ct_name=1

U.S. military considering return to Vieques

By CB Online Staff

Testimony at U.S. Senate committee hearing signals interest by military to return to island municipality in a limited capacity.

SAN JUAN (AP)_ Six years after protesters were able to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques, military authorities are considering a return to the island municipality.

In a testimony before the U.S. Senate this week, military authorities said the island is in an ideal location to expand the nation’s reach in the Caribbean and could potentially play a role in air surveillance or the war against drugs.

The U.S. Navy’s exit in 2003 was considered a victory by a significant part of the Puerto Rican population. The military exercises carried out on the island were considered harmful to the island’s environment and to the health of its 9,000 inhabitants.

However, Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi said Thursday the Puerto Rico government is open to establishing a low-impact military presence in Vieques.

Pierluisi, part of a new political administration in favor of Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state of the U.S., said the island has a “moral obligation,” of contributing to the nation’s defense.

“I am sure most of our people are more than willing to continue helping the U.S. Special Forces in any reasonable way that doesn’t include bombing our rare but valuable natural resources,” he stated in a declaration sent to the Associated Press.

The U.S. started military maneuvers on Vieques’ eastern coast in 1948 after obtaining 25,000 cuerdas (one cuerda is equal to 0.97 acres), about a third of the island municipality.

In 1999, protests against the military presence on the so-called Isla Nena grew in intensity after a bomb accidentally killed David Sanes, a Vieques-born security guard posted at an observation tower.

In 2001, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton announced the U.S. Navy would finish its maneuvers in Vieques. The Navy finally exited the island municipality in May 2003.

During his testimony before the Senate’s Armed Forces Committee Tuesday, Northern Command chief Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr. said the island could contribute to the national defense, “in a limited capacity.”

“We want to work with the Navy and the National Guard to see how we can take advantage of some of the systems and equipment that are still on the island of Vieques,” Renuart said.

March 19, 2009

Hawaii Superferry seeking new work for Alakai

Advertiser Staff

Hawaii Superferry will search for options to lease out the Alakai after a state Supreme Court ruling on Monday found that the law which allowed the catamaran to operate during an environmental review was unconstitutional, Superferry president and chief executive officer Thomas Fargo said this morning.

Fargo called the court’s ruling “a terrible decision” but said it was the law. He said Superferry will look for commercial and military charter options for the Alakai and a second catamaran but left open the possibility of resuming ferry operations in Hawaii in the future.

The Alakai left Honolulu Harbor early this morning for its final round trip to Maui to collect passengers and vehicles. Many of the Superferry employees, who are being laid off tomorrow, went on the voyage.

“The problem before us today is there appears to be no short-term solution to this ruling,” Fargo said at a news conference at the harbor’s Pier 19.

“To conduct another EIS (environmental impact statement), even with the work done to date, and move it through the legal review that it would have to go through might take a year or so. And other options don’t provide the certainty that’s necessary to sustain a business.

“As a result, we’re going to have to go out and find other employment for Alakai, for now. Obviously, this is not even close to our preferred and desired outcome. We have believed from the very start, and continue to believe, that there’s a clear and unmet need for an interisland high-speed ferry system for this state.

“My hope, our hope, is that the conditions will eventually be such that we can realize that vision here in Hawaii.”

Fargo would not address whether Superferry would repay the state for $40 million in harbor improvements other than to say that the payments were based on fees generated by ferry service. He would also not discuss the extent of the company’s financial losses or the possibility that Superferry might file a lawsuit against the state.

Fargo said Superferry proved, after a year of operation, that it took adequate steps to protect the environment.
Fargo, after mentioning that the military might want to lease the Alakai, addressed speculation by some activists who have opposed the project that Superferry was designed from the start as a military operation.

“That’s absolutely not true,” said Fargo, a former Navy admiral. “We certainly wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to paint Alakai in the manner that we did, to appoint her with 836 first-class seats, to spend the huge sums of money that we did to establish service here in Hawaii if that was our goal.

“The goal that’s unmistakable was to provide regular and reliable commercial ferry service in these Islands.”
Early Superferry executives – and main investor John F. Lehman, a former Navy secretary – had touted the ferry’s military utility in discussions with the state, including the possibility that it could be used to transport the Army’s Stryker brigade between Oahu and the Big Island.

The second vessel, which had been planned for Superferry’s expansion to the Big Island, includes a vehicle ramp that could make it more useful to the military.

Gov. Linda Lingle and state House and Senate leaders have said they would ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider aspects of its ruling. The court found that the Superferry was special legislation written for a single company.

The governor and lawmakers are concerned, among other things, that the ruling will unduly restrict the Legislature’s power.

A contractor hired by the state was almost finished with the environmental review ordered under the law the court struck down. Fargo said it was up to the state whether to complete the environmental impact statement under the stricter guidelines of the state’s underlying environmental review law.

“I’d like to see all of the pieces put in place so that you could operate an interisland ferry system here in Hawaii,” he said.

Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090319/BREAKING01/90319020&template=printart

This is great news!  The Hawai’i Supreme Court ruled that Act 2, the special legislation that retroactively exempted the Hawai’i Superferry from state environmental protection laws, was unconstitutional.  Perhaps this will be the end of the Superferry.

Read the decision here.

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http://www.starbulletin.com/news/bulletin/41333049.html

Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Breaking News
POSTED: 11:12 a.m. HST, Mar 16, 2009

Hawaii Supreme Court rules against Superferry

By Star-Bulletin staff

The state Supreme Court ruled today that the
state law allowing the Hawaii Superferry to
operate while an environmental impact statement
was conducted is unconstitutional.

The Sierra Club had argued that Act 2, a law
passed by the state Legislature in special
session in October 2007, is unconstitutional
because it was targeted to benefit just one
entity, the Hawaii Superferry. Act 2 allowed the
Superferry to provide Honolulu-to-Kahului service
while the environmental study was done.

A Superferry spokeswoman had no immediate comment
on the court’s decision. Sierra Club officials
previously said if the ruling is in their favor
the Superferry would have to cease operations
until the EIS is completed, a process that could
take months.

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