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Maui County
The Maui 10
Who's the county's most powerful player?
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December 21, 2006
RANK PREVIOUS COMPANY
1
1
Dowling Co.
2
2
Alexander & Baldwin
3
3
Weinberg Foundation
4
4
Maui Land & Pineapple Co.
5 8 Monsanto Hawai`i
6
9
Maui Electric Co.
7
5
Makena Resort
8
6 Tesoro
Hawai`i
9
7
Wailuku Water Co.
10
10
Hawaiian Telcom
MONSANTO PUT DOLL ON THE DOLE
There aren't too many companies on the Maui 10—hell, there aren't
too many companies on the planet Earth—who can afford to pay millions
of dollars to a world famous epidemiologist for more than two decades
without anyone knowing about it until a year after his death. But
somehow, some way, good ol' Monsanto—maker of fine but notoriously
controversial genetically modified foods—did. According to the Dec. 8,
2006 Guardian, Monsanto kept Sir Richard Doll—the first scientist to
prove conclusively that smoking causes lung cancer—on the dole, paying
him as much as $1,500 a day in the mid 1980s. During that time, Doll
kept the Monsanto consultancy out of his scientific papers and the
public eye, even as he produced research saying there was no link
between Monsanto-manufactured dioxin herbicides used during the Vietnam
War and cancer—a conclusion disputed by the World Health Organization.
MECO HIKES RATES?
Gotta love them public utilities. If they want more money, all they
have to do is ask the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for
permission to start charging customers more. Now MECO hasn't gotten a
rate hike since January 1998, but they're asking now. What's more,
their owner Hawaiian Electric Co. is asking for a rate increase even
though they still have a hike pending before the PUC. "We [HECO] have
been incurring much higher operation and maintenance costs for the
electrical system to maintain reliable service and we've made some
significant capital investments since the last case," HECO spokesman
Lynne Unemori said in the Dec. 13 Honolulu Star-Bulletin. "That would
be the same overarching reason for the Maui Electric case as well."
What, you thought those pretty windmills atop Thousand Peaks were going
to save you money? MTW
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