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Maui County
The Maui 10
Who's the county's most powerful player?
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February 15, 2007
RANK PREVIOUS COMPANY
1
1
Weinberg Foundation
2
2
Maui Land & Pineapple Co.
3
3
Dowling Co.
4
4
Maui Electric Co.
5
5
Makena Resort
6
6
Tesoro Hawai`i
7
8
Alexander Baldwin
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9
Wailuku Water Co.
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10
Hawaiian Telcom
10 7 Monsanto Hawai`i
PLANT THIS!
Bad news for genetically modified organism (GMO)/herbicide
manufacturer Monsanto this week: on Feb. 6, 2007, U.S. District Judge
Henry Kennedy ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has
been far too lenient in approving applications to grow GMOs that
haven't yet been authorized for commercial use. The specific instance
cited in the case was an Oregon application by Scotts Co. to plant 400
acres of grass—we're talking actual grass here, not "grass"—designed to
resist Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. The USDA approved it with
apparently little oversight. "The USDA received about 1,000
applications last year, most of which were approved quickly with no
formal environmental impact reviews," reported the San Jose Mercury
News the day of the ruling. "Kennedy ruled that the agency must give
more scrutiny to applications to determine if detailed environmental
assessments should be required." A coalition of individuals and
anti-GMO organizations filed the suit back in 2003, and they're
ecstatic. In a Feb. 7 press release, Joseph Mendelson, the legal
director for the Center for Food Safety, which was one of the parties
that filed suit against the USDA to stop Scotts' plan, called the
ruling a "significant victory" that will have far-reaching effect. "The
Court was clearly concerned that the agency has put our nation's
environment at risk by exempting many of these field trials from
environmental review," he added. "That's why the judge made the
decision broadly to apply future field trials of genetically engineered
crops."
CALLING ALL CONSULTANTS
For the first time in, well, a really long time, Carlyle Group-owned
Hawaiian Telcom is out of the cellar on news that they've replaced
consulting firm BearingPoint, Inc. with consulting firm Accenture, Ltd.
The reason is, of course, BearingPoint's inability to deal with the
torrent of customer complaints over bad bills following Carlyle Group's
takeover of the Hawai`i phone company last year. In exchange for not
holding BearingPoint liable for the complaint bonanza, that company
agreed to pay Hawaiian Telcom $52 million and forget earlier invoices
for work totaling $30 million. MTW
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