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Maui%20County
The Maui 10
Who’s the county’s most powerful player?

by By Anthony Pignataro

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