RANK   PREVIOUS   COMPANY



  

1            

2          Monsanto

Hawai`i

  

2            

3          Weinberg

Foundation

  

3            

1          Dowling Co.



  

4            

4          Maui Electric

Co.

  

5            

5          Makena Resort

  

6            

8          Tesoro Hawai`i

  

7            

9          Wailuku Water

Co.

  

8            

6          Maui Land & Pineapple Co.



  

9            

7          Alexander & Baldwin



 

10          

10         Hawaiian Telcom











DAM INVESTIGATION DAMNS HC&S



Oooh, A&B is in trouble. Okay, maybe not actual trouble. But

they—or rather their subsidiary Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar—is

definitely in the hot seat. That’s because the U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers announced last week it will rigorously examine 11 dams across

the state, including HC&S’s Reservoir 24 in Paia—mostly because of

their proximity to urban development, according to a Jan. 11 Honolulu Advertiser

story. The earthen Reservoir 24 dam, which has been in more or less

continuous operation since 1917, is one of four Maui dams classified as

“High Hazard” last year following the Koloko Dam disaster on Kauai. In

mid-March 2006, HC&S Plantation Manager Steve Holaday told The Maui News

that his company “does everything it can to actively manage the flow

into and out of the reservoir so as to protect the public’s safety.”

But that’s not really what the Army Corps of Engineers found when they

conducted a “limited visual dam safety inspection” of the dam. In their

May 2006 report, the Army Corps found that the dam’s downstream channel

was “unsatisfactory”—namely because it was “too small to contain flow

for this dam.” And that posed a threat because “Houses exist along the

flood plain downstream of the dam.” Indeed, the army engineers

determined that HC&S has used the dam for irrigation but kept the

accompanying reservoir dry since 1989 for exactly that reason, leading

them to conclude that “Urgent corrective action is required.”





HOME SALES FALL



More bad news for local homebuilders like Dowling, Maui Land &

Pine and A&B: In 2006, according to the Realtors Association of

Maui (and a Jan. 9 Pacific Business News

story) just 1,088 single-family homes sold, which was down from 1,316

in 2005. What’s worse is that people bought 2,050 Maui condos in 2005,

but only 1,210 in 2006. In addition, the median price of a

single-family stood in December at a paltry $632,500—a mere fraction of

the December 2005 price of $722,500, though the median condo price did

rise $70,000 to $472,500 during the same period. Of course, working

people still can’t afford a home here, which means builders will still

be raking in some of that big money. MTW