Battle Over Hawaii Geothermal Plant Heats Up : Environment: Critics charge the project endangers a valuable rain forest. State and company officials say the work will tap a vital energy source.

Kaolelo Ulaleo remembers trekking with his grandmother into the rain forest, an enchanting place where feathery ferns grew tall enough to dwarf a small boy.

She taught him to pull roots from the moist earth to make tea and pick berries for traditional home remedies.

“For me, Wao Kele is the spoon that feeds you,” said 41-year-old Ulaleo, who has continued to visit the forest throughout his adult life. “You come inside, and everywhere is God.”

Today, other visitors have come to the forest that Ulaleo treasures, known as Wao Kele o Puna, or Rain Belt of Puna, on the island of Hawaii. Their mark is less subtle.

The bulldozers of True Geothermal Energy Co. have cleared several acres of trees and tangled undergrowth in hopes of tapping volcanic steam for a 25-megawatt power plant. In the process, the industrial newcomers have taken center stage in the struggle over the future of the last major tract of lowland tropical rain forest in the United States.

Opponents in Hawaii and on the mainland argue that geothermal development could destroy a unique and fragile ecosystem by slicing through it with a web of pipes, generators and transmission lines. Hawaii’s forests are especially prized because most of their plants and animals are found nowhere else in the world.

“The greatest danger to any tropical forest is fragmentation,” said Dan Taylor, chief of resources management at nearby Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. “It can only go so far before the whole system collapses.”

Formal challenges have quietly and laboriously made their way through the courts and government hearing rooms for years. Ironically, geothermal energy is usually considered an environmentally benign alternative, and partly for that reason, the early local skirmishes attracted little notice beyond Hawaii’s shores. But the issue of the rain forest changed all that.

“How can we expect to save the rain forests in Brazil and Malaysia if we can’t save our own?” asked Suzanne Head of the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, which has seized on the case as a test for the environmental movement.

As drilling begins in the forest, the struggle has moved into the streets.

Five people were arrested in late October for trying to block trucks hauling equipment to the site, 3 miles deep into the rain forest. Two weeks ago, protesters staged sit-ins at the offices of Gov. John Waihee and held all-night vigils outside to dramatize their call for a moratorium on geothermal development.

Wao Kele o Puna is just part of a sprawling geothermal resource zone designated by the state on the eastern slope of Kilauea Volcano. An ambitious plan designed to promote Hawaii’s energy independence calls for geothermal plants to produce up to 500 megawatts of power, much of it to be carried through undersea pipes to Honolulu and elsewhere in this island chain.

Over the years the plan has provoked opposition from various quarters, with the arguments ranging from the spiritual to the practical.

Some native Hawaiians consider geothermal drilling a violation of the volcano goddess, Pele, and have appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, without success. Now they are challenging the legality of the state’s transfer of 27,000 acres of forest land, including Wao Kele o Puna, to a private estate for development. The case is on appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Nearby residents, soured by noise and noxious fumes from a small, experimental plant outside the forest, have argued against geothermal development on health and safety grounds. They also question the wisdom of drilling near an active volcano.

But the issue that has grabbed the most attention in this environmentally conscious age is the threat to the rain forest.

“It’s not just a native Hawaiian struggle any more,” said Palikapu Dedman, president of the Pele Defense Fund, which has led the legal fight. “It’s everybody’s struggle now.”

Hawaii’s once extensive lowland forests have been all but consumed since the first Polynesian voyagers arrived. The Puna forest’s inaccessibility and proximity to the volcano have helped protect it, until now. Naturalists argue that a geothermal network in the area would hasten the invasion of aggressive, non-native species that have decimated other areas. They also fear the effects of noise, lights and emissions on wildlife.

Tropical rain forests have moved to the forefront of environmental concerns in the past few years as fears over global warming have heightened. The forests are considered crucibles of life itself because they help regulate the Earth’s climate and house nearly half of all plant and animal species. But these rich habitats are fast disappearing as developing countries clear vast areas for timber or agriculture. An estimated 50 million acres a year is destroyed worldwide.

Scientists blame global warming on such deforestation and the burning of wood and fossil fuels. Leaders of industrialized nations, including President Bush, have called on their Third World counterparts to stop the plunder of the rain forests. Although Wao Kele o Puna is tiny by comparison to other tropical forests, environmentalists consider it strategically important to their crusade.

The 25,000-member Rainforest Action Network has begun distributing leaflets to Hawaii-bound travelers at West Coast airports, with fluorescent green stickers that read “Save Hawaii’s rain forests. Stop the Big Island power plant, or I stop traveling.” It also plans a demonstration Dec. 14 at True Geothermal’s Casper, Wyo., headquarters and simultaneous protests in Hawaii and California. And it is calling for a boycott of Hawaii-made products.

“A lot of people have emotional attachments to Hawaii because it’s unique and beautiful,” Head said. “Given the visibility of the rain forest issue and the fact that this one is in our country, I think there is a pretty good chance of actually stopping the project.”

But geothermal energy has strong allies in Hawaii. Along with the electric utility, the state government promotes geothermal power as a cheap, clean and indigenous source of energy.

“Of all the options, geothermal continues to be the most attractive,” said Maurice Kaya of the state’s energy program office. “The power is available 24 hours a day, and the money doesn’t leave the state.”

Hawaii depends on oil, most of it foreign, for 90% of its energy needs. While the islands have abundant wind and sunshine, those energy sources are intermittent and expensive compared to geothermal, Kaya said.

Allan Kawada, Hawaii representative for True Geothermal, said the company chose to drill here because of the state’s commitment to geothermal energy. The developer, he noted, has already endured an exhaustive permit process and plans to use just 350 acres of the forest.

“We’ve gone through about seven years of regulatory approvals,” he said. “These issues have all been discussed at length many times, not just once. We feel we have the right to go forward.”

Geothermal development was originally slated for another forest, known as Kahaualea, further upland on the volcano’s rift zone. But naturalists--and nature itself--intervened. While the proposed drilling was being contested as a threat to a pristine native ecosystem, Kilauea Volcano began to erupt in 1983 and eventually buried much of the area in fresh lava. Some native Hawaiians suggest that Pele was making her feelings known about geothermal development.

In 1985, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources agreed to exchange the private estate lands at Kahaualea for the state-owned Wao Kele o Puna to allow geothermal development in the lowland forest. Environmentalists supported the trade because, like most highland areas, Kahaualea’s ecosystem was more intact than Wao Kele o Puna. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying to save Wao Kele as well.

“Those same people were who were saying ‘Go down to the Natural Area Reserve’ are now saying that we should preserve it,” complained Kawada, shaking his head.

Charles Lamoureux, a professor of botany at the University of Hawaii and a consultant to the developer, contends that the threat to the Wao Kele has been exaggerated. The forest is not pristine, and drilling sites were chosen to minimize the impact on native ecosystems, he said. He also discounts the threat of emissions, noting that wildlife here has evolved around volcanic activity.

“There are patches of good forest and there are patches that aren’t,” Lamoureux said. “The best lowland forest is outside of the geothermal zone. . . . We’re talking about meddling with an area that has already been trashed by strawberry guava, mynah birds and wild pigs (non-native species). I’m not convinced this project will have any measurable effect.”

But other natural scientists disagree. While foreign plants have infested parts of the Puna forest, much of it is considered a rare collection of varied ecosystems that have sprung up after successive lava flows over the centuries. The forest also boasts large populations of native birds, which elsewhere have fled to higher elevations.

“You have a mosaic of different aged forests, from 600 years to the present,” said Jim Jacobi, a botanist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who has mapped native vegetation throughout Hawaii. “It’s a really dynamic set of ecosystems that doesn’t exist anywhere else in Hawaii.

“We’ve lost so many areas in Hawaii,” he added. “What little we have left is priceless.”

Because of its distance from any major land mass, Hawaii is considered a storehouse of revolutionary wonders. Only a few seeds, birds and insects were hardy enough to make their way here after the first volcanic cones burst through the ocean’s surface millions of years ago. From those few early arrivals, a plethora of native species have evolved.

“These are the most isolated islands on the face of the Earth,” noted Taylor. “More than 90% of Hawaii’s biota are endemic, which means they are found only here, a far higher rate than anywhere else. So they’re of tremendous interest.

“We have many lessons to learn,” he said. “But we’re tossing the books out before we’ve read them.”