Hawaii Kite/Windsurfing Ban - Deferred, but for how long?
 

you all see this?

Report Title:

Ocean Recreation; Sailboards



Description:

Prohibits operators of sailboards from approaching within 200 feet of a swimmer or surfer in the ocean.

THE SENATE
S.B. NO.
2091

TWENTY-FOURTH LEGISLATURE, 2008

STATE OF HAWAII

A BILL FOR AN ACT

RELATING TO SAILBOARDS.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:


SECTION 1. The legislature finds that surfers and swimmers using Hawaii's oceans for recreation face a danger from operators of sailboards and kiteboards. Sailboarders and kiteboarders often operate their craft at high speeds in areas crowded with surfers and swimmers. Kiteboards and sailboards are much heavier and faster and could cause serious injury if they were to collide with a swimmer or surfer. The purpose of this Act is to ensure water safety by prohibiting the operator of a sailboard or kiteboard from approaching within two hundred feet of a swimmer or surfer in the water.

SECTION 2. Chapter 200, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by adding a new section to part II to be appropriately designated and to read as follows:

"§200- Operation of sailboards and kiteboards. No person shall operate a sailboard or kiteboard within two hundred feet of another person swimming or using a surfboard within the waters of the State.

For the purposes of this section, "sailboard or kiteboard" means any type of board that is propelled by a detachable sail or kite apparatus.

For the purposes of this section, "surfboard" means any type of board that is used for the sport of surf-riding and includes boards commonly known as "body boards"."

SECTION 3. This Act does not affect rights and duties that matured, penalties that were incurred, and proceedings that were begun, before its effective date.

SECTION 4. New statutory material is underscored.

SECTION 5. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.



INTRODUCED BY:
_____________________________

This is a VERY bad move for us. If we had kept away from bystanders/surfers this wouldn't have been forced down our throats at the 11th hour out of nowhere.


We should have until 9 pm tonight Please send in your objection per the following:

SBC Kiteboard came up with the following. Sounds good to me.

Just sent my letter out to as testimony (real important) to:

testimony@capitol.hawaii.gov

and for good measure individually to all members of the senate
Water and Land Committee including:

Senator Clayton Hee
Chair - senhee@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Senator Russell S. Kokubun
Vice-Chair - senkokubun@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Senator Carol Fukunaga - senfukunaga@Capitol.hawaii.gov@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Senator Jill N. Tokuda - sentokuda@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Senator Paul Whalen - senwhalen@Capitol.hawaii.gov


I sent it with the subject line: OPPOSITION TO S.B. #2091 - Ocean Recreation; Sailboards




The letter, (so it's wordy, do a shorter one):

Senator Clayton Hee:

I am shocked that this bill has been proposed to heavily restrict and virtually ban both windsurfing and kiteboarding in Hawaii. Hawaii has been globally recognized as the prime destination for both windsurfing and kiteboarding for a very long time. Both sports were either started or in large measure developed and expanded through the marvelous ocean environment and culture of strong watermanship bound to your islands.

I have visited Hawaii on multiple occasions as have numerous friends. Our primary reason for these visits often several weeks to months in duration was to practice windsurfing and kiteboarding. Substantial revenues were earned by numerous Hawaiian businesses in these visits. If Hawaii legislates against these sports, ironically against global activities largely born and nurtured in these islands, many avid tourists some who vacation in Hawaii several times per year will have to travel elsewhere. This decision would not be voluntary but would be forced upon them by the Hawaiian Legislature in an ironic twist. Numerous Hawaiian businesses dependent upon windsurfing and kiteboarding will also suffer and may fail as a consequence of this measure if passed.

Kiteboarding can coexist with other water activities. Hawaii has a rich and long tradition of surfing, fishing, swimming, canoeing and more. These activities can be reconciled with windsurfing and kiteboarding through effective management. Such management has been successfully called upon to reconcile surfing, fishing, swimming and canoeing through responsible practices hundreds of times across the globe. Good management can improve the safety at which many things are practiced from automobile and aircraft operation to even the practice of windsurfing and kiteboarding. Does government exist to serve the people or to harm commerce, livelihoods and beneficial tourism?

I strongly request that you not support this bill which will not only cost Hawaii well deserved tourist and retail revenues but also potentially destroy a decades long global reputation as a primary birthplace of windsurfing and kiteboarding.

Sincerely,



PLEASE send those letters out, not so many hours left before the deadline. 9:45 pm EST, 3:45 pm PST, or 2:45 pm in Hawaii, TODAY!

It is very important that Hawaiian residents on here send in testimony emails. I think your thoughts will count even more than that of us visitors. I am concerned about not only what this may do to riding in Hawaii but the serious negative precident it may offer to other areas. Please make your feelings known to the legislature.

Requiring a 200 ft. offset if strictly enforced could end windsurfing and kiting in many areas in Hawaii. This is not a bogus threat, it is serious.

Rick, you repeated Sen Kokubun's email, what is email for Sen Fukunaga? Guessing it's senfukunaga@, but what to make sure.

JP

Thanks for catching that JP. It's fixed now.

letter sent earlier today.

So important to stay abreast of these things because it's harder to undo a bad law than to create one. The sooner and louder people respond (intelligently and respectfully) to this stuff the better.

Many laws get adopted from one town, city, state,
to another. Many of these well meaning politicians may not understand the sport from our perspective and that's a huge problem. We pay for them to make the laws..and then pay someone else to unmake them.


slightly off topic but if they (our govt) are so interested in saving lives why is smoking legal (kills millions every year), and how do they justify spending millions of $ on hassling Roger Clemens over HGH usage? It's a crazy world.

This just in from Alex on Oahu:

http://kiteoahu.com/

Letter sent.

Are the major players in both sports aware of this? I would assume they use Hawaiian Waters to do their R&D. Could be a big blow to them if this passes.

There may well be a round two in this thing. Unlike this time where it was hurried into place without much public notice, next time should come in clear view, I hope. The interests in windsurfing and kiteboarding should be prepared and ready to deal with this thing prior to the next vote.

More info on the bill, what happened and may happen in the future:

Proposed 200' Kite Ban on Maui Deferred
John Bryja
The Hawaii Senate Committee on Water and Land deferred a proposed bill this afternoon that would have banned windsurfing and kiteboarding within 200 feet of swimmer. According to the bills sponsor, Senator Les Ihara Jr, the move "effectively dismissed it from further consideration" (at THIS TIME).

Continued at: http://www.sbckiteboard.com/News?new...81&uniqid=1015

It looks like Sen Hee is on our side, got this response from him.

To: testimony@capitol.hawawii.gov Thank you for your email. I agree with most of your comments and will ask the members of the committee to not move this measure, introduced by Senator Les Ihara, forward for further consideration.



Thank you again.



Clayton Hee

I got the same one from him, and another one with how find the correct email address for testimony and check for future hearings:

Thank you for your testimony.

This is an automated response to acknowledge receipt of your email. Due to the high volume of testimony that we receive, we are unable to respond individually to requests for acknowledgement of your email submissions. Please do not respond to this message.

Please note that this address, testimony@capitol.hawaii.gov, is to be used only for testimony being directed to Senate committees. Each House committee has a dedicated email address for receipt of testimony. If you have sent testimony for an upcoming House committee hearing, please re-send it to the appropriate House email account. If you are not sure where to send your testimony, please review the following instructions:

To be sure that your testimony is being directed to the correct email address, always check the hearing notice:

1. Go to the legislature’s website at www.capitol.hawaii.gov.

2. Select “Bill Status and Documents.”

3. In the “2007 Interim/2008 Regular Session Hearing Notices” box, click the “Get Current Hearing Notices” button to get a list of all measures scheduled for hearing by Senate and House committees. The list will be in chronological order by hearing date and time. You can access a hearing notice by clicking on the date-and-time hyperlink in the first column.

4. In the bottom portion of the hearing notice, you can find the correct address for submitting email testimony. Other important information, including the deadline for timely submissions and ways to request special assistance or auxiliary aids to help you participate in the legislative process, is also included in this section.

Mahalo,

Hawai'i State Senate

Glad you guys heard back. I didn't receive any confirmatory email except for the last autoresponse. Doesn't matter, seems like enough comments got in to compel them to shelve this action, for now. Thanks for jumping on this!

If we could respond with equal vigor here in keeping guys out of swim zones, we should have clear kiting all over.

We're going to be podcasting with Martin Kirk and Neil Hutchinson on AsNews.net/The Kiteboarder this Thursday. Martin was at the meeting and has the full scoop on how this thing even got to this level and is in the same page as Neil as far as activism starting at the grass roots level to proactively protect our riding spots and foster relations with community/government officials.

Kent M. may join us... working out details Monday....wish we could do a whole forum of key individuals but we don't have our new stuff .....

Great ideas Marina! Looking forward to hearing about Martin's insight on how things went off the rails in Hawaii.

Thank you for having Neil onboard to help give us a good look at reality, not the kind we want either and to talk about the simple things we can do to ease the heat and keep us flying.

Hey Kent, come on down. Haven't heard you on a Podcast yet. Here's your time, looking forward to what you have to say and learn what Cabrinha is doing to encourage sustainable rider behavior. Not a loaded question, I know you have been doing a number of things for a while to keep us free and flying.