Comments taken from reports to Department of Health. Maui has extremely high electric prices so most residents do not have air conditioning. They depend on open windows during the night to cool their homes and to make sleeping bearable. HC&S begins burning as early as 4am.

A side-effect of the smoke is that residents end up disconnecting their smoke alarms which go off daily.



5:00am a large cane burn fire, red in the sky, with huge black cloud building above it, already blowing west across north Kihei. Closing windows & alerting friends & neighbors to do the same. Likely toxic black plastic pcb field irrigation hose ash rain to fall on my neighborhood soon, as does often. Beginning to rain black ash at 5:28am

Smoke from the morning burn filled my home at 6:15am, I closed up all the windows as quickly as possible. Burning eyes and throat. I also have asthma which is aggravated with the smoke.

Smoke at ground level. In the house.

ANY ash is excessive ash and individuals have to clean it up, not the company that created it. Clean clothes on the line, patios and lanais - all must be swept or washed again each morning.

Kupuna started coughing around 5:30 rest of us 6:30. This is almost daily!

Smoke odor is filling my apartment as I wake for work. No sign of large plume outside. it must have been an early burn. Woke up w acute asthma and teary eyes.

Starting my day with a cane burn headache! The smoke is in the air and my house.

I love spending my day off cleaning, to wake the next day and find ash all over my things. Not as bad as the smoke that fills my house but still not nice!

Was woken up again by smoke in my bedroom at 6:30am. Closed the windows to avoid breathing the smoke. HC&S should grow some good food for the people of the island on instead of nasty cane.

It seems I am having to clean an excessive amount of ash every other day...that is if I can clean it up. Two days 8n a row this time. And it isn't just the clean up it ia the illness my son an I wake up with every time they burn. Poisoning my family and I can not be this legal!!!

This is highly toxic and is causing everyone in our neighborhood to suffer. Enough is enough

Thick smoke hung in the valley all day! Sneezing and itchy eyes from morning till night.

Choking smoke smoke detectors in apt went off early this morning.

Ground smoke in North Kihei at 9:30 am Dec 8

Driving down the hill this morning

Woke again to acrid smoke filling the house. Massive headache along with sore throat and dry mouth. Our 6 month old kitten is gasping for air today. Breathing is raspy and this is after taking her to the vet last week after 4 days of continuous burns.

today is the picture of the "Bad Burn" example on your website. it looks like LA in the 1960's. it is not a good day to burn cain. it is dangerous can't breath, had to evacuate my home and go to north shore of island.

Drove through a cloud of smoke from the cane fields at 8:45 am. I had to roll up my windows

Smoke burning nostrils and lungs in kihei

Choking smoke

Smoke on ground - affecting breathing. Terrible!

Once again there is smoke at ground level. I can smell it inside my car. This makes 5 days of smoke in the last week alone.

Smoke smell and brown colored air lingering in the air on our street. Neighbors and I are coughing. Please stop

So smokey. Can hardly see the mountain. Hard to breathe

Smoke everywhere. Very hard to breathe. Hard to see. Eyes burning.

All over the ground at the site of the burn. And a big dark brown cloud blocking the sun. I hope you have seen the over 1100 miserable complaint comments mostly from people in Kihei that are sick or can't breathe and have black smoke residue all over their homes and yards. Just isn't right.

Heavy smoke odor permeating the entire house. My eyes are burning and watering.

Stepped out of my home this morning and couldn't stop sneezing. Drove to work in wailuku and it got worse. Big black cloud overhead. Allergy symptoms all day. Had to send an employee home because of a reaction to the smoke (headache

Heavy smoke and ash at Molokini bird and marine preserve

when will the paid government officials protect the citizens of Maui?

Burned on a rainy and no wind day. Think smoke in kihei and wailea. Even the weather report is showing smoke today.

People ask, "What happens if they stop burning?"

Answer: They use mechanical harvesting like the rest of the world. There is a combine that HC&S can use which cuts, strips leaves, chunks and loads into a truck that is fast and efficient. HC&S has 2 of these but A&B isn't giving them the capital to buy any more because they know that sugar's days are numbered due to it being a worldwide commodity and competition from areas with lower taxes, land prices, labor prices, fuel prices and water prices.

For the 60% of the land that HC&S says they can't harvest with the combines, they many times now harvest with their same antique equipment (knock down and put in rows with a cat, pick up with a crane and truck off to the mill)

So the end of burning does not mean the end of cane.

As long as HC&S gets to bank their land and water in anticipation of the economy allowing them to develop, they'll still grow cane even though they don't make a profit on it.

Another Question: Won't they just pave it over if sugar operations stop?

Answer: If we had a government that was not controlled by HC&S parent company A&B no. Because they couldn't get the zoning changed.

But reality is that politicians fall all over themselves to do whatever A&B asks so this is no bar to development.

And that is why the sugar operation has NO EFFECT on the pace of development - A&B is already converting fields to development as fast as (or faster than) the economy can absorb it.

Farm cane, don't farm cane. Entirely irrelevant to the pace that A&B develops.