“Insanity!”
Talk about rubbing salt into a wound. Days ago, Wai Kai Commercial Development announced that the “world’s largest deep standing wave” being built in Ewa Beach, on the glorious isle of Oahu, was officially filled with water, 1.7 million gallons of fresh, delicious, H2o, and ready to polka. Delighted tourists, who flew from across the world, shrieked with delight as they pushed through gate, towels and soft-topped surfboards in hand, thrilled to wiggle and giggle.
A problem?
Well.
The island is currently experiencing a major water crisis thanks to depleted aquifers laced with forever chemicals.
Ernest Lau, manager and chief engineer of the Board of Water Supply, described the opening as “unfortunate” in an interview with CBS News but said there was nothing his team could do as wave pools have not been expressly forbidden.
“The wave pool, that’s a sore spot for our community,” he said. “And we’re learning from that. It is going to use a lot of fresh water to fill the pool. And every five years, they’re going to have to change that water in the pool, so it is a large use of fresh water periodically.” Lau added that developers told him using seawater or recycled wastewater instead “was not an option they really could handle.”
While the developers have vowed amazing World Surf League-esque sustainability initiatives, including plans to become “Sustainable Tourism and Outdoors Kit for Evaluation” certified and possibly have Connor O’Leary come plant little bushes, it has not been enough to smooth the feathers of angry locals.
“They’re opening the largest wave pool on the island of Oahu in a water crisis,” local resident and water rights activist Healani Sonoda-Pale declared. “…They’re 100 feet away from families who don’t have access to clean drinking water. And there you see the dichotomy of the haves and the have-nots of how industry will continue, despite the fact that their neighbors are suffering.”
But at least those have-nots will get to gaze upon a German import. Like a fine sausage, the wave technology comes from Europe’s engineering capital and was inspired by Munich’s famous river wave The Eisbachwelle.
“That’s where the basic idea came from. Long ago when I came to Munich to study, we’d meet daily at the river to surf. And the idea was born in my head that one should develop the technology so it can be built everywhere. Not just in Munich in the river but everywhere in the world, independent of the river, because everybody has so much fun surfing there,” wave founder Rainer Klimaschewski told Reuters.
So, to sum up, all that fresh water being used up is the wound and Germans importing waves to Hawaii is the salt.
Or maybe it’s the other way around.
What do you think?
