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Council bills on water list only help developers

The new bills passed by Maui County Council affecting the Upcountry water meter list (The Maui News, March 23) miss the real problem facing individual residents who have applied for new or upgraded water service. It appears that these two bills were passed solely for the benefit of developers who have properties on the list, and not for the individual homeowners.

An extra 30 days to respond to a water meter offer and an additional two years to complete the requirements of funding public infrastructure upgrade will not help individual homeowners. Many families on the list would like an additional meter so that they can subdivide their property for their families.

We, like many other individual homeowners on the list, could not afford the $1.7 million it would have cost us to upgrade the county’s inadequate infrastructure. Because of this cost, we were forced to decline our meter upgrade offer two years ago and we still could not afford it now, nor would we be able to three years from now.

Many years ago, the county (not individual homeowners) upgraded the inadequate waterline on Kamehameiki Road using public funding, but now is unwilling to do the same for sub-standard waterlines on other public roads. Instead, the county spends millions of dollars hiring lawyers to investigate each other and requires individual citizens to upgrade public utilities.

Charles and Linda Chandler

Kula

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