Whew.
Joseph Bonfiglio, public affairs chief for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Honolulu, says the information about possible use of nuclear blasts in construction of the Kawaihae Small Boat Harbor, referred to in an earlier post today, is not accurate.
Bonfiglio, in an email, confirmed my understanding that the convention explosives were used to simulate a nuclear explosion.
In fact, the original Kawaihae Small Boat Harbor was excavated
using conventional high explosives under the Research and Development study
Project Tugboat. The payload was meant to simulate the yield of a nuclear
explosion, but was not radioactive. An entrance channel 830 feet long, 120
feet wide and 12 feet deep; a turning basin 200 feet by 200 feet, 12 feet
deep and a west breakwater 883 feet long were constructed under Project
Tugboat.The info paper is readily available on our website.
The Kawaihae Small Boat Harbor project is in the operations and maintenance
phase. The project was authorized under Section 301 of the River and Harbor
Act of 27 October 1965. The local sponsor is the State of Hawaii, Department
of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation
(DBOR).I hope that this clears up any misconceptions.
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My unhappiness with blogs stems from exactly this kind of no-bother-to-check tossing out of bad info. It’s like Drudge. DID WE HAVE A NUKE AT KAWAIHAE?
How about asking before posting? Like real reporters do.
Sorry, Bob.
Did I say there were nukes? No.
I said a DLNR staff submittal said there were nukes, and suggested it would be good to clarify the issue up front.
So far, so good.
And it resulted in a public clarification by the Army Corps.
Good result, no?
No, I didn’t report it fully before letting the DLNR agenda item raise the question.
Was it bad info?
No, it was info contained in a Board of Land and Natural Resources official document.
It may have been wrong info, but wasn’t “bad”.
Or so it seems to me.
I would recommend The Firecracker Boys: H-bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement by Dan O’Neill.
It is the story of an effort to use nukes to blast a harbor for a mine in northern Alaska. It covers a lot of the ‘nukes for peace’ business.
A little “Mouse that roared”, a little “Doctor Strangeglove” and in retrospect basically
terrifying.
Albertini is well known for construing his own version of things and convincing others that it’s the “truth”.
Jim didn’t say it. A state office said it. They were wrong. Not Jim’s fault.
Bob is way off-base here. When I read Ian’s original post, I did not interpret it to mean he uncritically accepted the information in the DLNR report. I saw him asking if this could possibly be true.
What Bob is taking as a sign of Ian’s sloppy reporting is more properly seen as evidence of Bob’s poor reading comprehension.
I have generally liked Bob’s reporting and commentary over the years. But Bob is the kettle here. I have read so many things in his Midweek columns over the year which reflected his inability or unwillingness to poke around a little bit before offering his opinion. It is as if he skims the paper and then pontificates, with no real “Value added,” like a grumpy old man sipping Whiskey Sours and sharing his “wisdom” to an ever smaller circle of listeners.
While I happen to share many of his biases, I rarely learn anything new from reading his column so I rarely bother. He knew somethings once, and some of that old knowledge might still have validity. But he hasn’t had a fresh idea in years.