The Honolulu Advertiser from Honolulu, Hawaii • 13

PM EDITION Hie Honolulu Advertiser rrt liiSIDE B2 9 v7 Obituaries LaJ Adults concerned about chickenpox PageB3 Neighbors briefs B3 paid advertisement City editor: Marsha McFadden 525-8090 TUESDAY October 29, 2002 SECTION honoluluadvcrtiser.comlocalnews ww to lb Lee Cataluna Advertiser columnist AAA Next-day counting will save ELECTION money, election officials say 2002 Mite-ybig differences in dust Hiraga said ballots from Lana'i, Moloka'i and Hana will be flown to Kahului, and then sent together with the rest of Maui's ballots to Honolulu. "I anticipate we'll have our delivery collection team accompanying the ballots in the aircraft" to ensure ballot security, Hiraga said Some features of the Nov. 30 special election are being borrowed from how the City and County of Honolulu han- whether that election will be needed, but if it is, he said it would probably be handled much like the Nov. 30 elec-tioa County clerks say they approve of the counting change. "That's something I'm really in favor of," Hawai'i County Clerk Al Konishi said "It will help reduce the cost, I believe.

On our island we'll fly one half (of the ballots) out of West Hawaii and one out of East Hawai'i." Maui County Clerk Roy way," Quidilla said Mink died Sept. 28. Her name remains on the Nov. 5 general election ballot. The Nov.

30 special election to fill the remainder of her term will be held regardless of the outcome of that race. Thirty-eight candidates are seeking the seat. If Mink wins the general election, the state will hold a second special election Jan. 4 to fill the 2nd District seat for the next two-year term. Quidilla said elections officials are not speculating on out Friday, said Rex Quidilla, administrative assistant to state elections chief Dwayne Yoshina.

Observers from the various political parties will be involved in overseeing all parts of the process. "We preserve all the checks and balances this mainder of late Congress-woman Patsy Mink's term. All the ballots would be tallied Sunday, Dec. 1, at one counting center on O'ahu, with Neighbor Island ballots being flown overnight to O'ahu by chartered aircraft The details of the handling of the election were worked By Jan TenBruggencate Advertiser Staff Writer State election officials, breaking a long Hawai'i tradition of counting ballots on election night, have decided to delay the counting until the next day in Nov. 30's special election to fill out the re A delicious use of pumpkin and light Governor renames Honolulu freeways Harris aide seeks ruling on summit 4i 'V A By Mike Leidemann Advertiser Transportation Writer After more than three decades of existence, Honolulu's H-l and H-2 freeways are getting new names.

Gov. Ben Cayetano announced yesterday that the state will name the western portion of H-l the Queen Lili'uokalani Freeway. H-2 will be known as the Veterans Memorial Freeway. The names honor Hawaii's last reigning monarch and the men and women who have served in the military. "As the main lifeline of transportation on O'ahu, it is fitting tribute that the H-l Freeway be named in honor of Hawaii's queen," Cayetano said.

"She was a woman of great compassion and creativity and her legacy of aloha continues." The name will apply to the 19.1-mile stretch of H-l from Middle Street to its end near Honokai Hale on the Leeward Coast. The original 8.1 -mile section of H-l from Middle Street to Kahala will remain the Lunalilo Freeway. Cayetano said all Hawaii's male and female veterans will be acknowledged in the H-2 name. "They risked their lives for freedoms we enjoy today, and we will be eternally grateful," he said The two freeways were built in the 1960s and 1970s but known only by their interstate freeway designations since thea Earlier this year, O'ahu's H-3 Freeway was named in honor of former Gov. John A Bums.

A friend was having an allergy skin test done recently the one where they write numbers on your skin and men poke you with essence of stuff like cat, dog, grass and pollen to see what makes you itch except along with the usual cat, dog, grass, pollen stuff, she noticed that one of the vials of allergens was labeled "Worldwide House Dust" and one said "Hawaiian House Dust" Hawaiian house dust? Oh, the mind races with possibilities: Microscopic pieces of old rice that got stuck in the carpet; flecks of dried poi that became airborne; a layer of mango flower pollen from the nearby tree; a touch of motor oil that wafted in from the VW up on blocks across the street; not to mention the gifts geckos leave behind Turns out the difference between "Worldwide House Dust" and the local kind, at least as far as allergists are concerned, is much more specific: mites. "It's not the inorganic dust particle that people are allergic to, it's the live mite in the dust that the main allergen," explains Dr. James Sweet of the Asthma, Allergy and Sinus Center of Hawaii "There was a paper written by Gary Carpenter awhile ago when he was an allergist at Tripler, and he found that there's two major dust mites, D. Pternoyssinus and D. Fari-nae.

In Hawai'i, 80 percent of one type, D. Pternoyssinus, is more prevalent. On the Mainland, it's more 50-50 in distribution between the two mites," says Sweet Though some allergists test for reaction to both types of mites, others disagree. Dr. Phillip Kuo says, "It doesn't make much of a difference.

Even though they're different mites, the antigen is the same, so the treatment is the same." "In the old days before we knew about dust mites," says Dr. Victoria Wang, "allergy labs from the Mainland would come to Hawai'i and gather people's dust and label that Hawaiian House Dust." The more you find out about dust mites, local or otherwise, the less likely you are to worry about, say, mold "Dust mites, they lay like 25-50 eggs every two to three weeks. There's thousands of these growing on your pillow and mattress. They're microscopic and they eat your dead skin. And so you shed your skin in your bed and that goes into the mattress and pillow and that's their food So you just sleep in your allergen all night," says Sweet, with a decidedly Glenn Grant tone in his voice.

In Hawaii, house mites are the most common allergen. Hawaii's high humidity and warm temperatures are conducive to mite growth. Places like Denver and Phoenix and Las Vegas aren't nearly as mite-y. The answer? Well, there's medicines or allergy shots or, hate to say it, Martha Stewart They do encasement covers," says Sweet "We tell people to put a plastic cover around the pillow and mattress." Or there's Vegas. Lee Cataluna 's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna('i honolulu By Johnny Brannon Advertiser Staff Writer A key aide to Mayor Jeremy Harris has been wrongly targeted for criminal prosecution because of her work on special events that involved major contributors to the mayor's political campaigns, according to an unusual lawsuit filed against the city yesterday. The suit, filed in Circuit Court on behalf of Lynette Char and two nonprofit groups, asks the court to declare that Char and the groups did nothing wrong by organizing environmental conferences paid for with public and private money. Plaintiffs attorney Philip Brown acknowledged that it was unorthodox to ask a civil court to rule on matters pertaining to an ongoing criminal investigation, but said the probe had jeopardized a conference planned for next year. "I think it is unusual, but given the circumstances, I don't know of any other venue where you could seek such relief," Brown said Char and other city workers should be able to organize the 2003 Mayors' Asia-Pacific Environmental Summit without a threat of prosecution hanging over them he said. City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle could not be reached for comment, and an assistant said Carlisle had not yet seen the suit Char is the city's deputy director for enterprise services and was an executive assistant to Harris.

Her husband, Peter, was the chief fund-raiser for Harris' 2000 re-election campaign and his aborted campaign for governor. Peter Char is also president of the two nonprofit groups named as plaintiffs in the suit: Friends of the City and County of Honolulu and the Environmental Foundation. Lynette Char is on the board of directors of each group. Prosecutors have interviewed City Council members and a tax attorney about public money the city granted to the groups or spent in conjunction with them for the conferences, which Harris co-chaired. The city granted $100,000 to the Friends in 1999 for the first environmental event and spent more than $300,000 on one held last year.

The city budget for the current fiscal year includes $100,000 for a conference to be held in June. Private money from international development agencies and Honolulu engineers and See HARRIS, B5 GREGORY YAMAMOTO The Honolulu Advertiser Architecture student Angela Wisco last night won Best of Show in an annual UH School of Architecture pumpkin carving contest. Students are encouraged to try innovative designs, such as the burger that Wisco created. Makapu'u work starts Saturday Wal-Mart opponents organize for blitz Daily highway closure required overhangs to remove large boulders, said Earl Mat-sukawa, of Wilson Okamo-to Associates Inc. the consultant for the Department of Transportation.

Then wire mesh will be hung from the ridge to the street, covering about 900 feet of hillside from just below the upper lookout to just above the lower lookout Road closure will be intermittent for this part of the project, he said. The project should protect motorists from slide material for 10 to 12 years, giving the state time to plan a permanent solution, Mat-sukawasaid, But Kawika Eckart, a city lifeguard at Makapu'u Beach and Waimanalo Neighborhood Board member, said he thought rust and corrosion would short en the life of the mesh. "I've worked there for 15 years. Nothing is sacred against corrosion," Eckart said. Then the community will be subjected to another road closure and businesses would suffer again, he predicted.

However the contractor that is installing the mesh assured the 50 people at a meeting last night at Waimanalo library that the coated wire has outlasted expectation under similar conditions in California. The drive to start the project sooner was sparked by an Oct. 15 landslide that dumped rocks and debris onto the highway. On Friday Gov. Benjamin Cayetano declared Makapu'u a disaster area.

This made it possible to speed up the project. the heart of Honolulu has obvious and far-reaching impacts on the character of a community." The attempt to block the project is an unusual combination of grass-roots community activism and sophisticated advocacy by a union that says it is worried about its members' jobs and the quality of life near the project. Jim Becker, a 76-year-old retired war correspondent, typed out petition forms while his wife, Betty, and others from the high-rise condominium neighborhood near the site went down to the city streets with steno pads in hand to See WAL-MART, B5 By Walter Wright Advertiser Staff Writer Ke'eaumoku-area residents and a local labor union are mounting a last-minute attempt to block or at least reduce the size of Wal-Mart's planned big-box retail complex on the Ke'eaumoku "superblock," opponents of the project say. And, today, the Sierra Club jumped into the effort The project "shouldn't be built without first completing a thorough environmental review of the project," said Naomi Arcand, spokesperson for the club's O'ahu group. "Building the largest Wal-Mart in the nation in By Boise Aguiar Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer WAIMANAIjO Bowing to the wishes of the Waima-nalo community, the state will begin the Makapu'u rockslide mitigation project this week.

Work on the $1.3 million project will begin Saturday three months ahead of schedule and will close Kalaniana'ole Highway from 8:30 am to 4:30 p.m. seven days a week for approximately three weeks in the area where the work will take place. Crews will remove loose material with hand tools and then blast dangerous.