WIR’s Second General Session was billed as “Smart Growth and Tourism: Values and Carrying Capacity.” It featured two key players in the fight over Hawaii’s efforts to market to the tourism industry: Robert J. Fishman, CEO, Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) and Jeff Mikulina, executive director, Sierra Club Hawaii Chapter. The Sierra Club is suing HTA in an effort to require the authority to undertake an environmental impact study based on a state law that requires environmental studies as a condition of receiving state funds.

Even though both promised no mention of the lawsuit, it came up anyway. Fishman started off innocently enough talking about the environmental carrying capacity of a visitor destination and outlining the principles behind the authority’s marketing efforts, which include a “relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction” and a commitment “to treasure every native host culture and the unique pristine, God-given environment.

“We have a history since statehood of a unique sensitivity toward our environment,” Fishman said.

It only took about 10 minutes into his remarks before Fishman raised the lawsuit, soon to be decided in Hawaii’s Supreme Court and closely watched by state tourism officials across the county. He prefaced the first foray by telling the audience that tourism accounts for 26 percent of the state’s gross product, and then launched the first salvo. “The lawsuit’s damage lies in its polarization.”

He continued: “It is equally unenlightened to destroy your environment on the way to building your business economy as it is equally unenlightened to destroy your business economy on the way to saving your environment. … [Our] approach to tourism is broader than just marketing. [We look at] outreach, infrastructure, the environment.”

As if to disparage the need for an environmental impact study, as sought by the Sierra Club, Fishman told the audience about a “massive” ($1.2 million) study to assess the “carrying capacity” of the islands, undertaken in conjunction with a 1998 task force on reviving Hawaii’s economy. Its goal is to help balance economic strength with the carrying capacity of the environment, including the basic infrastructure already in place.

The study will look at “models over time,” identify disadvantages and assess the impact of tourism on the water supply, water quality, solid waste disposal, infrastructure, energy use, beach erosion, character of bays and estuaries, coral reef ecosystem, and forest reserves.

“The goal is not to continue the linear growth of the number of visitors per year,” he claimed (Hawaii had seven million visitors in 2000) “but to increase the amount of money they spend.”

Next at bat: Jeff Mikulina from the Sierra Club. Mikulina brought a slide presentation, packed with charts, statistics and ingenious ways to illustrate the impact of cars on the islands.

Carrying capacity, he said, attempts to answer “How many is too many.” It is not easy to assess. It’s not isolated and can give birth to no magic number, he suggested.

According to Mikulina, Hawaii can expect a 15 percent increase in tourists (or, as he called them, “de facto population”) over the next five years. The state, he said, is home to 500 endangered species. It is not sustainable. It imports 90 percent of its food and uses oil for 95 percent of its energy needs. There is one car for every 23 feet of road in the state.

Given this set of facts, how do you address the issues arising from them, he asked. And responded: “You set measurable indicators. You set standards for the indicators. And the standards you set can vary from place to place.”

Throughout his presentation, Mikulina appeared to be taking aim at the “carrying capacity” study, popping up slide statistic after slide statistic; painting discrete rather than universal scenarios. Along the way he claimed that many rules are broken in Hawaii, and posed the rhetorical question: “Are we out to please the visitor industry or the whole community?”

The Q & A that followed his presentation accented the tension between the two sides even more. In response to a question about how the hotel tax should be spent, Mikulina said $1 for $1, or one-half should go to tourism. one-half should go to the environment.

Fishman, for his part, mostly ducked the question, replying that user fees may be a more appropriate way to help the environment. But this idea came after a preamble that began: “The Sierra Club and we have different roles in the cosmos. They’re involved in social engineering. They don’t have to run anything.

“HTA, on the other hand, is not charged with preserving Hawaii’s environment. They have different responsibilities. At the local level, should we impose Sierra Club standards, or should the standards come from science or the community’s values?”

The Hawaii State Supreme Court has yet to rule on the case.