Aloha To All Members:
As the president of the Hawaii State Golf Course Superintendent Association it is with great pleasure to welcome everyone to another great year of Golf Course Management in the State of Hawaii. Already it has been an eventful year with three successful televised tournaments and a well deserved congratulations to the entire tournament team and their staff.
On January 11th the Ho’olau’lea Awards Ceremony took place at the Japanese Cultural Center on Oahu. We presented two awards for the Superintendent of the Year, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the membership’s nominations and votes. I have included the bios for both award winners, Robert Itamoto and Scott Nair and let’s give them congratulations for doing a great job of representing the turf industry with Aloha, Dignity and Respect. Great Job!
The board is currently working on a few projects including updating the website, teleconference meetings, yearly calendar, budget, donations and the yearly seminar and golf outing. All of these will be sent out to the membership when completed.
Also, I am attaching some other important information on Legislative Senate Bills that are currently being sent for voting. These bills oppose use of different chemicals and could increase reporting usage within the State of Hawaii. The two of greatest concern is the ban on Glyphosate (Round UP) use on non-agricultural crops.
“Glyphosate is important to all types of industry not only the golf course industry. We need to get the Hotel industry, Department of Transportation, Department of Water, and rest of the Green Industry involved. Glyphosate is one of the safest herbicides that we have available to us as far as environmentally safe. It is also economical to the end user for pricing and effectiveness.” Clint Tolbert
“If you have made use of glyphosate for so called cosmetic weed control purposes in your work or business then you should consider submitting testimony to oppose these bills. If they can ban a product like glyphosate for cosmetic uses then all pesticides used in a similar setting will be targeted next, you can count on it.”
Dr. Joe DeFrank
This is the time where our membership needs to get together and submit testimony like this opposing these bills. Neither has been scheduled for a hearing to date, but once it is scheduled, testimony needs to be submitted on line, mailed or e-mailed. On line is the easiest and takes about 5 minutes to do. A testimony will be submitted on behalf of the HGCSA, but more individual petitions are needed to prove that this bill will impact all of the plant science industry negatively throughout the entire State of Hawaii.
Let all of us continue to enhance and improve all of our association events this year by having more participation by all of our Hawaii State Golf Course Superintendent Association members and the Ohana that surrounds them.
Derrick R. Watts
President 2012-2013
Hawaii Golf Course Superintendent Association