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Getting around: Superferry's kryptonite

THE HONOLULU ADVERTISER reports that protests and a court order have (at least temporarily) stopped the Hawaii Superferry, which I wrote about earlier this week on Furthermore. According to the Advertiser, Superferry executives are confident that they can survive the crisis. "We have the financial wherewithal to weather this storm," a member of the Superferry board told the paper.

I have my doubts. The kind of environmental review that protesters are seeking can take years, and it seems unlikely that the Superferry's owners can cover payroll and financing costs for that long, however deep their pockets are.

Whether or not the company survives, this episode should serve as a warning to new businesses in environmentally sensitive areas. Just because your company has been granted an exception from environmental rules doesn't mean you're off scot-free. There's still public opinion to worry about. Even a small number of protesters can shut down a multi-million-dollar business. The truth is that Superferry was stupid to avoid an environmental study that could have given them greater legitimacy and wider public support.

Imagine if Superferry executives had received their exemption and then said: "Well, we care about Hawaii, so we're going to do an environmental impact assessment anyway." Sure, the study would probably have exposed that the Superferry could pose a danger to some marine life. But most Hawaiians travel island-to-island by plane, which is incredibly unfriendly to the environment in a different way. An environmental impact assessment would have made the trade-offs involved in any environmental debate clear. On balance, Superferry would probably have come out on top: After all, many other archipelagos are served by similar systems.

Instead, the company decided, with the state's blessing, to avoid a time-consuming environmental review. Now their rush to get up and running them is costing them dearly, and some people in the company are probably wishing they had just gone ahead and done the impact assessment. It would have insulated them from exactly the kinds of criticisms they're facing now. And it's too bad, because those $5 introductory fares were a really great deal.