A boy’s injury at a popular scenic overlook is the latest incident leading to a closure of an Oahu tourist site.

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The Koko Crater trail (blue No. 1 on the map) was closed after an 8-year-old fell 20 feet down a shaft on July 5. It reopened five days later with some areas of the summit off limits.

Other Oahu trails, however, have been permanently closed or switched to permit-only status because of hazards or overuse.

The map above shows these sites:

Closed (red)

1. Haiku Stairs (Stairway to Heaven). This route has been officially closed since 1987, but it continued to draw crowds — especially after it began getting attention on social media. Neighbors complained of trespassing, noise and littering, and in April 2024 the demolition of the stairs began.

2. Sacred Falls. It has been closed to the public since 1999, when a rockslide killed eight people. In February of this year, a California couple in their 60s had to be airlifted out after falling from the trail. They had been hiking for about 15 minutes, they told the rescuers.  Several days later, while her husband was still in the hospital, the woman was fined $1,000 for violating the restriction, the state’s parks agency said.

Permit or reservation required (orange)

1. Diamond Head. Since 2022, non-residents have been required to make a reservation ($5 per person) and pay for parking ($10 per car) to hike to the summit that looms over Honolulu.

2. Lulumahu Falls. A day-use permit is required to hike this short out-and-back trail off the Pali Highway.

3. Poamoho Trail. Hikers need a permit (and a high-clearance 4-wheel-drive vehicle) to get to the trailhead for the spectacular and challenging ridge hike.

4. Kuaokala Trail. A day-use permit is required for hiking, biking or four-wheeling in the area accessed through the Ka’ena Point Air Force property.

In addition to the Oahu trails, reservations are required for the Kalalau Trail on Kauai’s famed Na Pali Coast. The out-and-back covers 22 rugged miles, so most people doing the full trip will be spending a night at one of the two camping areas, but day hikers also need a permit.

Houstonian Mike Peppercorn bought property along Lake Livingston in 2008, choosing timberland where his family would have privacy and pasture where they could raise cattle for Future Farmers of America projects. He and his neighbors with acreage along Barrett’s Landing Road all figured that surely this lake—which serves as a reservoir for the City of Houston 80 miles south—was an invaluable public resource that would forever be protected.

That seemed like a safe bet. Lake Livingston, an enormous impoundment of the Trinity River created in 1971, is surrounded by retirement homes, ranchettes, and sprawling RV parks. Part of its shoreline is a popular 635-acre state park, and its waters, stocked with bass, crappie, and catfish, are favored by Texas anglers’ for fishing tournaments.

The reservoir, the largest located entirely in Texas, is owned by the Trinity River Authority and is a major source of Houstonians’ drinking water.

So it shocked Peppercorn‚ and his neighbors Karl Van Brocklin, a retired engineer, and Randy and Ginny Lammers, when energy giant Entergy Texas Inc. (ETI) proposed building a high-powered electrical transmission line, up to 160 miles long, that would run right through their properties and the lake itself. 

One of Entergy’s favored pathways for the project, dubbed the SETEX Area Reliability Route would cut across about a mile of the reservoir. And yet Entergy, records show, 

didn’t ever bother to inform the City of Houston—which gets about 70 percent of the water produced by the reservoir—about its proposed lake routes.

Lammers, Peppercorn and Van Brocklin, all former Houstonians who regularly gather to share research in a barn-like workshop on Lammers’ property, worry about much more than the impact of unsightly poles and power lines on birds and on the people who live, boat, and fish here. They fear that its construction could unleash toxic threats buried in the lake’s sediment that could poison the fish and impair water quality for Houston residents—and for everyone downstream.

“All of these routes are 100 miles long. Going across the lake is one mile. For the safety of everybody’s drinking water, why go across the water?” Peppercorn said in an interview with the Texas Observer.

Until this small group reached out to Randy Macchi, director of Houston Public Works, city officials knew nothing about it. Entergy’s plans call for erecting a variety of steel structures that, if one of the lake routes are chosen, would be anchored to pilings and stand at least 75 to as much as 195 feet tall above the water and could create a mile-long path of obstacles between 125 and 250 feet wide.

After being informed by the Barrett’s Landing bunch, Macchi dispatched a letter of opposition expressing concerns that any route across the lake could adversely impact the city’s water supply. “The construction of powerlines across Lake Livingston could create many undesirable scenarios; none of which are in the best interest of HPW’s customers or the customers of other entities” that receive treated lakewater,” he wrote.

But the city’s letter of opposition arrived too late to be considered. Macchi, who did not respond to the Texas Observer’s request for comment, told KPRC he’s outraged that the utility’s failure to inform city officials shut them out. “There’s a regulatory process, and Entergy notified a lot of entities… The City of Houston was not one of them. And that’s troubling—because this isn’t just a lake; it’s our most critical water source.”

Neighbors Mike Peppercorn (left) and Randy Lammers (right) fear that a proposed electrical line project that may cross Lake Livingston—and their neighborhood—could stir up contaminated sediment. (Photo by Lise Olsen)

The contested project, part of Entergy’s plans to improve the grid that connects Entergy’s power plant in Willis with several counties in East Texas, is now under review by an administrative law judge at the State Office of Administrative Hearings. By August, the judge is expected to make a recommendation on the project to the Texas Public Utility Commission. But a look at the growing number of opponents to Entergy’s proposed Lake Livingston routes shows that Entergy thus far has done little testing to determine how the lake’s ecosystem might be affected by the construction or by the power line itself. 

In the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s comment, the agency’s wildlife division director Alan Cain remarked that the company had done insufficient work to determine the impact on “important rare or protected species and their associated habitats”—including alligator snapping turtles and other creatures that live in or near the reservoir—along the more than 100-mile route proposal. The letter doesn’t specifically mention the Livingston reservoir.

Lake Livingston may look pristine. Indeed, park officials boast that its shoreline is home to multiple nesting pairs of Bald Eagles. Trinity Water Authority officials like to brag that big strides have been made to improve the quality of the river’s sometimes turbid water since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

But this huge reservoir’s waters are still troubled. Since 2017, it has been listed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) as an impaired body of water—contaminated by cancer-causing dioxins and PCBs. In other words, it’s one of the lakes and rivers that the state has designated as needing more protection and clean-up to fully comply with the lofty aims of the Clean Water Act. In 2017, the TCEQ did a limited amount of testing of sediment in the lakebed, probing four sites for toxics, but those samples are miles away from the proposed route, according to a report posted online.

For even longer, an underfunded Texas fish-testing program has documented that some of this lake’s gar and even its prized species of catfish and bass are essentially too dangerous to be regularly eaten by anyone because of those same carcinogenic contaminants. 

Though Lake Livingston and other East Texas lakes along the Trinity River continue to be popular for anglers, the state health department has issued periodic advisories warning children and women of child-bearing age not to eat gar and bass or catfish–and for all others to limit consumption. Surprisingly, Cain, the Texas Parks and Wildlife official who reviewed the proposed pipeline routes, doesn’t mention Lake Livingston or the fish studies that the park service has conducted there over the years.

The source of the poisons found in those fish issues is believed to be contaminated sediment in the bed of the lake—sediment that’s already frequently disturbed by floods and hurricanes but would be stirred up by the process of excavation and construction of those enormous metal towers and high-powered lines.

Entergy has also failed to consider that Lake Livingston is used for “recreational purposes”–despite the ubiquitous presence of fishermen, boaters and campers, according to documents filed by the Trinity River Authority (TRA) Attorneys representing the TRA, which opposes the route through the lake and favors alternatives, have objected that there was “no discussion of recreational uses of Lake Livingston itself and no discussion of boating or potential public safety hazards that would be created.” (The TRA did not immediately respond to the Observer’s request for comment).

For its part, Entergy insisted in a statement released to KPRC that “we are committed to transparency and continue to fully participate in the regulatory review process, which includes opportunities for public input and review of all routes under consideration.”

The utility company’s statement adds it was “also committed to complying with all federal and state environmental regulations, including any permitting requirements under the Clean Water Act. While route evaluation is ongoing and no final decision has been made, each proposed route—including lake and land crossings—is being thoroughly assessed based on a number of factors, including environmental impact, community input, engineering feasibility, and long-term reliability for our customers.” 

Peppercorn argues that Texans who fish, live, and ultimately drink this water deserve more answers before the PUC approves construction through this large reservoir and popular recreation area. He and his neighbors argue that any other route would be better.

“We want a study on the water,” he told Observer. “There’s a lot of people who pull water on the Trinity River and on Lake Livingston–and not all of them have the sophistication of the City of Houston…Why not do the right things?”

The post Proposed Transmission Line Threatens Texas’ Largest Reservoir  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

You can not, without the assistance of the internet or its loud new voice called artificial intelligence, name the heavyweight champion of the world.

OK then, his name is Oleksandr Usyk, a 38-year-old Ukrainian. He unified the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO titles when he defeated another heavyweight in May 2024. That boxer’s name was Tyson Fury, his first name given to him by his father, a former boxer named John Fury, in honor of the boxer Mike Tyson.

You might have recently seen that name when Tyson made $20 million fighting, so to speak, Jake Paul on Netflix last November, or as a wildly successful owner and chatty advocate in the legal marijuana business.

That he is alive and active amazes. But remember when he was young and fighting and going to prison and his name was as prominent as any on the planet? Tyson’s fame was, as writer Mark Kriegel puts it, “a lethal dose of a peculiarly American disease, a form of insanity whose victims include Elvis, Marilyn and Tupac.”

Those words come early in Kriegel’s remarkable new book, “Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson,” which moves from the boxer’s birth in 1966 to 1988, what Kriegel calls “the year of (Tyson’s) first public crack-up.”

Do not think of this as a boxing book, but boxing does make a colorful and primal backdrop for a uniquely American book, filled with enough mentors and monsters to do any Dickens novel justice.

I suppose that somewhere, someone is writing about Usyk, because writers have long been drawn to boxing and boxers. The physical and emotional drama that is inherent in the sport has attracted writers as far back as Homer and Plato. Jack London wrote a lot about boxing and so did George Bernard Shaw, Hemingway, Mailer and A.J. Liebling, who called it the “sweet science of bruising.” Novelist Joyce Carol Oates once called it “the drama of life in the flesh.”

Tyson attracted Mailer and Oates, as well as Gay Talese and Pete Hamill, all neatly represented here, and with whom Kriegel holds his own, as when he writes, “Tyson surpassed my capacity to imagine. Well, not just mine, but ours. His own, too. (This book) began as a kind of essay — an attempt to explain the Tyson phenomenon — and became, perhaps inevitably, a biography. There is a distinct anatomy to his fame. For even among those with no recollection of his prime, the sheer idea of him, the planet’s Baddest Man, remains as potent as ever.”

The only other boxer who comes close to Tyson’s stature was, of course, Muhammad Ali, deserving of our admiration in the ring and out of it. He appears momentarily in “Baddest Man,” the ravages of his ring career heartbreakingly apparent, as when he appears at a Tyson fight and Mailer sadly writes, “Ali now moved with the deliberate calm of a blind man, sobering all those who stared upon him.”

There is so much to savor in the book that it is understandably getting lavish praise — though the antics and dark intentions of such people as promoter Don King, actress Robin Givens and her mother Ruth, the current president of the United States Donald Trump, and Tyson himself are vile and often disgusting.

Kriegel, who spent his early career as a crime reporter for New York City tabloids, has written such previous biographies of Joe Namath, Pete Maravich and Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini. He has been called “one of America’s finest living sportswriters,” and this book has been deemed “a masterpiece from an author who long ago entered the pantheon of the true greats” by writer Wright Thompson.

Michael Spinks goes down after receiving a knockout by Mike Tyson during their 91-second heavyweight fight, June 27, 1988 in Atlantic City. (Richard Drew/AP)

Kriegel’s research is exhaustive. I had no idea or didn’t remember that before she hooked up with Tyson, actress Givens had a relationship with Michael Jordan, or that after attending the 1988 NBA All-Star game at the Chicago Stadium, Givens and Tyson took a limo ride to Father George Clements’ home.

“After 10 minutes of premarital counseling,” he married the couple. Well, not exactly, since they had neglected to obtain a marriage license. They did so when they got back to New York and married in a civil ceremony.

Kriegel interviewed dozens of people and read dozens of books. One of them was Jonathan Eig’s stunning “Ali: A Life,” published in 2017. Eig lives and works here, so I called to find out if he had read “Baddest Man.” Of course, he had and says, “Mark’s book on Tyson is one of the most exciting, satisfying and nuanced portraits of an athlete that I’ve read in years. I think I understand Tyson better than ever now, and that’s saying a lot, because I’ve been fascinated by him since he first emerged as a young fighter. I get the feeling that Mark did a lot of old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting on this, and he’s a fantastic writer.”

So is Eig, whose most recent book, “King: A Life,” about Martin Luther King, won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for biography.

“Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson” by Mark Kriegel. (June 2025, Penguin Press)

It is much to Kriegel’s credit and to your enjoyment that he does not focus on the ferocity of Tyson’s fights. They are, of course, mentioned, but delivered without the sensationalism or look-at-me literary fireworks that mar much sportswriting.

The book ends immediately after Tyson’s destruction of then-reigning heavyweight champion Michael Spinks, at Trump’s Atlantic City hotel and casino, with Tyson, “his arms outstretched, palms up, not a gladiator now as much as an emperor.”

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He was just shy of his 22nd birthday. There are troubles ahead, a lot of them, but we know that he survived.

Or, as Kriegel writes at the beginning of his spectacular book, “Glory is a long shot in any boxing story … Even as Tyson became boxing’s greatest-ever attraction, his doom seemed a lock. In fact, before too long it was the very prospect of impending doom that became the attraction itself. At any juncture in his career, the smart bet on Tyson’s mortality was always the under.”

rkogan@chicagotribune.com

By Rae Ellen Bichell, Katheryn Houghton, KFF Health News

Nicole Silva’s 4-year-old daughter was headed to a relative’s house near the southern Colorado town of La Jara when a vehicle T-boned the car she was riding in. A cascade of ambulance rides ensued — a ground ambulance to a local hospital, an air ambulance to Denver, and another ground ambulance to Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Silva’s daughter was on Medicaid, which was supposed to cover the cost of the ambulances. But one of the three ambulance companies, Northglenn Ambulance, a public company since acquired by a private one, sent Silva’s bill to a debt collector. It was for $2,181.60, which grew to more than $3,000 with court fees and interest, court records show. The preschool teacher couldn’t pay, and the collector garnished Silva’s wages.

“It put us so behind on bills — our house payment, electric, phone bills, food for the kids,” said Silva, whose daughter recovered fully from the 2015 crash. “It took away from everything.”

Some state legislators are looking to curb bills like the one she received — surprise bills for ground ambulance rides.

When an ambulance company charges more than an insurer is willing to pay, patients can be left with a big bill they probably had no choice in.

States are trying to fill a gap left by the federal No Surprises Act, which covers air ambulances but not ground services, including ambulances that travel by road and water. This year, Utah and North Dakota joined 18 other states that have passed protections against surprise billing for such rides.

Those protections often include setting a minimum for insurers to pay out if someone they cover needs a ride. But the sticking point is where to set that bar. Legislation in Colorado and Montana stalled this year because policymakers worried that forcing insurers to pay more would lead to higher health coverage costs for everyone.

Surprise ambulance bills are one piece of a health care system that systematically saddles Americans with medical debt, straining their finances, preventing them from accessing care, and increasing racial disparities, as KFF Health News has reported.

“If people are hesitating to call the ambulance because they’re worried about putting a huge financial burden on their family, it means we’re going to get stroke victims who don’t get to the hospital on time,” said Patricia Kelmar, who directs health care campaigns at PIRG, a national consumer advocacy group. “It means that person who’s worried it might be a heart attack won’t call.”

The No Surprises Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2020, says that for most emergency services, patients can be billed for out-of-network care only for the same amount they would have been billed if it were in-network. Like doctors or hospitals, ambulance companies can contract with insurers, making them in-network. Those that don’t remain out-of-network.

But unlike when making an appointment with a doctor or planning a surgery, a patient generally can’t choose the ambulance company that will respond to their 911 call. This means they can get hit with large out-of-network bills.

Federal lawmakers punted on including ground ambulances, in part because of the variety of business models — from private companies to volunteer fire departments — and a lack of data on how much rides cost.

Instead, Congress created an advisory committee that issued recommendations last year. Its overarching conclusion — that patients shouldn’t be stuck in the crossfire between providers and payers — was not controversial or partisan. In Colorado, a measure aimed at expanding protections from surprise ambulance bills got a unanimous thumbs-up in both legislative chambers.

Colorado had previously passed a law protecting people from surprise bills from private ambulance companies. This new measure was aimed at providing similar protections against bills from public ambulance services and for transfers between hospitals.

“We knew it had bipartisan support, but there are some people that vote no on everything,” said a pleasantly surprised Karen McCormick, a Democratic state representative.

A less pleasant surprise came later, when Gov. Jared Polis, who is also a Democrat, vetoed it, citing the fear of rising premiums.

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States can do only so much on this issue, because state laws apply only to state-regulated health plans. That leaves out a lot of workers. According to a 2024 national survey by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News, 63% of people who work for private employers and get health insurance through their jobs have self-funded plans, which aren’t state-regulated.

“It’s why we need a federal ambulance protection law, even if we passed 50 state laws,” Kelmar said.

According to data from the Colorado secretary of state’s office, the only lobbying groups registered as “opposing” the bill were Anthem and UnitedHealth Group, plus UnitedHealth subsidiaries Optum and UnitedHealthcare.

As soon as the legislative session ended in May, Kevin McFatridge, executive director of the Colorado Association of Health Plans, a trade group representing health insurance companies in the state, sent a letter to the governor requesting a veto, with an estimate that the legislation would result in premiums rising 0.4%.

The Colorado bill said local governments — such as cities, counties, or special districts — would set rates.

“We are in a much better place by not having local entities set their own rates,” McFatridge told KFF Health News. “That’s almost like the fox managing the henhouse.”

Jack Hoadley, an emeritus research professor with Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, said it isn’t clear whether state laws approved elsewhere are raising premiums, or if so by how much. Hoadley said Washington state is expected to come out with an impact analysis of its law in a couple of years.

The national trade association for insurance companies declined to provide a comment for this article. Instead, AHIP forwarded letters that its leaders submitted to lawmakers in Ohio, West Virginia, and North Dakota this year opposing measures in each state to set base ambulance rates. AHIP leadership described the proposals as inflated, government-mandated pricing that would reduce insurers’ chance to negotiate fair prices. Ultimately, the association warned, the proposed minimums would increase health care costs.

In Montana, legislators were considering a minimum reimbursement for ground ambulances of 400% of what Medicare pays, or at a set local rate if one exists. The proposal was sponsored by two Republicans and backed by ambulance companies. Health insurers successfully lobbied against it, arguing that the price was too steep.

Sarah Clerget, a lobbyist representing AHIP, told Montana lawmakers in a legislative hearing that it’s already hard to get ambulance companies to go in-network with insurers, “because folks are going to need ambulance care regardless of whether their insurance company will cover it.” She said the state’s proposal would leave those paying for health coverage with the burden of the new price.

“None of us like our insurance rates to move,” Republican state Sen. Mark Noland said during a legislative meeting as a committee tabled the bill. He equated the proposed minimum to a mandate that could lead to people having to pay more for health coverage for an important but nonetheless niche service.

Colorado’s governor was similarly focused on premiums. Polis said in his veto letter that the legislation would have raised premiums between 73 cents and $2.15 per member per month.

“I agree that filling this gap in enforcement is crucial to saving people money on health care,” he wrote. “However, those cost savings are outweighed in my view by the premium increases.”

Isabel Cruz, policy director at the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, which supported the bill, said that even if premiums did rise, Coloradans might be OK with the change. After all, she said, they’d be trading the threat of a big ambulance bill for the price of half a cup of coffee per month.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.