COM 0664.032 2008-2010 - Laserfiche WebLink

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TDR and Floating Zone concepts remain in the plan in order to enable flexibility in town and village center planning. 2. Implementing terminology. Much has been made of proposed amendments that would reduce action words to conditional words in PCDP implementing statements. We believe concern over this might be caused by uncertainty about the expectation of implementation of activities. In our meetings with community members, we often encountered questions regarding which official or which section of government would be ultimately responsible for putting proposals into action. There is fear that without firm implementing language, action plans might be shunted among clerks and bureaus and eventually neutralized by procedure. For this reason, we recommend retaining the original implementing language. We understand that a "disclaimer" at the beginning of the document may put perspective to expectations arising from the use of action, rather than prompting, verbs. We suggest something along these lines: "The Puna Community development plan was developed with an emphasis on action. Citizens were energized in the vision of the ideas expressed in this plan becoming reality resulting in many people spending countless volunteer hours shepherding this plan to completion. Please do not be confused that a sentence stating something will happen, and the fact that this plan is adopted by County Ordinance, means that the action will necessarily happen as shown by timelines in the plan, or at all. In all cases, implementation of any activity requires many steps, especially funding. Many more actions, government as well as community, are required for full implementation. This plan is a statement of community vision, with broad support." A partial solution to the uncertainty over implementation has been resolved by Planner, Mr. Brown. He designed a simple work plan protocol that describes project actions, relates them to a master list matrix of project proposals in the PCDP (Section 5), indicates cost and time estimates, indicates the entities that are responsible for implementation, and arranges them in priority order. It would be desirable to identify an entity responsible for keeping projects in muster and seeing them through to implementation. We suggest assigning this responsibility to the PCDP Action Committee. 3. Water quality of the Puna Aquifer. It is well known that the underground water which flows mauka — makai under the surface is of very high quality. We also know that discharge of waste water from surface sources will eventually contaminate this aquifer. We don't know how much surface contamination the aquifer can absorb before the water deteriorates to the point of impacting human health or causing harm to near -shore marine resources. Waste water disposal systems throughout Puna are crude, consisting mostly of cesspools, which discharge human and industrial waste directly into the porous substrate, where it is quickly mixed with the natural aquifer. We fear it is only a matter of time before human health effects will be documented, and State and local officials will have to react, possibly by answering law suits or imposing mandates. The Action Committee believes it is prudent to anticipate problems caused by improper disposal of waste water. We think a preventive measure is an essential first step: protect the