2019-03-07 Hearing Transcript - Piilani Partners Request for Reconsideration SMA 18-000070

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CLARKSON: Please introduce yourself, sir. Speak into the microphone and proceed. MEDEIRO S -GARCIA: Aloha, I'm Jaerick Medeiros-Garcia. I'm the president of Pepe`ekeo Community Association, and chairman of the Shoreline Fishermen. I'm in a position to the reconsider—everybody spoke on behalf of what I had to say pretty much, but I just look at your folks. I see this is the pretty much the last resort of you folks being our protectors, so I ask you guys to just protect. Protect us. Thank you. SHERWOOD: Thank you so much for hearing our testimonies today. My name is Leah Sherwood. I am a graduate student at UH -Hilo. My field of research is plastic pollution in the marine environment. I work with Hawaii Wildlife Fund at Kamilo, South Point conducting plastic marine pollution surveys. Since 2016, we have removed 260 tons of plastic marine pollution, included in that number are plastic water bottles, beverage bottles, and thousands of plastic bottle caps. I personally counted 800 plastic bottle caps in one day. I am in strong opposition to this proposal for an SMA Use Permit by Piilani Partners, LLC. Given the important role the Commission of Water Resource Management with water quality issues and the relevancy to this SMA application proposal, I would like to ask the Windward Planning Commission to either decline this proposal outright or then to defer it until the new update to the Water Resource Protection Plan update is finalized. This year, the Hawaii Legislature is taking action to secure an ocean -friendly future. This is to combat plastic marine pollution which can be found in every ocean from the surface waters to the ocean floor. Plastic poses threats to our wildlife such as our Hawaiian Monk Seals who are disproportionately harmed by plastic marine pollution due to physical oceanographic processes that allow global plastic pollution to accumulate near our islands. Let's work together to minimize the impacts of single -use plastics. Let's join together to protect our State and its wildlife and plastic marine pollution. Please vote "no" to the SMA Use Permit to help protect our natural resources, our ecosystems, and our oceans. Nature is not a commodity, and water is not a commodity either. Water is a natural resource that needs to be protected. Thank you for your time. MUISE: Aloha mai kakou. O wau no Ku`ulani Muise. O Mauna Kea ku`u mauna. O maha kea ku'u wai. O kahua ku `aina noho, noho nei. I'm speaking to you today as a mother of three young children and as the vice-president of the Hui Aloha `Rina o Hilo. I want to mahalo you for your time, and mahalo for your motion to defer which in my humble opinion was a wise decision, and I'm here to ask that you hold to your decision of an indefinite continuance. Ms. Bunn earlier referred to the 2014 Supreme Court finding that the public trust is the duty and authority to maintain the purity of waters for future generations and to assure that the waters of our land are put to reasonable and beneficial uses. I do not see and maybe according to your motion to defer, that you might not see as well, how the privatization of this invaluable and to many sacred Wai Kane will benefit our future generations, our children, our children's children. How will tapping and bottling a deep, contained, unknown, and untouched aquifer put this public trust resource through reasonable and beneficial use? Reasonable how and beneficial to whom? EXHIBIT B 17