2019-04-15 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – April 15, 2019 CH: Cory Harden for Sierra Club Hawaii Island Group – brought a letter which I passed out to all of you talking about how lead was found in the discharge water from Hu Honua and as you know on November 9 there was a continuous spurt of dark water coming out of a pipe from Hu Honua going over the cliff into the ocean and that may have happened on other days too – went on for hours – workmen got concerned when – and turned it off – later got in trouble with the supervisor for doing that – so, um, Department of Health tested it – think they found iron in it – but we got a hold – someone took a plastic bottle and caught some of the water and we got ahold of some of that water and sent it to a lab in California and it had some – a couple of marine scientists at UH read the report and interpreted it for us – and there were lead levels in the samples ten times higher than acceptable fresh water levels and two times higher than acceptable marine water levels according to the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department of Health standards. As you know, that is a toxic, heavy metal in fresh water and the ocean – a lot of impacts on fish and vertebrates and seaweeds – not to mention people – if anyone was fishing in that area around that time I’d be really concerned. Also, iron levels were found over 10 times the levels typically reported in the ocean and an ocean scientist said probably caused the significant browning of the ocean water that witnesses reported and then there’s less light going into the ocean and the seaweed can’t grow and of course the fish eat the seaweed and a lot of marine animals depend on it. So we wrote to Department of Health and the Department of Land and Natural Resources and asked them to do independent testing of the discharge water – which I believe is still being stored on the Hu Honua site – we can’t believe that they didn’t have viable plan for what to do with that discharge water from when they cleaned out the old boiler – so we’re calling for an independent testing of that water – our testing was not totally reliable cause the sample was pretty old and we didn’t have a good chain of custody but it does indicate a need for further testing – we’re also asking for monitoring by the State of marine and fresh water systems that could be affected by Hu Honua – we’d appreciate if you guys would support our request to the Department of Health and DLNR and we certainly don’t need lead and iron going into the ocean off Peeked Point so, thank you. BKK: All right, thank you. Is there anybody else that wants to testify at this time? OK. And at this time, I apologize, this is not an agenda item – but I just want to acknowledge some of Donna’s friends that’s in the room in Kona – Donna if you – go ahead and just take a minute of two and introduce everybody that’s there. DUH: Thank you so much, Chair. I’ve invited friends who are here from Japan – they have a TV show in Japan that demonstrates how to trap pigs and or wild animals using their own traps. I’d like to call on Leo to do the introduction. 3