2019-07-24 Meeting Minutes (EMC)

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3. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS Jerome Warren: The Council passed Bill 75 on July 9, 2019, which approved $10 million for the Nāālehu sewer project. It will use $47 million from the state loan fund. The ʻ state loan fund is administered by the Department of Health. Brown and Caldwell are the county’s contractors. Both the state and county have solicited written comments from the public. However, the public is not told how they can review the comments. He has been trying to follow up, but everybody gives him the run-around. If any commissioner is successful at following up, he would like them to contact him or report on it at the next meeting. In the meantime, the court case against Director Kucharski and Dora Beck will continue on August 8 in Hilo. Judge Nakamura will hear answers that have not been given to this commission or to the County Council. 4. UNFINISHED BUSINESS a. Report on the meeting held with Councilmember Tim Richards in response to his request for a dialog. Chair Bennett explained that he had asked Commissioner Gaffney to report on this. Commissioner Gaffney reported that the meeting was changed from in-person to a telephone conference, but it was excellent. He was pleased to learn about Dr. Richards’ strong science background, not just as an animal biologist but in chemistry. He is a go- getter and strongly focused on solutions to pollution issues. He is interested in out-of-the- box thinking where necessary and maximizing the county’s revenues toward solutions. He had a lot of good questions. Specifically discussed were the sewer issues in the Puakō and Queen Kalama areas. One area Dr. Richards was not up to speed on is that he appears to believe it is a slam dunk that Mauna Lani will accept the Puakō sewage. They also spoke a bit on public-private partnership possibilities for South Aliʻi Drive, Keauhou Bay, and the Heʻeia peninsula. Chair Bennett said Dr. Richards invites the commissioners to think outside the box and would like to know how they would solve solid waste problems if money were not an issue. Solid waste issues are very important to him. He wants the commissioners to break down any departmental barriers in their minds and recommend policies that address the big issues. He wants them to feed him ideas, whether or not they are directly a part of DEM’s functions. Chair Bennett asked the commissioners to send him or Commissioner Gaffney their ideas, concerns, and inspirations so they can further the dialog with Dr. Richards. Commissioner Gaffney said another area discussed was the necessity for the county to be in regular communication with their federal representatives, as the offices of Dave Chun and Tulsi Gabbard have indicated several times that there is a lot of federal money available which Hawaiʻi is not requesting. He asked Dr. Richards’ office if that could be looked into, as well as the possibility of hiring grant writers for DEM or Research and Development to support the pursuit of the funding which seems to be missing in massive projects. Dr. Richards also informed them that he will be authorizing a formal request for 2