2019-10-29 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – October 29, 2019 to it by vehicle – getting on and off the highway. We wanted it where it’s not in the middle of the rain belt, you know, we’re getting 230 inches of rain a year or something because that makes for difficult shooting conditions. We wanted to be close to where people could – close enough so people could drive to it – had access to utilities and we had some control over the property – we could secure it against vandalism and theft. This is a list of the places we looked at over the years starting in 1990, um, and there’s quite a few of them and there are reasons that each one of them – one or more reasons where each of the others failed to meet those requirements and many cases there were few things that they met of all that list of requirements we had for the range so, um, this is the one we found that met all of what we considered to be important for establishing a range and there it is. It’s a square mile and its south-west corner is adjacent to the north-east corner of the Puuanahulu landfill and you can see by scale, you know, the distance between there and the Kohala Resort area – the Waikoloa Resort area. And these are some of the benefits of this – it’s basically a barren lava field with no endangered plants that can be identified – no endangered animals that could be identified. We have access through the landfill. We had an agreement back in 2007, I think it was, with Department of Environmental Management for access to it. Malia met with the Department of Environmental Management recently and that approval is still in place – we will be able to do that and right now it’s before the DLNR Board – they’re trying to get it before the Board to get an official easement so that could be going forward. Nearest habitation – nearest houses is 1.7 miles, which is a considerable distance, you know, for a range. We have prevailing clear weather and it’s predictable – it’s not going to rain there. I think the area gets about 10” of rain a year and that’s not only for the shooters that’s for the water table – that’s for the lead management and those things that are very important on a range. We did a sound test in 2005 – we had gun fire at two shooting range sites. We didn’t use any sound mitigation. We didn’t announce it in advance, ah, not for any particular reason but, you know, we wanted to do the sound test and the state participated in this and we recorded sound levels at 6 sampling locations and two of them within the resort complex and the sound of the gun fire was unmeasurable at any of the remote locations. The instruments we had they didn’t measure it at all. NP: Yet, people were saying, “Ah! I can hear it!” JO: We’ll get – we’ll get to some of that – yeah. Well that was 2005. We’ve done three sound tests. This is the first one, ah, in 2006 we got an agreement of principal on the land – access to the landfill – 2007 we got DLNR land use approval for that square mile – for that purpose. In 2008 we identified sources of funding for this that would allow us to move this project forward and in 2010 we actually incorporated On Target as a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization so that we could accept donations – tax deductable donations for the purpose of doing our education programs and for building the range. In 2011 we did a facility design requirements manual and a facility master plan, which I’ll have 17