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from coming into the collection system that you then have to treat and to pump. So same concept of what the Department of Water Supply is doing now in terms of Doppler and flow measures, you’re looking to do the same thing on the wastewater collection system side of things. Another angle on this is the idea of water recycling. Because water recycling pays for itself, it creates an income stream. So they could be put as a subcontractor by the energy savings performance—under the energy savings performance contract. Once again, there’s a specific carve-out in state law for this. It’s being used by counties, federal agencies, and state agencies, so there’s good legal authority for using this type of an approach. Basically, the concept is to turn a liability into a resource. Rather than throwing a water resource into a hole in the ground and polluting our coastline, you can actually use the ESPC to fund the R-1 upgrade and to do water recycling. So there is a way to get there (another man’s voice is speaking)—I’m hearing another voice. This also brings in experts. So people who are experts in wastewater treatment systems, process controls, pumps and motors, all sorts of expertise that an ESCO company can bring to the table. So rather than hiring consultants and paying for them out of taxpayers’ money, you use the ESCO financing to pay for those experts to come in and do this type of work. So that’s another benefit. So zero down. In the case of solar, they own the system for the entire time period of the ESCO contracts. So you don’t own the system. You don’t have to maintain it. They maintain it, because it’s their asset. And they get to take all the tax write-offs and depreciation of those assets. None of those things could be done by the county. You can get electricity for half of the cost you’re paying today using this ESCO financing mechanism. So this is really a huge opportunity. The other thing I wanted to put out there is—let’s say you did a lighting project in an office in Hilo. You can transfer those savings to work on a wastewater project in Kona. So that money becomes fungible. You can kind of move it around and put it where you need it under an ESCO contract. So it’s a little different way of thinking about it. You don’t have to think of just a specific location—where can I harvest savings at that specific location, and how can I expend it at that location. You can actually harvest savings from the entire county under an ESCO contract and use it where you need to make those types of green infrastructure improvements. Mr. Chairman, that’s pretty much it. I’ve given you a lot of materials, case studies. I gave you a summary and an email that was shared with all of the commissioners, and I will pass it off to Riley at this point. Thank you for your time today. Chair Pequeño thanked Mr. Holmes and moved to the next presentation. b. Presentation by Riley Saito on the use of ESPCs by Hawaiʻi County. Mr. Saito showed a PowerPoint presentation entitled “County of Hawaiʻi and ESPCs.” Mr. Saito: The key word in energy savings is energy savings. To build on what Steve has mentioned—so we look at the analysis we’ve been working on, Madison and I, is analyzing the 4