2021-08-25 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Vote: The minutes were approved as presented by a raising of hands. Ayes: 6 (Adams, Cardwell, Fulton, Hoopii, McIntosh, Robinson); Nays 0; Absent 3 (Burns, Gaffney, Olson). Motion carried. 3. STATEMENT FROM THE CHAIR Chair Adams said she wanted to acknowledge it’s a challenge to get people and agenda items lined up. But she is thrilled that we canhave Representative Nicole Lowen. She will be talking about our continued discussion on how we fund our solid waste management program, and about some of her efforts around extended producer responsibility. We are also going to do the postponed training on how the Commission is responsible for and conducts administrative hearings that may challenge the Director’s orders. And we will talk a little bit about how we might look for funding or cost saving opportunities with the transfer stations. Her understanding is that the Director is unable to attend the meeting, nor is he able to prepare the Director’s informational report in time. If he shows up during the meeting we will ask him to provide any updates. But otherwise it may just be us. Hopefully we’ve got enough time and interest in talking about topics of interest. 4. PUBLIC STATEMENTS ON ITEMS ON THE AGENDA Jennifer Navarra, Zero Waste Hawai‘i Island:I have been following these meetings for maybe about two years now and it’s nice to see the topic of funding finally coming up because that has been kind of the complaint. Oh, we want to do all thesethings but we don’t have the funding. But something interesting from your presentation last meeting, Georjean, is that we are spending a lot of money on the landfilling of waste, and it would, not only as we move forward, to try to get more secured, reliable funding for the Department, it would be great to see the funding structure change as well, to put more money into actually diverting waste. And in regards to the extended producer responsibility, it’s good to see Rep. Lowen on the meeting today. We do have a working group going totry to get a bill going, to introduce in this (next) legislative session. I don’t know with all the Sunshine Law rules if it’s appropriate for the Commission to participate in those meetings but if anyone is interested, it is allowable, you can reach out to me at zerowastebigisland@gmail.com. And another discussion that has come up in the community, Mr. K’s Recycling is going to start taking batteries, and we were thinking that collecting a fee at the point of purchase, this is something that comes up at these meetings regularly. You guys talked about it last time. I’m curious to know, can we do a point of purchase collection fee at the County level rather than at the State level because I know we have seen a lot of problems with how the money flows from the State to the County. I think that maybe that’s something you can talk about in the discussion.Maybe we can do some of these point of purchase fees at the County level, that is just food for thought. 2