21-07-28 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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plans for each district, and let's have a prioritizing mindset. It's always the same case, we don't have the money to do all of it at once. But if we prioritize you could at least chip away instead of having a roadblock that prevents anything from happening, because there are small areas where the time is now to make a change, and there are other areas where we might say those resources could be best set aside until we get to there, it's just not the same top priority. That's just the reality we face with our current budget situation. Director Mansour said Commissioner Burns was correct. It's not going to be one -size -fits -all. We are dealing with decentralized versus centralized, urban versus rural. Because commissioners represent different districts, he would like to get feedback from each of them about how you foresee that for your district, and how you would like to shape our policies when it comes to sewer tie-ins for sewer treatment versus septic systems versus cesspools. The driving force would be the Department of Health because they have to make a decision on it, but we have to modify our codes to be in compliance with DOH and our needs. You hit it right on. That's the reason we try to talk about it. It's not going to be one -size -fits -all. And we don't have the soil in some areas, some areas we have lava tubes. Some areas have soil. So it's going to be site specific. The challenge is if you have a service area, already going to be dedicated to be tied in to sewer. You have the existing conditions versus the upcoming conditions. We did not control the existing conditions so he would rather use it as a lesson learned. So as we apply the future, we learn from our mistakes. That's his intent. Commissioner Olson said that he has seen examples on this island of both incineration and evaporation units that deal with solid waste, and some have succeeded in getting permitted. There is a lot of options out there if you open the door. Commissioner McIntosh said the other thing to consider is that if you require new subdivisions to create their own treatment plants or whatever, you want to avoid the problems where they just slap something together and throw it back to the County to fix. When you are envisioning it you need to think about the whole island and how to figure out, is the county going to be responsible for it or not? Director Mansour said that is a great point because as a government entity, it is always the private sector that will say, we are not in the business of wastewater, let's give it to the government. He wouldn't want to see the County taking on a hundred subdivision treatment plants in the future. That is why we need to work with the Planning Department and look at the next comprehensive update to the General Plan, and see where the growth is projected to be, an plan it. It may cost the developer more, but we will have a better system over the long run and in the long term be sustainable on this island. Otherwise, 20 or 30 years down the road we will be talking about the same thing. Eventually septic will be obsolete. We're getting rid of cesspools too so we could intercept it now and plan ahead for a long term solution, or a Band- Aid. That's where the challenge is. We have a lot of players and we have a lot of moves to make, but that's the reason we need to continue talking about it, to see what the commissioners think, because it will impact all districts. 22