21-07-28 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Chair Adams proposed possibly coming up with a survey questionnaire, with a little more background to give to commissioners as homework to bring back for the next meeting. Director Mansour appreciated the idea. He said he was reading through the Kona Community Development Plan and one paragraph said, no permits unless all infrastructure is in the ground. So that discussion must have been taking place over the last 10 or 20 years. It seemed like it made it into our Code, but they modified it to say within 10 years after 1989, instead of just indefinitely until we build out the service area. And we somehow dropped the ball and people started building without dry sewers. Now who's going to pay for it? Is it going to be a community facility district, and how do you get 50 percent plus one to agree? People are going to say, I'm OK with septic. But if you handle it from the get -go with one developer rather than 200 different people, you already solved it. This is the intent, but any feedback you can give to shape our policy would be greatly appreciated. Chair Adams said it might help people to have it laid out a little bit more in terms of, this is what it's about, these are the two or three questions we have, go do a little bit of sounding out or thinking about your own district, and what that means, and then come back. Director Mansour rephrased the question to be: "Think of it as your district, how would you like to provide wastewater services to your district. Some of the districts don't have any wastewater treatment, so as individuals, think about for example, Puna district, I don't have any wastewater treatment plants, the County is going to be doing a study about the feasibility of putting a wastewater treatment plant. If not, then how is that going to shape up for the district? Is it going to continue being on septic, or is it going to be individualized treatment - based systems based on subdivisions or commercial? The standard thinking about how you would like to see your district being serviced with that wastewater." Vice Chair Gaffney said what we are talking about here is essentially a wastewater master plan for the island. While he thinks it's valuable that each commissioner provides inputs for our districts, and what we think fits, there are so many more parameters to master planning. To him, it's something that ought to be on our wish list for the federal money that is likely coming down for wastewater. The process would be to hire a consultant for the wastewater master plan for the island. That consultancy would then involve all commissioners as well as constituents in all our districts, and would be akin to the community development plans, which were very well -attended processes in the last two rounds of which he was aware. Rather than this being a project for the Department, this is a much larger project that involves DEM, Planning, potentially Water Supply, and other agencies, and this a natural fit to the Mayor's desire to look at this island from a sustainability point of view. If we are master planning for wastewater, that also involves the use of that water and its contributions to the recharging of aquifers. It's important for the Department and the Council to look at master planning for wastewater on this island. To his knowledge, this hasn't been done. There are a lot of technical aspects that must be considered. 23