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2 Chair Adams sent the message, and the Director is here. He wants to be at our meetings, and wishes we would hand him more answers. And so she is fairly confident we will have Department representation. The written report is still frustrating and she will continue to press for coming up with at least a short update in a monthly written report for our meetings, and perhaps resign ourselves to wait quarterly until we can get the big, long, 20-page summary of activities. We have adequately communicated our concerns. b. A Recommendation for a Major Policy Revision for the Operation of the Kealakehe Wastewater Treatment Plant (Gaffney) Chair Adams asked Vice Chair Gaffney and Rick Bennett, Ph.D., (former EMC Chair) to present their recommendations. Vice Chair Gaffney said this subject is the Kealakehe Wastewater Treatment Plant, which has been an ongoing subject of our discussion going back as many years as most of the Commissioners have been involved on the Commission. Basically, we responded to the request for some very specific recommendations to the Department, and our purpose is basically to see the KWWTP turned into a specific water resource recovery facility, which is specifically a water recycling plant, as opposed to what it is now. Part of the reason for doing that is because that is what the original intent of the EPA was when the plant was built in the 1990s, and that aspect 3 oftheplanthas not been fully realized. That is the purpose of our letter. Dr. Bennett didthe heavy liftingcreating this letter, and although Dr. Bennett is retired as EMC Chair he is still active in getting things done with the Commission. Dr. Bennett greeted the Commissioners. During his days on the Commission, we talked extensively about water reuse, and we’re still talking about it. If you have his paper in front of you, he lays out some history. As the Vice Chair said, it started in the 1990s, and the intent was to reclaim the water and use it on a golf course that did not exist. And when that golf course was not built, any notion of water reuse died with that dream. And to this day, water reuse for agronomic purposes is happening in the private sector, but it is not happening the public sector. The Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole, you can say is public, and they do a nice job of reuse. The golf courses do a nice job of reuse. Down in Keauhou, the golf course uses treated water very successfully. It’s not like we have to reinvent the wheel here. Agricultural irrigation is a science, about which there is a tremendous amount of information and expertise, and it is his hope we make that expertise available. So in the interim years, what did we do with the water? The water went to basically a settling basin, six-tenths of a mile from the harbor, and that settling basin went into a de facto injection well as the water found a hole it could flow into constantly, and it has been doing so for 25 years. The science is very, very clear. That water joins the groundwater on its inexorable path to the sea, and fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, it emerges in Honokhau Small Boat Harbor, where a lot of science has identified the constituents in that wastewater, expressly nitrogen and phosphorous, 2 “EMC meeting participation” http://records.hawaiicounty.gov/weblink/1/doc/112485/Page1.aspx 3 “A Recommendation for a Major Policy Revision for the Operation of the Kealakehe Wastewater Treatment Plant.” http://records.hawaiicounty.gov/weblink/1/doc/112484/Page1.aspx 18