2021-09-22 EMC minutes draft - Laserfiche WebLink

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and the isotopic signatures of that nitrogen indicate it has a human or animal waste source. Recently our research showed a significant concentration of the artificial sweetener Splenda, known as sucralose, which is flowing into the harbor. We’ve measured it in the harbor, we have measured it at the wastewater treatment plant, and it is the source. So as we move into this era of water shortages, you would read the news, and community after community after community is saying, hey, we cannot afford to throw wastewater away. He was sitting in South Kona where we have gotten more rain than we have gotten in a decade, but the rest of the island is very dry. And the long-range forecast is that dry trend is going to continue. So it is in our interest to address our water resources holistically. Every gallon of reclaimed, reused water that can be reused for irrigation purposes displaces a gallon of water that has to be pumped from the deep water wells up mauka. It is a limited resource, it’s expensive to pump 1,500 feet, and so making our drinking water resource go farther is accomplished by reusing or reclaiming wastewater. Currently the wastewater treatment plant operates under the authority of the Department of Health, specifically Hawaii Administrative Rules 11-62, Chapter 25. And those are called water disposal plants. And in the statute, a water disposal plant must have a 100 percent backup system. When the Department commissioned Brown and Caldwell to do a plant update for Kealakehe WWTP, it was done in the context of a water disposal plant. And so there was an option for reuse, but they also had to have the ability to dispose of 100 percent of that water, should reuse not work. And the way it was being approached, he was being assured it wasn’t going to work. Because fully realizing reuse was not part of the plan. There was some language that spoke to it, lip service if you will. And so the $160 million price tag for the upgrade was basically to fulfill the letter of the law, and make it a disposal plant that might do some reuse. But once you have spent the money on the wetlands treatment and the soil aquifer treatment ponds, which was yet another ground disposal system, it precludes any investment in agricultural irrigation. The decision to go that direction was made when he was on the Commission, and it was not a decision he was a party to. So administratively, the decision to have it be a disposal plant was made, and the draft EIS was done accordingly. If you read further in HAR, Chapter 27 specifically defines a water recycling system or a water reuse system. One hundred percent of the water is recycled through agronomic irrigation, and he was going to go back to that. There is no provision for any disposal if you are going to be a reuse plant. A feature that has to exist for any irrigation system, whether it is fresh water or reclaimed water, is storge capacity. You have to have storage capacity to buffer the very wet years and the very dry years. Storage capacity can be built on site and relatively inexpensively, and there are other facilities in the region where water can be stored. Chair Adams asked to move the discussion along to get to a point where the Commission could make a motion. Dr. Bennett continued: In the HAR there is explicit language about an irrigation plan … (the video connection was briefly interrupted here) … So there is no provision in the reuse chapter for a land disposal of water, where you simply take some land, erect some big sprinklers, and you just dump water on the land. That would not be permitted under this chapter. It wouldn’t be permitted under any chapter because of the impact on groundwater. So several things need to happen to fulfill this potential. We need a water reuse policy county-wide, and the plant 19