2021-10-27 EMC minutes draft - Laserfiche WebLink

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Commissioner Burns said these are all good points. To go from discussions to promoting positive change, we could write a letter that is extremely compelling, but if we touch on all the issues, we would be unlikely to hit all of them at once. If we move to having more discussions, that would be good but we could move to picking one issue we want to address, just as a start. It is easier to target one issue to the Council and push it forward. Vice Chair Gaffney spoke in support of approaching the Council and the Mayor with an individual suggestion. A lot of times give them a whole range of opportunities, and often that is lost in a complex Council process. There is an opportunity for a waste management approach on this island, and that is the waste that is being produced by the two major aquaculture companies on this island. They are both in a major growth phase, they are producing a high nutrient waste, and they are looking for something to do with that waste. We also have a ton of greenwaste and mixing the high nutrient waste with the fish wastewould produce a high quality product. Both companies arelooking forward toassisting the County with that opportunity. Maybe we should produce a letter to the County to say that these companies, Blue Ocean Mariculture and Kohala Mountain Fish Company, have this high nutrient waste. We already have this greenwaste. We want to see a facility developed to combine the two into a production of a high nutrient compost for farmers that is available for sale. One of the things the Council is going to like about that is possibly that would be a revenue generator for the Solid Waste Division. Chair Adams said that based on the last month’s Commission meeting with recyclers there was the possibility of setting up a special investigative group or an ad hoc committee to gather information. There’s the whole issue of handling compost on this island, which is a mess, and it suffers from some contractual obligations that we have with HER. And so maybe we should talk about getting a group together to pull together the information, and present the findings to us, and then decide what we are going to write up and send to our advisees. Vice Chair Gaffney asked who could serve on this permitted interaction group, to which Deputy Counsel Salas-Ferguson said only members of the Commission could serve. Commissioners engaged into further discussion about how to involve Council members in the talks. The Deputy Corporation Counsel said he would have to look into whether an open discussion with the Council were to be possible. He has never seen that happen before. Commissioner McIntosh cited the success of the request for life cycle assessment funding. If we work with where DEM wants to focus and ask the Council to support those endeavors, we might have more success in what we are trying to push through. Chair Adams clarified that the Council did not give specific money for the LCA, but rather the Department found a source of money and applied it. Discussion continued further. Vice Chair Gaffney said two commissioners could discuss board business with a Council staff person. Would that be legitimate? The Deputy Corporation 10