2021-11-24 EMC draft minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Chair Adams said it is another issue the Commission need to keep track of. Lets make sure that our constituents, the people in our districts that are going to be affected by it, understand the why and the what for, and how to ease the pain. But its a necessary pain. iii. Rule amendments regarding authority to inspect and repair private 8 laterals Chair Adams said the last request for updates dealt with an initially proposed rule to deal with private laterals, and requiring the inspection and correction of said laterals. Its been an issue that has been raised before at the Commission. There was a proposed rule 20 that is in the docket that dealt with that. But for whatever reason, before your time, this part of the proposed DEM rules, Rule 20, was tabled. Its sitting as reserved in the DEM rules. She would like to know why and what the status is and whether or not theyre likely to be reinstated, whether as the specifics that was proposed back then or something similar. Director Mansour said we just talked about pretreatment. Pretreatment will allow us, as we modify the Code, to include certain requirements, because the reason when we first started that Code changed for Chapter 20 and 21, and he took the liberty to withdraw that because it did not make sense at the time. That was presented to them for our acceptance. There is so much work that we need to do, he said. Commissioner Fulton shared her screen to display the proposed Rule 20. This is something that has been porpoising within this committee for the last few years. This is what she considers very low hanging fruit. This is a rule thats already been implemented on Oahu with great success. Of course, there is a recognition that with any implementation of a rule, there needs to be enforcement, and that takes man-hours. But what it calls for in a nutshell, is inspection of privately held laterals and the authority to enforce repairs of fractured laterals that may be leaking sewage into our beloved bays. Chair Adams scrolled through the proposed rule. There was the authority for the County to be able to go in and look at the laterals, see whether there were problems, and that the owners of those laterals had to fix them. There was a requirement for a corrective action plan. And one of the complaints that have been made is that all their stuff is coming from the lateral, and we dont have authority to look at them. So that was the purpose of this proposal, Chair Adams said. If the Director felt it had too many shortcomings to be able to begin to implement it, what are you doing to fix those issues, and when are we likely to see a new proposal to change it? Because it seems like this is a worthy thing to have on the books. Director Mansour said this is one of our high priorities. Fortunately, we were able to hire an engineer that came from the City and County of Honolulu, who was dealing with the same issues in Oahu. He is working on the Code, he is working on the pretreatment, and he actually brought up the HRS already allowed us to do that. So hes writing and strengthening the language that pertains to the Code. So weve been fortunate that once again, having 8 Proposed rule: http://records.hawaiicounty.gov/weblink/DocView.aspx?dbid=1&id=113220 22