2022-02-16 EMC minutes draft - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

we don't have a market for it, that we deliver it to people who can use it and hopefully expand agricultural opportunities as part of that process. Chair Adams said to consider this as a living document. If you've got new things that come up, feel free to let her know. But this will just be a published document so people know, hey, I know that Commissioner Cardwell is working on this, and let me go talk to her, or suggest talking to someone, to help get information. She added a couple of items. But one of the things that she wanted to continue to work on is sustainable funding for DEM, both the solid waste and wastewater programs. And she will keep pushing on that. And also know that there was an interesting webinar that she listened to, about how you could use a surcharge on tipping fees to fund your recycling operations. And there were several states, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, New Jersey, and a couple others of how they had laws established that said there would be this surcharge, and it would be used to fund this, that, and the other, a chunk would go to developing their recycling programs as a steady way – it was a fund specifically dedicated to the recycling operations and other environmental issues. It was very interesting, but it also struck her that one of our issues is we let more than half our waste go to the landfill for free, hidden in property tax. So to put a surcharge on people who don't even know they're paying for the landfill fees will be an interesting challenge for us. But that's one that she will tuck away. And if any of you are interested, she can forward some of the links they had for background information. And the title of the thing was Tipping Fee Surcharges to Support Infrastructure for Recycling. And infrastructure is something that we have pitifully little of. So that'll be a new continued effort of mine to try and figure out how we get funding. If nobody else has any comments on it, feel free to send things to me at any time and I'll update that list, she said. b. Status report from the Barriers to Private Recyclers Permitted Interaction Group. I'm the only member who is on it that is here at this meeting and I have to unfortunately say we haven't done much since the last time, so I don't really have anything to report, Chair Adams said. We are still collecting issues and a lot of it is just the raw material and the logistics of getting it to them, is a concern. Setting up meetings has been challenging over the last couple of weeks. 6. NEW BUSINESS 4 a. Review of active bills of interest in the Legislature for the 2022 session. Chair Adams said what has been taking up fair amount of her time, and DEM’s, is all the legislative bills that have been introduced in the environmental arena. The Secretary noted that there were 67 different bills that dealt with DEM issues that they were tracking, and then going through hearings, and getting testimony, and making revisions on the fly. Only 23 of them appear to still be moving. She is not an expert on the political process here and would be happy to let either the Director or the Secretary pipe up on that. There are several layers of hearings and reviews and each of you individually has an opportunity to submit testimony as individuals, not representing EMC, but as individuals what your opinions are. And legislators do read them; they do pay attention. Rep. Nicole Lowen has introduced several of the bills and is someone 4 Active bills: http://records.hawaiicounty.gov/weblink/DocView.aspx?dbid=1&id=114389 3