2022-02-16 EMC minutes draft - Laserfiche WebLink

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registered owner before issuing a certificate of registration or completing a transfer of ownership.  HB 1414 makes a person who is the registered owner of a vehicle deemed abandoned or derelict subject to a tiered fine system.  HB 1640 establishes electronic device manufacturer recycling goals, record keeping, and reporting requirements for manufacturers and collectors.  HB 1992 is about composting, about agriculture districts allowing them to do composting and decentralized composting. That comes to play for our DEM because as you we were thinking about in the prior administration, they focused into a centralized composting facility on the east side, where all the somebody must transport all the greenwaste across the island to one location without understanding the cost and without understanding how bad it's going to impact the environment. Imagine all these trucks, vehicles. Just think about us now moving waste from east to west, and it's becoming a nightmare. So imagine taking that countywide from each district to start moving the organic food in the greenwaste to one location on the east side. It just becomes more complicated. We were talking about decentralized, more efficient systems. So that's something we need to stop looking at. This bill could lead us thinking about what do we need to do to be more efficient when it comes to composting decentralization. We also need to start encouraging homeowners to go back to figuring a way to find composters that we could hand out to these homeowners and encourage them to do the same. The Director was in California last weekend, and because they under a mandate for organic food by 2035, they are supposed to have zero going to the landfill. So they started following what the County Hawai‘i was doing years ago. But we've been fortunate here. Our residents went through the exercise before and they love to do that. So we need to find ways to start encouraging that process again.  HB2147 is to allow Department itself to permit the federal facilities (as required by federal law).  HB 2399, as previously discussed, is about extended producer responsibility.  SB 2998 requires the Department of Health to implement the Auditor’s recommendations for the Deposit Beverage Container program.  SB 3363, is the one we have really been watching to authorize the issuance of general obligation bonds by the state in the amount of $50 million to allow us to subsidize the replacement of the Hilo Wastewater Treatment Plant. Most of you have probably seen the Hawai‘i News Now report about the Hilo plant. We have about 13 percent lifespan on it. It is our top priority, it’s the No. 1 priority now, in addition to the other priorities. Vice Chair Gaffney said the west side is not as high a priority as it was for prior administrations. That's not a true statement. It's still high priority, but it's not ranked the No. 1 high priority. So they are all still priorities to us. But Hilo becomes an environmental crisis if we don’t pay attention to it right away. That's why it's on the top of our radar. We're trying to get it going before it becomes an environmental crisis. A 13 percent operational facility is not adequate. It's not acceptable. And that's why we're focusing on protecting from a potential 3 million gallons of water potentially spilling in the ocean. That requires immediate attention. We're looking at possibly a $200 million 5