2007-02-15 twaikoloadevco - Laserfiche WebLink

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IWASHITA: Of the Director, yeah. GRAHAM: If we have no further comments for the testifier, I think we can let him sit back. Thank you, Mr. Walsh, for coming today. All right, go ahead, Mr. Yuen. IWASHITA: Thank you, Dr. Walsh. ALAMEDA: Are there any other testifiers? I’m just curious, Mr. Chair. GRAHAM: Are there any other public testifiers? I haven’t received notice of any. But if there are any in the room, you certainly have the opportunity right now. So you may come forward and sign up at the Planning Department, or you can just come right forward and sit forward here at a moment, if you’d like. All right, thank you.Seeing none, Mr. Yuen? C. YUEN: If I understand your question correctly, it would be something like this: Say, we have a conference like this, and the upshot is that the Department wants everybody to – I’m making up numbers, okay – to take 50 samples 6 times a year, and say a particular developer has been taking 10 samples 3 times a year – just making up numbers – and say the typical condition is going to say something like, as this one, there be a water quality monitoring plan approved by the Director, and it may be that what they’ve been doing conforms to the approved plan. All right? Now if the developer does not agree to change the monitoring, the Director can always bring a request to amend the permit to the Commission. And it’s my expectation that we will come to a reasonable agreement about what kind of changes would be made in the monitoring. Many of them there will be the flexibility to – within the terms of the permit itself – to increase monitoring or to change monitoring requirements without bringing the amendment to the Commission; but if it’s necessary, that would be the upshot of it. GRAHAM: Commissioner Iwashita? IWASHITA: Thank you. I guess then the other follow-up would be – like in the particular instance where we have testing that has been done that shows, you know, 300 percent increase in the nitrogen in the anchialine pond circumstance – I guess my concern would be that the Department has power through rule-making or otherwise to – or I don’t know if the Department wants to do it – but there has to be some way to fix it, you know, once the tests show that there is something going wrong. C. YUEN: Well, this is a situation where actually -, you know, we are familiar with this situation in anchialine ponds, and the reports are that the key indicator species would be the shrimp within the pond. So the ponds in Waikoloa specifically had very good shrimp populations and were very healthy, until fish were introduced in some of the ponds. So regardless of the nutrient levels, you have a healthy shrimp population in an anchialine pond until you get fish into it. And then they disappear. So I’m not going to blow the whistle on nutrient levels when we see that the real problem in – it’s just direct correlation; if you get fish in the ponds and the shrimp disappear, and that is a problem. And they have had, you know, there is a pond reserve that’s very closely watched in Waikoloa, and I’m basing what I’m telling you on all the reports from the pond reserve, that there was a situation pretty recently where fish got into some of the – not by themselves most likely but – fish got into some of the ponds, and that’s what has caused the degradation in the ponds. EXHIBIT C 16