2022_07_19 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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I’m against Hog Stop. AA: All right, thank you. Hawaii County Parks and Recreation Director Maurice Messina going give a presentation on the update on the Laupahoehoe Boat Ramp Closure. Maurice are you on? 4. PRESENTATION: a. Hawai’i County Parks and Recreation Director Maurice Messina will present an update on the Laupahoehoe Boat Ramp closure. MM: Yes. So we recently had a meeting in Laupahoehoe with the community in the area talking about the Laupahoehoe Boat Ramp which is under County jurisdiction and the break wall which is under federal jurisdiction – it’s the Army Corps of Engineers is working to put a plan together to repair. We were – over the years – discussed, you know, how can we do the wall repair, and break wall repair, and until recently it was recommended that we would hold off on the boat ramp \[unclear\]. Army Corps of Engineers has a chance to do the break wall. But that has since changed through the Army Corps and so we have put in for our Capital Improvement Budget the 6 million dollars in CIP - yet to be funded but we did put the request in to repair the Laupahoehoe Boat Ramp. As we all know on this call – Hamakua stretches over 40 miles and Laupahoehoe Boat Ramp is the central launching point and it’s basically the only boat launching point within 20 miles in either direction. It’s not only used for fishing and gathering, it’s also used for rescue. The Fire Department – I believe I got this correct but the Fire Department – their area of responsibility is within 3 nautical miles of the shore – anything outside of that goes over to the Coast Guard. At the last community meeting that we held, we talked \[unclear\] from the Hamakua Coast and have launched boats out of the Laupahoehoe Boat Ramp themselves over the last couple of years to actually rescue boaters and \[unclear\] the ocean. Right now the Army Corps of Engineers they’re working on what’s called a major maintenance report – the major maintenance report is required for them to decide exactly what needs to be done to fix the break wall – the breakwater. They’ve got an 8.5-million-dollar threshold on this, which means anything above that – it has to go up their chain of command to the federal level – to Congress – and when that happens they’re asking for a bunch of letters of support. Basically, why and how the Laupahoehoe Ramp is important to the public. They’re asking for individual letters of support, talking about how it’s for the greater good of the community. That’s what we’re working on right now. We’re gonna have another meeting coming up in Laupahoehoe with the community to try to get more support for this measure. So basically we’ve got two tiers of what we’re working on the first tier is the County, working to repair the boat ramp. It will not – what we’re looking for is not the traditional repair that you would normally see where it’s gonna be the concrete pour – just a one component slab which is what’s there now. Over the years, what’s happened is with that concrete pour is the rebar is, um, become predominant in the ocean and has been sharpened by the wave action. So it’s basically if you go out there to the boat ramp now what you’re gonna see are rebar spears – the County has at numerous times we’ve sent welders and cutters into the water to shave off those edges of those spears but it’s become progressively worse so we ended up closing the boat ramp a few years ago but we want to get that boat ramp back open. So our goal is to develop a boat ramp that’s actually gonna be built in sections – that way if a section gets bad we can actually pull that section out and replace the section without shutting down the entire boat ramp for years and years again. We’re gonna do that – we’re working on it while at the same 9