2006-04-07 Tgp-amendment - Laserfiche WebLink

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ALAMEDA:Okay, Fellow Commissioners, let me ask also Commissioner Graham, now Im thinking it might be appropriate for the Director to respond or -. Fellow Commissioners, if there are no objections I would like to ask Director Yuen if he could respond to this South Kohala issue before we move to Mr. Hunters testimony. Is that okay? MCCALL:Okay. ALAMEDA:Okay. Maybe if you can take a seat right there, in the corner there; and you could share the microphone with Mr. Hunter. Thank you. YUEN:Well, as I said at the last meeting, this is an item that Im simply suggesting that the Commission defer until the Parsons Brinckerhoff study. Now the Parsons Brinckerhoff study actually only deals within the Waimea section, rather than the Lalamilo section.Justonemorecommenton,andthisrelatestowhatCommissionerGrahamwassaying about how specific is the General Plan in this. The General Plan was not meant, when you have language in a General Plan like this for road or when you have the road on the map, the Facilities Map, when you were talking about a proposed route, its not meant to be, to lay out an exact alignment or to specify one alignment. It merely says that, the idea being in concept there ought to be a road that goes around Waimea on the Lalamilo side from the Mamalahoa Highway, as it says from the Mamalahoa Highway to the Kawaihae Road in the vicinity of the transfer station. It doesnt mandate a particular alignment. My thinking right now is that the lower section is something that will definitely be needed. I noticed the resolution of the committee asking the State to expedite the construction of both the Mudlane to Waimea and the Waimea to Kawaihae Bypass. I believe that the Mudlane to Waimea section is budgeted at something like $60,000,000 and the Waimea to Kawaihae section, last estimate from the State DOT, was in the $90,000,000 range. Im sometimes chastised for being too pessimistic. But I think that if we get the Mudlane to Waimea portion built in the decade of 2010 to 2020 we would then be fortunate to get the Kawaihae to Waimea portion built in the decade of 2020 to 2030. The reason I say this is that you can project what money is available from the Federal aid to highway fund for the State. For the State there is a set amount. For at least six years we know what the funding is, its renewed on a six-year basis. The County typically gets 16 percent of that, the County of Hawaii. So we can expect roughly $25,000,000 a year from this Federal aid highway for the island as a whole. If you look historically at the use of that $25,000,000, then with the local funding it would go to about $30,000,000 a year. If you look historically at the use of that funding, only less than half, perhaps 25-30 percent has been used for new road construction. The bulk of that money typically goes for safety improvements like guardrails, realigning bad curves like on the Kohala Mountain Road, fixing bridges, that sort of thing. So you can project out that youre only going to do a very few major projects within the span of any ten years. We have lots of other things that are on books that are going to be worked on, like Queen Kaahumanu widening to the airport for four lanes. We have needs in the Puna area, for example, on this side of the island. So I think that there will be some lower section of this bypass necessary. Now that lower section though does not make any sense to do until you have a road around Waimea, until you have the upper section done first, either the full bypass of the State DOT Bypass from Mudlane to Waimea, or the shorter Parker Ranch Bypass, the shorter Parker Ranch Bypass Road. The reason 13EXHIBIT C