2007-08-31 TPUAKO - Laserfiche WebLink

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Finally, we did have the flora and faunal type of studies done; and, again, basically none of them, you know, none of those studies concluded that there were any impacts, which pretty much like brings us to here. So if there are any questions that the Commissioners may have of myself or any of the consultants we’d be more than happy to answer them. GRAHAM: Thank you, Mr. Fuke. Commissioners, do you have any particular questions? I’d like to ask a question perhaps of Mr. Dollar, your consultant. FUKE: Thank you very much. GRAHAM: Sure. So do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter today before the Hawaii County Planning Commission? DOLLAR: Yes, I do. GRAHAM: Thanks. And could you give your name and address, please. DOLLAR: Yes. My name is Steven Dollar. Address is 1039 Waakela Place, Honolulu. GRAHAM: Thank you. Mr. Dollar we just got presented the bulk of this application to us this morning, so I haven’t had a chance to really read over your work, although I was quickly trying to browse it here while I was trying to pay attention to Mr. Fuke at the same time. My understanding is that the Puako Bay, the condition of the marine life there right now is rather stressed and that there are problems with algae in the area. And when I just took a quick look through your analysis of the water quality and all there, I didn’t see the usual kind of discussion that’s made of the marine life and all. So could you just give me a little understanding of what it looks like in the water off this project as far as whether there are algae, whether there are other sedimentation stresses or whatever on the coral that we should know about. DOLLAR: Yes, I can. In fact, we, Tom Nance and I, prepared a report that, I’m not sure you have, that presents a lot of photographs of the bottom coral. Have you seen that? Is that part of what you’re looking at? GRAHAM: I really don’t know, but usually in the black and white the photographs come across kind of bad anyway, so -. You know, I have snorkeled a bit in that area in the last few years so it doesn’t look like your normal kind of off-shore healthy reef, but I’m sure you have a more formed analysis. DOLLAR: Yeah, that’s true. I have the colored photographs here if you want to look at them later. But as you say the area of Puako Bay there is not what I would call a typical coral or Kona Coast, West Hawaii Coast, coral community. And basically it’s, because of a lot of sediment runoff that’s happened over the geologic past and there’s an area in-shore, if you look at the beaches there they’re composed basically of volcanic rock, and not white sand, a terrigenous or land arrived mud. And there’s a zone, a near shore zone, where this mud extends out. And where that mud extends out is sort of trapped in these bays. They get stirred up every time there’s a storm, and then resuspends and it settles back to the bottom. So it prevents coral growth in that inner part of the bay. If you swim out past that, and we actually characterize that EXHIBIT B 6