2003-10-03 TRUTTER - Laserfiche WebLink

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GALDONES:Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter now before the ` Hawaii County Planning Commission? BROCK:I do. GALDONES:Doctor, could you state your name and your residence address, please. BROCK:Okay. My name is Richard Brock. My residence is 1820 Kihi Street, ` Honolulu, Hawaii. GALDONES:Thank you, Mr. Brock. Mr. Yuen has some questions for you. YUEN:I wanted to ask some general questions because there -, these are things that come up again and again in front of the Commission on coastal water quality, water pollution, and then on this site, in particular, we have concerns about the anchialine ponds. I ` know you did the, some of the initial surveys of anchialine ponds in West Hawaii. The general -, to give a lead up to the general questions about the coastal water quality, we're always concerned about the effect of what we're doing on ocean water, and just in general, the people are concerned about nutrient levels that have caused problems in other areas in the past. We now, we've had, we have a history of, and when we have -, for the benefit of the Commission, there is a great deal of sampling, of water sampling that's done as a condition of all the permits on water chemistry. Most of those over the last 20 years have had monitoring requirements, and there's been a great deal of data generated. As far as getting in the water, looking at the corals or the transects, I think our data may be much less detailed from a scientific point of view. What I wanted to ask Dr. Brock is what -, can you make some general comments about what -, are we seeing declines in coral reefs? Are we seeing unusual growth in algae? Are we seeing ` problems on the West Hawaii coast in areas where you have, where we've had development, where we have golf courses, in particular, out in the ocean? And what has been the experience as far as areas where we have golf courses next to anchialine ponds or upslope from anchialine `` ponds such as Waikoloa, Kkio? I can't think where else we have -. Waikoloa and Kkio would be the main ones. BROCK:Okay. Nice little short simple question to answer. Thank you. I'll try. What I'll say will be based on probably more than 20 years worth of looking at these systems, both pond systems, groundwater anchialine ponds and then your shore ocean waters. In general, where there has been development, say like at Waikoloa, where there are a lot of anchialine ponds, and as we all know, there were a bunch filled in a very heated contested situation in the mid-'80s, what we've seen there is -. And of course this golf course near anchialine pools, mauka of anchialine pools. What we've done there is we sample, just to give 9