2003-11-07 TRUTTER - Laserfiche WebLink

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FROST:ItÓs 77-6473 Princess Keelikolani Drive, Kailua-Kona 96740. SPRINGER:Thank you, sorry to interrupt. FROST:IÓve been in Hawaii a long time. IÓve been in the environmental business a long time. IÓm an expert in fluid flow and porous media. IÓm an expert in water and brine and oil flowing through rocks. What I want to talk about is what goes on under the ground because youÓre not dealing with the normal place here. You cannot apply the rules of housing projects and, over the nation and over the rest of Hawaii at this place, because itÓs a unique place. Imagine ten blankets six inches thick overlying each other and itÓs flat. And what happens under that ground is significant because nothing stays there very long. ItÓs full of pukas, itÓs full of tubes, different permeability zones and porosity zones. TheyÓre quite a mess. I have some experience in the soils of Hawaii. IÓll tell you a few stories if I have time. But IÓm greatly concerned about what goes into the ground, and this area in particular because the transport mechanism is right there in front of your nose. You look at the pond down here by this little, the old KingÓs house, itÓs almost fresh. Where does that water come from? Have you ever gone out here to the park and gone in the little keiki pond in the morning? And thereÓs ice water on the top of the water. ItÓs hard to get in. ItÓs fresh water. You sit down near the edge, youÓll feel jets of this fresh beautiful water coming out. Sometimes itÓs really icy. You can reach down, pick it up, and itÓs wonderful. ItÓs much better than what youÓll get along Alii Drive in your house pipes. Where does that all come from? ItÓs flowing through these blankets all the time. So when you put something into that blanket, it doesnÓt stay there. My concern is the underground. IÓve a, chemical engineering at Berkeley, a master of science in environmental health from UH, 30 years of work experience in Hawaii in environmental health. In my 20s I worked for Dow Chemical. We were trying to find ways to flush more oil out of the ground so we started off with table models and core tests in labs; and I learned how to put brine and oil and all kinds of things through all sorts of stuff. We wound up doing field tests in little oil fields and big oil fields. We put brine in one injection well, popped up in some farmerÓs yard. We used tracer chemicals of all sorts. What happens out here is unlike any other place. You donÓt find them in the rest of Hawaii. I know Maui and Kauai and Oahu very well. You wonÓt find it in Hilo. Only here, along here, down a little bit south, youÓll find this wonderful weird ecology with these blankets and this flowing water underneath. So what happe in goes the termicide, some in the ground, nobody notices. You sell a house, escrow, mortgage people, they want to see those termite treatments, who cares, it rolls into the cost youÓre buying a house, and it goes into the ground. 18