2024_08_20 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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BL: \[Unclear\] SH: I would point out, however, that the State Department of Health is primary under The Clean Water Act. And so, the very fact that you have EPA stepping in and you have citizens whose being brought into The Clean Water Act, tells you that the Department of Health is not doing its job properly. They’re required to do regular inspections of County facilities to ensure compliance so that we don’t get into this kind of a mess. So, I really think we all need to understand that this points the finger directly at the Department of Health is a colossal failure on their part. BL: Yeah, I just wanted to thank you. Just touching back I see you’re from the Hawaii Sierra Club and, I was a little leery cause we’ve had issues in the past with Mark Hansen of the Sierra Club writing bogus articles about the palila birds and the Hawaii Sierra Club would not recant their issues and stuff like that and so I came in here with a little doubtful – like I was mentioned earlier when I catch somebody lying my credibility and after listening to you talk and your everything else that brought back a lot of credibility and hopefully we can keep the honesty and the facts and the truth coming through and I appreciate your speech today. Thank you. SH: Thank you. I did receive an award from President Regan back in the 80’s for my work on The Clean Water Act so,I’ve been doing this for quite a while and, it’s important to keep your credibility and to speak truth where it’s necessary. I thank you and I’m sorry that you had a bad experience with Sierra Club previously. BL: Thank you, sir… LT: Anymore discussion for my Commission members? No hands seen – aloha, Leomana, District – 3, thank you, sir. I grew up in Hilo, I swam in the ocean in Keaukaha my whole life. When I was seven, I got scabies, when I was eight, I got staff, right from Puhi Bay, you know, growing up. I’m thinking it’s because I’m a boy and I might be gross and I never knew it was because of that discharge right there, and now as an adult I take my kids there to go swimming and I see the news and it hurts my feelings and I have such a down look on Hilo and I call ourselves pigs because we swim in our own poop and we don’t really change it and it’s just been stress for me this past two years because I’m a caretaker of eleven acres right on the coastline in Keaukaha – One Kahakaha Beach – the old zoo is our property now and I’m trying to revitalize the fishing community. My dad and my family were kinda like the leaders of the fishing community and the ocean clan – so this was a big stress, and I’d just like to tell you thank you for all of the information you shared because it helps me a lot, so thank you very much. SH: Yeah, when I first got involved in the treatment plant it was down in Keaukaha right next to Puhi Bay, as you know, we found that there was about a six-foot hole in the pipeline just outside Puhi Bay in the \[unclear\]. The County absolutely denied that it existed, so we took an underwater camera from UH-Hilo and shot a movie we called Jacques Cousteau Meets the tidy bull man and we showed it at a County Council meeting and immediately got emergency funding approval to fix the hole in the pipe but it’s just astounding how things have been allowed to get into that condition. You think of all the kids in Keaukaha that just loved Puhi Bay and go out to that floating platform and enjoy the water there and then to think that this big puka was in that pipe and it was allowed to happen for decades so it’s just astounding. And this generally been the sad 11