2024_08_20 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

Home

brass when you’re up there shooting – pick up some trash – tell your friends – tell your friend hunters pick it up before they close it down. The other one was I sat in a meeting with the state – DLNR was trying to approve a buoy at Makaiwa Bay – a mooring buoy for a resort even though it’s right next to some of the ancient fish ponds – there was a huge outcry of local protest against it – it has now been suspended – we will see what comes of it – but the public really came out in force on that – trying to stop the resort from putting in two mooring buoys right next to a surf break, right on top of a thriving reef and right next to the fish ponds. So that’s good news, and that is all I have to report. LT: Right… BL: Brian, District – 4. Just to reiterate what you were saying. Not everybody that shoots on Mile Marker 16 is a hunter. There’s a lot of people that just shoot – so not everybody with a gun is a hunter so… JA: Correct. BL: So, you know, it might not be hunters trashing the place. JA: Agreed, agreed. Anybody who uses it – pick up an extra bag of brass when you’re there. 5. PRESENTATION: a. Stephen Holmes, representative from Sierra Club Hawai’i Island Group, presenting “Clean Water Act Enforcement and Policy Implications”. LT: All right, any more discussions – District – 9, OK. Thank you very much sir, ah, moving forward into Presentations, 5 a. Representative from Sierra Club Hawaii Island Group presenting “Clean Water Act Enforcement and Policy Implications.” Mr. Holmes, aloha. SH: My name is Steve Holmes. I first came to the Big Island in 1970 and worked as a National Park Ranger at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. I have a degree in law enforcement and have worked as a law enforcement ranger up at Hawaii Volcanoes, so I have a little experience dispatching pigs and goats up at the park so… But I’m here today to talk about the Clean Water Act. I was regional vice president of Sierra Club back in the late 80’s and it came to our attention after repeated discharges of untreated wastewater into Hilo Bay that the treatment plant that the County had in Keaukaha was in bad shape and I went down to the Department of Health and pulled the files, and it was awful. Basically, the stuff coming in was cleared and the stuff going out – if you can even imagine that, and, I have a science background – I went in and I toured the plant and noticed that the autoclave – which is used for bacterial monitoring wasn’t working. I asked them – did they send their samples out and the guy showed me a book where they basically were lying and putting in false numbers, so I took my information over to EPA region 9 and flew over and met with them and they stepped in and took an enforcement action, so there’s a couple of layers of enforcement action the EPA can be involved with under the Clean Water Act and one is called “an administrative order of consent – consent to create for short – and, so it has the effect of law and the County of Hawaii was forced – in this case – to build a 7