2024_08_20 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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new treatment plant and now that treatment plant some 30 years later is a total train wreck and is subject to get another AOC. In this case, EPA officials toured the entire Island and found major deficiencies all around the Island with wastewater infrastructure – basically decades of neglect – and so EPA has sewed up county-wide consent decree that includes a number of treatment plants on the Big Island – Hilo is one of those and there and the AOC has a number of provisions and, Mayor Roth has described the impact of this is creating the largest public works project that County will ever see. So, it’s coming with a big price tag. So, the Hilo Treatment Plant is incapable of repairs – they’re going to have to replace it. It’s actually structurally unsound and unsafe for workers – it’s that bad. You couldn’t possibly take apart components and fix ‘em because they’re fused together by saltwater corrosion and it’s just really appalling conditions and Mayor Roth and Ramsey Mansour who heads Environmental Management are quite honest about this – they’ve talked to the council presented information but the AOC that’s been established by the EPA now has the effect of law and their on a time frame to do certain things and that includes replacing the Hilo Wastewater Treatment Plant, replacing a couple of other smaller facilities on the Hamakua Coast – Kulamanu and Pepeekeo – they’re also being required to connect thousands of homes on the Big Island to existing County wastewater facilities and part of that is to do away with cesspools but the second thing is to create revenue. You need paying customers anytime you have a utility and so EPA has recognized that a lot of the failures have come from the lack of revenue to properly do operation and maintenance. So, by requiring people to connect and putting in sewer improvement districts to connect homes they hope to create sufficient customer base to provide the revenue so that we don’t get in this condition again. So that alone is gonna be a big project as you can imagine. It also is going to address the cesspool concerns that you may have heard about – even up in Honokaa, for instance, while that treatment plant is not subject of the AOC – the requirement to connect more homes in Honokaa is going to greatly increase the size of the facility and probably also require it to be upgraded for additional capacity. The same is true in Kona. The AOC requires them to upgrade the pre- treatment equipment that handles solids that are in the waste stream to prevent them from impacting the treatment plant and the County is also under an enforcement action in federal court that was brought about under the Clean Water Act – Citizens Suit Provisions – so in this case Earth Justice representing a group called Hui Malama Honokohau has stepped up to – above EPA and Department of Health to take an action in federal court and, I understand they’ve had some pre-settled – but that’s not publicly available, they’re probably going to have to upgrade to R1 which is a higher level of treatment with disinfection and they currently are discharging to a hole in the ground and have been for 25 years now – scientists have clearly identified hydrologic connection to the ocean – Earth Justice has submitted scientific documents that show that this is the case and the coastal waters in this area are federally listed as impaired so it’s a fairly clean cut case under the Clean Water Act and the County has hired outside counsel and they’re in negotiations and so we’re hoping for good results from that. The EPA has also stepped in on two other enforcement actions. One is for Naalehu and Pahala – these are old sugarcane towns as you know – and they had gang cesspools so it’s technically not the Clean Water Act but the Safe Drinking Water Act and they’re requiring those 2 communities to have a wastewater treatment put in and have all the homes connected to it. So that would address not only the homes that were on the gang cesspools but all the other homes in those communities that are presently on individual wastewater systems. They also have an AOC regarding a pre- treatment program and basically this means that you need to take sampling of stuff that’s coming into the treatment plant when the happy do pumper guys are bringing in septic waste to the treatments plant, for instance, you’re required to do periodic sampling to make sure that bad stuff isn’t coming in. You don’t want stuff coming in from an auto-body paint shop, for 8