2010-11-03 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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the Honokaa project and they just finished the Queen Liliuokalani project in Kona. That one is especially is interesting because when it was first spec out, the Q of E project had about 18 lcc’s in it. By the time they were done, they had 38. So it shows how difficult it is to really get a grip on some of the problems that Environmental Management has to deal with. Solid Waste Division operates and maintains all solid waste collections, disposal facilities including 20 transfer stations around the island along as well as the two landfills. And to close landfills which, and when we close the landfill that doesn’t mean it goes away. You still have to spend millions of dollars over the lifetime of that heap to take care of it. Solid waste division has about 108 funded positions and handles about 800 tons of solid waste a day. Back to Wastewater, they’ve got about 11.2 million gallons of capacity per day also. There is also a derelict and abandoned vehicle disposal program which comes under Solid Waste Division. That’s got two funded positions civilly funded through the county’s vehicle disposal fund. There is also various recycling programs that are run by the Solid Waste Division. In those three, you think they’re fairly simple, but really it is extremely difficult as our mayor knows. Largely because what you’re doing when you’re dealing with recycling is you’re dealing with the psychology of people who are out there. You got to get them convinced that this is a good thing to do, rather than throwing everything in the landfill which is also expensive. The landfill is something which we have a very limited capacity for. And the sooner we run out of the capacity, the sooner we’ll have to do something else with that rubbish, which is going to be expensive. The recycling area is also very difficult because basically once you get the recyclables into your hand, then you gotta do something. And that means you’re interacting with live markets out there. You’re becoming a market participant. Very, very difficult. And government as you know, it’s not terribly nimble when it comes to buying and selling things. In order to try and just figure out how you’re going to deal with the market, whether you’re doing it as a government or whether you’re dealing with a private contractor, it’s a very complex proposition. Those are the basic functions that the Department of Environmental Management deals with. Basically our task is to try to protect the unique environment of Hawai‘i from the solid and liquid waste hazards that we as the users inhabit this place produce. And the financial difficulties are, at the Wastewater division basically subsists solely on the sewer fund which is basically just the sewers fees that they’re able to collect. Solid Waste division collects tipping fees, but also has a certain amount of subsidies from the General Fund. But our funding is limited in that respect. We’ve had some challenges in terms of collections obviously in the past few years. We are making steps right now. We’ve been talking to our business services people. We would have some things that we are intending to move on as soon as possible. Just real general, I think what we need to do particularly with the Wastewater Division is to get going on generating late and final notices better than we have been. And to get a better grip on where all of our delinquent accounts are so we can make more timely referrals to the Corporation Counsel, the collection agency. We also need to get a new collection agency contract online. All of these are things that we are in the process of inaudible. The question was asked if we could ever cut people off? In terms of Solid Waste, in the past there has been many times where somebody is seriously delinquent in their solid waste tipping fees. We’ll issue basically a notice telling them that you’re not allowed to come and tip anymore unless you work out a payment plan or pay off your debt. We are moving in that direction again. Before we do that, obviously, we have to make sure that our 18