2011-07-21 Leeward Exh B - LDS Church

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TAKEMOTO: Roy Takemoto. I’m with PBR Hawai‘i. We are the planning consultants to the applicant, the Church. Address: 1719 Haleloki Street, Hilo. BEAUDET: Please proceed with your presentation. TAKEMOTO: The applicant is in agreement with the staff report, the recommendations and the conditions, as amended. We have also seen the letter from DOE, and we can address those now or after testimony from the DOE, however pleases you. Maybe, let’s, we can quickly address those since it’s before you now. You have the testimony. BEAUDET: I would prefer that we address them now. And then if we feel that there is need for comments subsequent to testimony, then we can ask you to return. TAKEMOTO: Okay. There are three concerns. On concern No. 1, the access, the site plan that we showed, maybe not on this one but another exhibit in the application, it showed an Easement A and an Easement B. So this is Lot E-4 that is the subject of the letter, and Easement B is this one and Easement A is where the driveway would be located. Lot E-4 is intended to be part of the Onouli Road right-of-way; so eventually, although DOE owns it now, I think the idea and the hope is that Onouli Road and Lot E-4 would be dedicated to the County at some point. But at this time Easement A has been created and we’ve given a copy of the warranty deed that gave title to the Church that included Easement A, easement rights to Easement A. Easement B was something desired by the Church but never pursued and there was no grant of easement, so Easement B does not exist. So easement rights, the only question would be Easement A and the rights had been secured. On concern No. 2, which is the traffic, the concern raised in the letter was the potential concurrent activities with after-school and high traffic activity at the church. Those times would be, if they ever occur, would be very rare. The mitigation offered in the letter is to comply with the six conditions of the Traffic Impact Report, the TIAR, which is also Condition No. 5, I believe, of the existing conditions – no, let’s see, not that one, No. 3, No. 9 – it’s existing Condition No. 9. And the sixth condition of the TIAR addresses that; that should there be an exceptional queuing along Onouli Road due to the traffic occurring either at the church or the school, if there is queuing caused by the church, that there would be an attendant at the access point to help guide the traffic in and out to moderate and mitigate the problem during that event, which should be very rare. The third concern was drainage. The school experienced flooding in their parking lot in this area here, and it was apparently an extreme flooding event, a 100-year storm. And we believe that the Church will actually mitigate a recurrence of the flooding in the following ways. One is that although the engineering standard and what is required by the County is to accommodate the 10-year flood on site, the Church actually would be doing more; they would be intersecting some of the flow, off-site flow, that’s coming onto the property, which they by right can just pass through, but they will be intercepting some of that, and accommodating that flow onto their drywells on site by designing the drainage to a 50-year storm rather than a 10-year storm. Additionally, there would be -. In the previous flooding, the existing condition, the undeveloped condition, brought a lot of debris with it. So by developing and maintenance of the landscaping and the yards here, there will be a substantial reduction in debris. And there also will be, as a possible buffer, there will be a retaining wall on the boundary, the easement boundary, with the school. That retaining wall is necessary to provide the access to the church, but the retaining wall will be raised about a foot above grade where it would be able to, whatever flow does make it down to this point, would be, 4 EXHIBIT B