2012-10-04 Windward Transcript PD yagong & blas

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AU: No, that’s good. KERN: Thanks, gentlemen. Have a seat. Oh, actually is there, any other Commissioners have any questions while they’re up here? Okay, you may have a seat. It has been made aware to all of us as public knowledge that the administration has issued a joint fact finding study. If it’s okay with the Commissioners, if there’s somebody present here from the administration, I would like to hear a little more background; and I think it’s relevant to this overall conversation of a health study. Mr. Melrose, are you prepared for -? And I’ll give you the same ten minutes max. MELROSE: Good morning. KERN: Do you swear to tell the truth today before the Windward Planning Commission? MELROSE: I do KERN: Okay, give me your name and -. MELROSE: My name is Jeff Melrose. I’m on special projects in the Mayor’s office. I live in Hilo. KERN: Very good. Go ahead. MELROSE: I just want to thank, I think this conversation is a good one. And I appreciate both Councilman Yagong and Mr. Petricci’s comments. The real goal here is to come up with a study that everybody can appreciate and to buy into. And I think identifying what that study looks like is a challenge, particularly for people who are not involved in science. The science of gas studies or toxicity is, you know, is new for everybody in the room probably, and certainly for the people who are going to make decisions about that, which is this Commission. So several months ago we got into a, you know, our effort was to say, well, let’s figure how we do a study. Let’s, we know the Geothermal Asset Fund is the place to fund this process, let’s make sure we have a fundamental understanding of what works have been done elsewhere, what do we not want to repeat necessarily but what can we do in this circumstance that would address the issue. And I don’t want to say once and for all cause I don’t know that any of this ends up in a once-and-for-all circumstance. But I think it puts together a solid study that says, that helps us to get focused on health issues as they are or aren’t related to the geothermal activities in Puna. So we’ve contracted with an independent third party whose profession is to develop joint-fact finding. This is a process, it’s a way of looking at complex science issues and building policy based on a common understanding of the science first. So often in these kinds of issues one side gets its scientists and another side gets its scientists and they end up in the middle and they end up fighting, and the only people that are making money are the scientists and the attorneys in the middle of that process. So we’re trying to avoid that process. So we’ve contracted with a Core 3.0, and Peter Adler. Peter for the last 30 years has been doing, you know, complex issues, management and problem solving on a national scale. And so he will basically 11 EXHIBIT C