2014-01-09 Windward Exh B - Items 5 & 6

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to, further delays accomplishing a comprehensive health study. Following should be understood: the JABSOM proposal raises questions and issues from the GPHA report that served to frame our efforts as we did our deliberations. We tried to answer those questions as best as we could, and came to the conclusion that we wanted to do a comprehensive health study. We don’t need the School of Medicine to repeat that effort. Revisiting these questions and issues before doing the health study, disregards the effort the Working Group did. It’s already been a year since the Mayor vetoed the health study mandated by the County Council. The JABSOM proposal offers to explore new questions, but it fails to realize, or fails to recognize, that a study done by the Environmental Protection Agency, reviewed by the National Research Council, a process that took over nine years, uses essentially the same methodology that they are proposing to take to accomplish an effective study in several months. Rather, it would make more sense that they start with the Environmental Protection Agency study, and answer specific questions necessary or update the study. The JABSOM proposal on a meta-study also makes an error in that it states the eligibility criteria for studies be included in the study of studies should be low or moderate exposure to hydrogen sulfide. In fact, the Geothermal Public Health Assessment report specifically says that highest exposures may have been possible. And in the absence of effective monitoring it is unknown what those actual exposures were. In short, although I strongly support the Mayor’s recommendation to use these funds to move forward on the recommendations, I must highlight the fact that we are still not acting on the most important and critical of those recommendations, which is to do a comprehensive health study. In no way is a meta-study going to illuminate that to a degree that it is worth a delay. Thank you. GONZALES: Thank you. LUEBBEN: Thank you. My name is Tom Luebben, and I thank the Commission for the opportunity to speak today. I’m a Native American rights attorney from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I come, if you will, as an outside observer with some knowledge of the history of the geothermal issue in Puna, having litigated on behalf of the Pele Defense Fund and others in the 1980’s and the 1990’s; so I have some extensive experience in the past with this issue. I represented the Pele Defense Fund for many years. In fact, I’m proud to say I’m the only lawyer I know who has ever represented the real life gods. At this point I’m not representing anybody. But during that process I kind of fell in love with the Big Island, and I’m now a property owner in Puna. I litigated Medeiros v. Hawai‘i County Planning Commission and the Pele Defense Fund versus PGV. In the Medeiros case, at the behest of geothermal proponents, the state legislature enacted HRS Section 205, which exempted geothermal permitting only from the contested case provisions of the state’s Administrative Procedure Act; it deprived the community of its right to the contested case and substituted a public hearing in what I have referred to as compulsory mediation, which is not consistent with the way that mediation is ordinarily conducted. It’s ironic, I think, that you can get a contested case hearing on permitting a farmers market but not a geothermal permit, although a geothermal permit will have a much greater impact on the community. I just want to provide a little bit of perspective here about what this community has been through. Developers were allowed to subdivide the East Rift zone, Volcanic Hazard Zone 1, way back, and the result was that thousands of people have settled in Puna to take advantage of the inexpensive land available there. Then the geothermal proposal arrived with the potential to industrialize Puna, which is not what most residents want and not why they moved to Puna in the first place. There has been a broad community effort to protect the community, but they’ve found that the dice have in effect been rolled against them throughout this process. The state legislature has repeatedly acted against the community’s interest. The Department of Health, state Department of Health has failed to protect 11 EXHIBIT B