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

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GONZALES: Jeff? MELROSE: Yeah, Jeff Melrose again from the Department of Research and Development. I never really, I’m glad to answer any questions you have on this conversation. As I said early on, the health study is a priority for us. You know, but given the critique of the meta-study, you would think it wasn’t in the recommendations; it is a specific recommendation. And it has a value. It may not be something we need to do right now. We can continue to talk about that and see whether, you know, well, we will have another pass at this, you know, before you in the future. But as I said, you know, the Mayor made a very clear statement of his commitment to this community and to the health issues associated with geothermal as being, you know, there is nothing we can do about the 30-year history but we can address what we are doing today and expedite issues associated with this, and that’s what we are trying to do. Designing a health study in a way that has, that is, that can be pure review that has, that will hold up under a scientific scrutiny, is very important, and that’s what we are trying to do and that’s how we expect to use the public money at the level of activity. So, you know, I really, I don’t believe the, we ask the John A. Burns School of Medicine to help us and they provided us some ideas right off the bat that were consistent with the recommendations, so we were moving along in that way, but we continued to have ongoing conversations with them. One of the things we really don’t want to do with them is kind of eliminate them; you get them involved in a scope of work, drafting and, you know, managing the RFP kind of eliminates them from being useful, you know, in the actual bidding process to do the work. I’m concerned about that. I want to make sure that we, whatever we do with them keeps them still in the group, because they do have some researchers, particularly Elizabeth Tam, who has a long-term eight-year study of sulfide dioxide out of Halema‘uma‘u that, she’s done a really good body of work, and very community-based, very engaged in the community. That’s something we are looking to, we’d like to find that, and they’ve kind of got it there, and we don’t want to lose that option by how we address them in early stages. So we are working at that at the high level of JABSOM today, and hope that we can get some resolution to that early on and move forward. So you’ll see a health study. These are not linear. The Health Study Group knows this. This is not linear; we are not waiting eight months before we do the health study. But we are starting where we can start. So that’s what we are trying to accomplish. So any questions, I’m glad to answer them. GONZALES: Any questions, Commissioners? Thank you. Where are we at, Daryn? ARAI: You could entertain a motion on, we did provide to you our Background and Recommendation on Item No. 6 that outline basically what needs to be done next in accordance with your Rules. We did look into a claims adjuster that is on the professional services list for the County, which would then satisfy the State’s procurement process, and the one company is John Mullen & Company. So with that being said, we are asking for your positive vote to hire John Mullen & Company as a claims adjuster for the purpose of this study. KANUHA: Mr. Chairman, if I may, one point of clarification here is, and that is the way the rule is set up, the first step in the process is to have a claim come to the Department, not to the Commission, but to the Department first, and then at that time the Commission makes a decision on whether or not to hire a claims adjuster to adjudicate those claims. And this particular case we have a lot of information related to the study, and we are anticipating four more claims to come in. So when you vote on whether or not to hire this claims adjuster, you have to keep in mind that you have some information on what the anticipated claims will be for what amounts are, but they are not 20 EXHIBIT B