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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2014-01-09 Windward Exh B - Items 5 & 6 WINDWARD PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I HEARING TRANSCRIPT JANUARY 9, 2014 Regularly advertised hearings on the general update/overview of the Geothermal Public Health Assessment and on the discussion regarding selection of a professional claims adjuster were simultaneously called to order at 10:07 a.m. in the County of Hawai‘i, Aupuni Center Conference Room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo, Hawai‘i, with Vice Chairman Ronald Gonzales presiding. COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Ronald Gonzales, Charles Heaukulani, Gregory Henkel, Myles Miyasato and Raylene Moses ABSENT AND EXCUSED: Wallace Ishibashi and Stephen Ono ALSO PRESENT: Margaret Masunaga (Deputy Corporation Counsel), Duane Kanuha (Planning Director), Daryn Arai (Planning Program Manager), Phyllis Fujimoto (Planner), Jeff Darrow (Planner), Maija Cottle (Planner), Sarah Hata-Finley (Commission Secretary) and Noriko Sauer (Commission Secretary) And approximately 23 people from the public in attendance. General update/overview of the Geothermal Public Health Assessment dated September 9, 2013, prepared on behalf of The Geothermal Public Health Assessment Study Group, and its findings and recommendations. Discussion regarding selection of a professional claims adjuster in accordance with Rule 12-5 of the Planning Commission Rules of Practice and Procedure regarding the Geothermal Asset Fund in anticipation of the filing of claims by the Office of the Mayor for the release of funds from the Geothermal Asset Fund for the following community approved geothermal impact mitigation projects Air Quality Monitoring Equipment Purchases - $180,000 a. New fixed and hand held air quality monitors to be purchased by Hawaii County Civil Defense to improve emergency response to geothermal events and to provide community members with hand held monitors, on a pilot basis. Ground Water Sampling in the Kilauea East Rift - $45,000 b. Contract with USGS to conduct ground water sampling of existing wells and selected warm ponds along the Lower Puna coast to test for the presence of chemicals used in the geothermal energy process that might have mixed with ground water in the region. The study follows up a 1994 Study by USGS and addresses a specific recommendation in the study group’s report to conduct such studies. Meta-Analysis of Health Effects of Low to Moderate H2S Exposure; John A Burns School c. of Medicine - $55,000 The study will synthesize results of available published studies on the impacts of low to moderate exposures of H2S from geothermal and other sources globally. The report will highlight consistent research findings using independent biostatisticians and epidemiologist and lay the ground work for future health studies in the Puna Region. 1 EXHIBIT B Comparative Analysis of Hospitalization and Emergency Department visits for Puna d. Residents; John A. Burns School of Medicine - $27,500 The study will investigate whether the residents who live in proximity of the Puna geothermal plant are more likely to experience negative health impacts based on existing health data on all payers and all visits to local medical facilities. Data will be drawn from the Hawaii Health Information Corporation databases and compare Puna data with control data in other Hawaii communities. Enhanced Level 1 Environmental Site Assessment on former HGP-A brine water pond e. sites - $25,000 Study would collect existing environmental data and conduct soil sampling from the former brine pond sites to analyze for the presence of any hazardous materials that may be in the ground as a result of the early years of geothermal development. ARAI: Again, what’s before you right now is general update and overview by the Office of the Mayor regarding the Geothermal Public Health Assessment study dated September 9, 2013, prepared on behalf of the Geothermal Public Health Assessment Study Group and its findings and recommendations. Once again, this is just an update; you’ll be taking no action on this particular matter. And again, Item No. 6, which can be discussed concurrently, will be the hiring of a professional claims adjuster in accordance with your Rules of Practice and Procedures in order to utilize funds from the Geothermal Asset Fund for claims by the Mayor’s Office for community approved geothermal impact mitigation projects. So with that, we do have the Mayor in attendance, as well as a representative from his Office that will provide you with this overview and discussion. GONZALES: Very good. Mr. Kenoi, the floor is yours. KENOI: Aloha, everybody. Good morning. ATTENDEES: Good morning. Aloha. KENOI: Happy New Year. My first time I’ve come to testify for the Planning Commission. Can I talk like this, or you need the mike? GONZALES: I’m going to swear you in first. Raise your right hand. KENOI: All right. GONZALES: Do you swear to tell the truth today before the Windward Planning Commission? KENOI: Always. GONZALES: All right. Thank you. KENOI: To Chairman, Ron Gonzales, to the distinguished members of the Planning Commission, first of all, I want to say thank you. Thank you to all of our board and commission members, but especially the Planning Commission; of our many boards and commissions, and I know, this is my sixth year as mayor now, we’ve appointed over about 220 members to boards and commissions – Liquor Commission, Water Commission, Planning Commission, both Windward and Leeward – and of all the commissions, all very important, we all ask our residents to volunteer their time. But 2 EXHIBIT B the Planning Commission especially has such a broad range of issues that come before all of you, as you well know, and that requires a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of effort. So I want to say thank you to all of you for the work you do. And to our Planning Department staff, thanks, you guys, for all the support you provide to the Commission, really appreciate it. I’m here on behalf of a few recommendations that are before you, requesting funds from the Geothermal Asset Fund. And just for a real brief background, you know, myself, as well as our administration, remain advocates for cheap, clean, but especially safe renewable energy. And as proponents of that, you know, we support geothermal development, but good, clean, safe geothermal development. And a lot of questions and concerns have been raised in the community whether or not geothermal development is safe and has any adverse impact. And so towards that end, we have worked with – is he a doctor? Is Peter Adler a doctor? Ph.D.? So Dr. Peter Adler, one of the most renowned, respected, neutral third parties we could find, was tasked with coming in and bringing members of our community to come and talk, not to advocate a specific viewpoint, not to get to a specific place; but when I asked him, “Hey, Peter, what is your goal here?” and it was interesting and it was the first time I heard the term, but he said his goal was to bring diverse viewpoints together to try to reach, attempt to reach, the highest level of consensus and then remain there. It wasn’t trying to get us, get our pro or against position or establish, but really the highest level of consensus. And toward that end, I know we have some members of the Geothermal Public Health Assessment Study Group who are here. And they did an amazing terrific job. I want to thank every one of them, also who volunteered their time. Our conservative estimate would be that this group volunteered more than 1,500 of their hours over a nine-month period, meetings, public consultations, teleconferences, report drafting. And so I want to thank Dr. Adler and I want to thank the community members. I know I see some of them here. If you could just raise your hand and say aloha. And I know some of them will be testifying before all of you with regards to recommendations, and I’m not sure of their exact position on it. But we have LaRee Ann Hiltner – aloha, LaRee – Bob Petricci, René Siracusa, Jeff Sutton – Jeff, aloha – and Thomas Travis. Did I miss any members who are here, who have been here? And, you know, all of them, I met them, I think, a couple of months ago for the first time together as a group, and got their bios, and just in a really great cross-section of people who brought their personal experience and expertise to the table. And all we were trying to do was, what were the questions that were raised and how can we best find answers to those questions. And that was the purpose, because at the end of the day, as the chief executive, as the mayor, regardless of the positions we advocate or the issues before us, first and foremost, paramount, is public health and safety. I want to really thank also our Civil Defense administrator, who is here, Darryl Oliveira, who’s been just a great facilitative leader. First of all, I go sleep at night, my family go sleep at night, because of the wonderful leadership that Darryl provides. And before right in front of him is John Drummond – John, raise your hand – John also is one of those who work at Civil Defense, and they are up there all day all night and keep us all safe. So mahalo, you guys. And a couple of people from staff who help facilitate this: I know Jeff, thank you very much for facilitating that; I’ve got Clarysse who will also be working with the Study Group going forward. And so, what were some of the questions, and what were some of the proposals to get answers to those questions? So we are before you very specifically to ask for your support on a couple of things, and I’ll leave it to the really smart people I work with to answer specific questions. But I’ll be open to questions as well. But one is $180,000 for the air quality monitoring equipment purchases. Myself and Chief Oliveira went to the Department of Health, Environmental Quality Control Division, and talked to them about how can we provide more support. And we didn’t want 3 EXHIBIT B at the County level to get into, hey, State, you do this, County, we do that, and get into that; we were like, hey, you know what, questions were raised in our community and we want to get answers as quickly as possible. Most importantly a lot of good people put in a lot of good work, and we don’t want their study and recommendations to sit on the shelf. Very legitimate questions were raised, and these are our first steps, not last steps, not only steps, but first steps to getting some answers to those questions. We wanted to provide, one is, there are two types of monitoring equipment, we are moving with funds that we have in Civil Defense, we move for, one is hand-held monitoring equipment that we want to give to community members and the second is fixed monitoring equipment. And, of course, Department of Health would say, you know, we are not here to agree or disagree, they will say no, no need anymore, and we are saying, hey, not going to hurt for have more equipment. We’d rather be in a position who have more information than less, rather be, we want to err on the side of caution. So if we can get more information, let’s do that, more information, better information, better decision-making. Another is to contract, $45,000 to contract with USGS to do water sampling of wells and warm ponds along the Lower Puna coast to test for the presence of chemicals used in geothermal energy production. And it will give us a sense. We could, there is opportunities in the future to do broader studies that might require more resources, but right now it’s to do the first scan study. Another one is a meta-analysis of health effects of low to moderate H²S, or hydrogen sulfide, exposure to be done by the John A. Burns School of Medicine. A meta-analysis, I had to ask, I never know, I said, hey, bro, what is a meta-analysis, sounds cool. But as they were just saying is, I guess they would just grab all of the existing research and information out there, compile it, kind of squeeze it all together, and see what we get. And it makes a lot of sense. What we didn’t want to do, and, you know, it might sound cautious, but what we want to do is take very certain steps, right, and get information that we can really grasp and not go off in different directions. So each study we are trying to get is to lay the foundation for future information. And also another is funds -. I think they, I’m under the impression or received the information that the comparative analysis of hospitalization and emergency rooms was taken off the table by the Study Group. Okay. So I got that, reviewed that earlier. So the Study Group has determined, let’s not pursue that at this time. That’s my understanding. And the next, the final one is an enhanced Level 1 environmental site assessment on former HGP-A brine water pond sites. What happened was when geothermal back in the day in the start and when it first began in the early 80’s, had these open ponds. Look at pictures, and if you drive down Pohoiki – those of us who surf, go down there – there are these open ponds. Now the ponds are covered. We, County of Hawai‘i, has asked the State through the Department of Health if they could follow up and conduct an assessment of the area, because the ponds are basically covered up. So questions have been raised: Are there any adverse environmental impacts by that; or are there any heavy metals; are there any potential threat or harm to our public health or public safety to the residents of Puna? And we, so we asked, written communication, and the Department of Health said no need, DLNR who has ownership of the land said no need, NELHA came in and they also said, hey, we did some study, no need, they have confidence. And all we said was, hey, for $25,000, you know, if we can get more information, if we can do a more thorough comprehensive analysis and assessment of the sites, why not? Just to be sure. I don’t want to look at residents of Puna, our neighbors and friends, being from Puna, Henkel over there swimming in the water in Pohoiki, but I don’t like looking Gregory and we surf in that Pohoiki, and he go, hey, bro, are you 4 EXHIBIT B sure or what? And I’m like, well, they said, you know, they said. But, you know, as the chief executive mayor, I have responsibility as to all of us, too, not just to be sure, but be certain. And so we are making the request for $25,000 to do an environmental assessment, and if necessary, to come back probably before this Commission and ask for a subsequent funding. And that’s what this is, you know, this is, a lot of questions have been raised in the community, and very reasonable questions have been asked. And it’s only right that we, as municipal county government, be able to collectively, collaboratively and cooperatively come up with answers. And if more questions raised from the funds that we have asked to utilize, then we’ll certainly continue to pursue that just so that we can be confident that our families are protected, our children are protected, our future is protected in Puna. And that’s what we are here for. So I just would like to ask all of you to support that. And if not -. Nah. I’m going to replace -. No, I’m just kidding. But that’s what I’m here for. Thank you for the time, staff, Commission members. And I’m sure a lot of other people will testify and have an opportunity to answer your questions. But again, mahalo, you guys, to our group that has done so much work. Look forward to continuing working with you. My office and this administration will provide as much support as we can going forward to make sure we follow up on the hard work that all of you have already completed. So, if anybody get any questions? If not, thanks, you guys. Mahalo for your work. And a Happy New Year and aloha. GONZALES: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Do we have a staff presentation? ARAI: No, but I just wanted to make you aware that the Office of the Mayor has provided the Commissioners with some summary information: One of them is a letter dated January 9, 2014, identified as Findings and Recommendations from the Geothermal Public Health Assessment Study Group, and the second is an executive summary of the Geothermal Public Health Assessment Findings and Recommendation. So copies of that have been provided to you. Once again, there was, as scheduled, there is a general update of the assessment study, which the Mayor has done. And what you will be acting, or being asked to act upon today, is the selection of a professional claims adjuster that will look at these proposals with exception of Item d, which is a comparative analysis of hospitalization that the Mayor said was taken off the table. And the claims adjuster will then make its recommendation back to the Planning Commission at which point we will then schedule another hearing, and at which time you will then make the final determination regarding the funding. So, with that, I stand ready, if you have questions. GONZALES: Very good. We do have people signed up to testify. Would that be appropriate at this time? ARAI: Any other presentations by the Office of the Mayor? Mr. Melrose would like to make a presentation. GONZALES: Very good. Would you raise your right hand, sir? Do you swear to tell the truth before the Windward Planning Commission today? MELROSE: I do. GONZALES: Thank you. Go ahead. 5 EXHIBIT B MELROSE: My name is Jeff Melrose. I’m, I work special projects of the Mayor and the Department of Research and Development. But I’ve been the, kind of the staff link to this conversation from the early stages. And I just wanted to add a couple of quick comments to this. One is, again, affirming the role that this group of people played trying to get to the bottom of serious and complex issues, trying to use a joint fact finding process that we could kind of penetrate in. These three-minute testimonies about positions don’t necessarily get us to good decision-making, so this was aimed to try and have a sustained conversation. The very first and most important recommendation that this group has is to establish, is to undergo, or to initiate, a health study that is specifically focused on issues of geothermal and the relationship between particularly H²S but maybe other things on the surrounding community. That is the No. 1 goal. And you will hear today a real interest in moving that forward. And that’s clearly on our agenda to initiate, and we are working with the John A. School of Burns (sic) to help us develop that scope of work in a very disciplined way so that the product can be put out to a variety of different folks and say, you know, how do we, in other words, look for a variety of different folks who can conduct the study. And there are several around the nation who do that kind of work and we would like to be able to do the work. So that’s high on our agenda. What we are doing today is really some of the low-hanging fruit that was kind of easier to start moving on in your term and then ask you to kind of teach us how do you get through the process of moving money out of the Geothermal Asset Fund, and understand how that works so we are able to come in more streamlined and clear each time for the next kinds of things we have to do. So just know that the primary goal that this group has, and I fully support it, is to establish a broader community health study. And just so you know that’s high on our agenda and something that we will continue to bring forward to you, as we can do so. But it’s a little outside of our wheelhouse to design epidemiology for a complex community-base health study that has, that would stand peer-reviewed rigor, you know, and provide us all with the kind of information we are looking for to make our decisions. So that’s the next piece of the puzzle. So I just wanted to add that to the Mayor’s list because really it is the most important piece of the report recommendations, and clearly I didn’t want that not to be on the table when we, when you start with your deliberations for this. So, any questions or? GONZALES: Any questions for Mr. Melrose? Thank you, sir. Commissioners, are you all right? Bathroom break, anyone? Good? Keep going? I would like to take public testimony at this time. We are going to call you up four at a time. We are going to ask your name, where you live. And you are going to have three minutes each. Please keep in mind that I think our goal here today is to select the claims adjuster to go over these items then come back to us, so just bear that in mind when you are testifying. Mr. Jon Olson, Steve Sparks, Paul Kuy Kendall and Suzanne Wakelin. Suzanne, still here? If you all could raise your right hands, please. Do you swear to tell the truth before the Windward Planning Commission today? TESTIFIERS: I do. GONZALES: All right. Why don’t we start, ladies first, Ms. Suzanne, name and where you live, and then three minutes. Thank you. WAKELIN: Good morning. My name is Suzanne Wakelin. And I live on Pohoiki Road, just down the road from PGV. So I have been following the issue of the Geothermal Study Group very closely. My family and I moved to the area just a little over three years ago with no awareness of the issue surrounding geothermal in the locale, and was surprised to find out that things were really not as good as we had been led to believe before we moved here. So before moving to Puna, I 6 EXHIBIT B actually worked for 25 years as a laser engineer, and I have a Ph.D. in physics. And the reason I mention this right now is having worked in a number of research facilities and university departments, I’m aware that even respectable well-funded university departments have some desire to gather money for research, and I bring this up in the context of the proposal from the John Burns School of Medicine for the meta-analysis. It seems that they have missed the point of the Geothermal Study Group’s report. And although one of the lower items in the list of recommendations from the Study Group is to do a meta-analysis, as we heard from Mr. Melrose just now, the primary recommendation from the Study Group is that we need to do a health study, and that is very clear to me. What I see here is a list of items that are being requested for funding from the Asset Fund, and I do not actually know how much money is in the Asset Fund, but it looks like a pretty good part of money for all these things, and if these actual health study that is necessary is not prioritized, then this list of items will get funded and the health study will not have the appropriate funding. I think that’s very key, because a good health study is not cheap, and obviously none of these items on this list are cheap. So I would recommend that the meta-analysis from the John Burns School of Medicine really take a very low priority, because the Health Study Group has done a very thorough job of gathering together resources, they have a good reference list, they really looked into this, and there are other sources for the kind of information that’s being requested by the School of Medicine. GONZALES: Ms. Wakelin, I have to cut you off. WAKELIN: Okay. Are there any few minutes for me to finish up? GONZALES: That’s three minutes per person. Sorry. Sir, your name, where you live, and you have three minutes. KENDALL: Aloha. My name is Paul Kuy Kendall. I live in Pāhoa, just a mile as the crow flies from PGV and HGP-A. I’d like to begin by thanking the members of this Planning Commission for considering funding for the recommendations of the Geothermal Public Health Assessment Working Group. It is essential to the citizens of Puna these recommendations be implemented as soon as possible. These recommendations are not only a list of what needs to be done; they are a list of what has not been done to ensure the safety and health of the people in the ‘āina of Puna, that is, there have been no adequate health studies, no adequate monitoring of emissions, no adequate testing of drinking and near-ocean water, no testing for contamination, and poor communication around alerts, and other problems with the plant. The sad truth is that this has not been done for 38 years since HGP-A, the first geothermal well, was completed in 1976. I mentioned the long sad history of geothermal power in Puna, because while I applaud and appreciate the Mayor’s proposal to implement the studies recommended by the Geothermal Health Assessment Working Group, there is one serious flaw with this proposal, and that is the primary recommendation of the Working Group was that a comprehensive health study should be performed. This was the first and foremost recommendation. The Mayor talked about reaching highest consensus; this was the highest consensus, the No. 1 recommendation. The proposal on the other hand that the Mayor has before you proposes to do a meta-study before writing the RFP for the health study, and would further delay a comprehensive health study. This is an egregious error when considered in light of the geothermal history in Puna. To see the magnitude of the error, it helps to remember recent history. In 2012 the Hawai‘i County Council passed two bills regarding geothermal power. One of them was requiring a health study. The Mayor vetoed both bills at that time, saying there were already funds available for health studies. Shortly thereafter in August of 2012 Puna Pono Alliance made a 7 EXHIBIT B proposal to the Hawai‘i County to do a long-overdue health study. It was then that the Mayor commissioned the Peter Adler study, to do a study of the studies to determine what needs to be done. So now we have the results – and so the County spent $50,000 on this – so now we have, after one year after Puna Pono made the proposal for the health study, we had the results of the Mayor study; the results, to no one’s surprise who lives in the community, is we need a health study. Now we are six months after the Adler report came out, and the question to the Mayor is that we do another meta-study. So my concern is, yes, we need to do these other studies, but let’s not put off doing a comprehensive study for another year. Let’s not wait till after an election, the next election to do, to complete the study. And please reserve the funds, because there would be a, it would really be a pity after you spend a year deciding what needs to be done, and then they find out, oh, we don’t have funds for it. So in conclusion I thank the members of the Commission for moving forward with the recommendations of the Study Group, I only request that you make every effort to expedite, rather than delay, the comprehensive health study. It is long overdue. Mahalo. GONZALES: Thank you. Any questions? Sir? SPARKS: I’m Steve Sparks, and I’m a resident of Leilani Estates in Puna. And I’m about two and a half miles as the bird flies from the Puna Geothermal Ventures. I have the same concerns as these people, it seems like. Why do the Adler report, and have as No. 1 recommendation be a health study, and then put it off for six to seven months, which is what this Burns proposal is to put it off for six or seven more months. We are now into, he says, 38 years? That’s a long time of having effects on some of the residents who have been there 40 or 50 years. I mean their children have grown up there. They have been exposed to this for a long time. And they are seeing effects that doctors cannot understand. We need to do this study now. We need to fund this study now. And we would like to put an RFP out now to get people. It’s going to take another six months to get an RFP, and so if we can get the RFP out, the Burns people to do their meta-analysis, or meta-whatever they call it, at the same time we get people ready to do a health study. We have delayed this thing too long. We need to do it now. And, yeah, the long-term effect of H²S is affecting our, it’s public health problem. I mean, just because -. There have been studies, lots of studies, this is one that’s on H²S done by the National Research Council; I mean there have been a lot of studies already done of the effects. We need to study what’s happening in Puna right now, especially before HELCO puts a, starts building more plants in Waimea, in wherever. So let’s do this and continue doing it. Let’s continue the funding for this health study. Thank you. GONZALES: Thank you. OLSON: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Members of the committee. My name is Jon Olson. I reside at 13-631 Leilani Boulevard. My residence is about 450 feet from the plant boundary, about a quarter of a mile to the nearest well pad. During the most recent incident, major incident, back in November, those high readings that the Fire Department took were in my driveway. I’ve been there since 1989. The first thing I would like to address is the fund itself, what you refer to as the Geothermal Asset Fund started on the conference table of Governor Waihe‘e, or, yes, Governor Waihe‘e. It was intended to be a benefits fund for the community. It was intended to pay for programs and infrastructure for the surrounding community that was enduring the impacts of geothermal. It was turned over to the County to administrate. A former inauguration of this body and the Planning Department changed it into and morphed it into what you see before you today, which has nothing to do anywhere with other than spending which would have been the community’s money for studies and other things to defend, try to defend itself from the impacts of 8 EXHIBIT B geothermal. No one denies the blowout; everybody got to see it on TV, a rolling mess that went on and on and on. Now the place still leaks. It still has all of the problems that any industrial site has. Undeniable. A health study, we did one. Dr. Legator from the University of Texas at Galveston, he was the preeminent person in epidemiology at the time. The Puna District was part of a five-area study. The man studied an oil and gas refinery area, he studied a wastewater plant, he studied a landfill. I don’t remember what the other one was, it may have been a meat packing facility. Now, what did that get the guy? It got letters to the dean of the University of Texas university system from our senator, then Senator Inouye, threatening the funding of the entire university program, if the man continued. I saw the letter. This is not just about this little 38-megawatt thing sitting down there. This is about you are taking on the oil and gas industry, you are taking on the wastewater industry, the municipal wastewater industry, anybody who generates hydrogen sulfide. I mean, they can bury you in paper that says that it has no effect, that everything is fine. You can’t count the billions of dollars that these people take in in a day, much less a year. And that’s what, these are the people we are picking on here; it isn’t just little old geothermal. So I would like, change of topic, I would like you to go back and review Rule 12 in terms of, you’re talking about hiring yet another person to look into the relocation of people. GONZALES: Mr. Olson, I have to ask you to wrap it up, please. OLSON: Okay. Well, I mean, you’ve got, what, six different things on one under 6 and one on 5, and we are supposed to cover the whole thing in three minutes and that’s going to be the total topic. You get what you get, folks. GONZALES: Thank you, sir. I’d like to call up four more people: René Siracusa, Tom Webber, Steve Philips and Mr. Petricci. Tom Webber? Tom L. Webber? No? Oh, Tom Luebben. PETRICCI: Is it all right if Tom Travis goes before me? GONZALES: Sure, come on up. That will be that. Mr. Petricci, you can stay up here. We’ve got room for four. Okay, can I get you all to raise your right hand, please. Do you swear to tell the truth before the Windward Planning Commission today? TESTIFIERS: I do. Absolutely. GONZALES: All right. Where do we start? Do I start with you, sir? PHILIPS: Yeah, I’ll start. GONZALES: Name, where you are from, and you’ll have three minutes. PHILIPS: I’m a, was the chairman of the Geothermal Asset Fund Rules Committee. And the first thing I’d like to say is that we wouldn’t be in this mess today, if we weren’t discriminated against, property owners in Puna, if we were allowed a contested case hearing like every other development in the State of Hawai‘i, except for geothermal development. I worked on the roads for six months with the County. I think, Duane, you were involved a little bit with that, or you were the planning director at the time, or you know something about it. Anyway, we worked on that for six months, met with the County once a week. The night before the rules were adopted, Kevin Balog, who was a commissioner at the time, rewrote the rules, and those rules were passed without any input from 9 EXHIBIT B the community at all. And there was Commissioner Crook, who asked what happened to the community’s rules, and Fred Giannini – I’m paraphrasing it, of course – Fred, because he’s been there for 20 years or a long time, Fred Giannini says he would have to check into it, but, yeah, he was advising the County at the time as Corporate Counsel on that; so that seemed a little disingenuous answer that he had. After, anyway, the hearing was closed after the rules were adopted. And I never reviewed the rules. I never saw the rules before they were adopted, couldn’t comment on it. None of the community commented on it. The County did not have any experience with geothermal development before they did this, and so they relied on the developer to come up with a lot of the rules. A lot of the rules reflect what the developer wanted and not what the community wanted. Norman Hayashi was the director, Rodney Nakano was a wealth of knowledge, and they knew what was going on. The record of the Commission meeting will reflect a lot of what I’m saying. The County probably does not have their documentation anymore; I think they got rid of it. But we’ve retained our records. We can, you know, we can show what’s, how this thing got developed and how the community really got run over. Virginia Goldstein was involved at one time. I’m not sure the developer’s money should be funding these studies. There was never intended the Geothermal Asset Fund to be doing the job of what the government should be doing, okay? This is because the County and the State decided to put an industrial activity that has poisonous gases and heavy metals sited right next to a preexisting community with a 40-foot setback. That’s why it’s important to have the Geothermal Asset Fund, because the plant, when you have mediation and not a contested case, that means we are going to do it, and we are going to try to mediate the impacts, mitigate the impacts, we are not going to stop it. So that’s why the Geothermal Asset Fund was so important to move the people out when you put an industrial activity with a 40-foot setback. It’s never worked because it was never permitted properly. We never had, we never, the things we wanted was BACT, Best Agreeable Control Technology; we never got it. Goddard report, Goddard & Goddard report was not put into it that stated that we didn’t have to do open venting. And lastly, I just want to close with, my son was six weeks old at the time when the blowout happened. He was gassed in his crib a mile and a half away from the plant, and that was completely legal. And the only way we are going to get to the bottom of this, to do it right, is to get a contested case hearing where I bring my people under oath, threat of perjury, and you bring your people, and we do it that way like any other development in the state. We shouldn’t be put in the position of second-class citizens, second-class property owners. GONZALES: Okay. Thank you, sir. Can I get your name, too, for the record? PHILIPS: Steve Philips. I was the chairman of the Geothermal Asset Fund Rules Committee. Also I was at every mediation that we ever had. GONZALES: Thank you, Mr. Philips. Thank you. Sir? TRAVIS: I am Tom Travis. I live on Papaya Farms Road in Lower Puna. I was both a member of, although I was a member of the Adler’s group, I am not speaking for the group; I’m rather speaking just for myself. I’m speaking in support of hiring a claims adjuster to provide the funds that the Mayor is requesting. But this support is contingent upon the County taking swift action to initiate a comprehensive health study. A major thrust of the Geothermal Public Health Assessment report was that a comprehensive health study should be performed. And although several recommendations of this report are now being active in the Mayor’s proposal, the priority effort has not yet been acted upon. The John A. Burns School of Medicine proposal to do a meta-study before doing a comprehensive health study muddies the waters and, to the degree that the County allows it 10 EXHIBIT B 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 the community, and the County has failed to protect the community. There have been significant hydrogen sulfide releases. The original project, HGP-A, free-vented into the community. Perceptions of hydrogen sulfide have changed over the years; the EPA now recognizes hydrogen sulfide as toxic in low doses. And the community has been trying for 30 years to get a health study, a comprehensive health study, of the impact of geothermal development on a community. They’ve been continuously thwarted. And I urge this Commission to do whatever you can to make sure that that does not happen again. This community has never been fairly treated by the State and other agencies with respect to geothermal development. GONZALES: Mr. Luebben, I’ve got to ask you to wrap it up, please. LUEBBEN: Okay, I will. I would just urge the Commission to make sure that the comprehensive community health study is the priority here, and to make money available from the Geothermal Asset Fund for the comprehensive study, and not get distracted by any other kinds of diversions. Thank you very much. GONZALES: Thank you. Commissioner Henkel. HENKEL: May I ask a question? GONZALES: Absolutely. HENKEL: Would the inclusion of Dr. Legator’s earlier study help establish a baseline, since it was done so many years ago? TRAVIS: I will offer an opinion. It was included in our review when we did the Geothermal Public Health Assessment review. We as a group did review it. It’s included in our reference list. And it should be included in any meta-study that should be done, setting up a comprehensive health study. Just as a reminder, the Legator study’s conclusion was that we needed to do a comprehensive health study. GONZALES: Any other questions? All right. Ms. René. SIRACUSA: Good morning, and a Happy New Year. My name is René Siracusa. I’m an ex-member of the Hawai‘i County Planning Commission, and I am, I was Vice Chair for a while, and I was also a member of this Health Study Assessment Working Group. I have lived in, I’m not speaking for the Working Group, none of us are; I’m speaking for myself, okay. When we were first organized by the Mayor, one of the things he did was choose all the members of our Working Group, who are residents of Puna. Several of us have been long-term residents and have historic memory that we were able to bring to the table and to the deliberations, or those of us are more recent residents but have scientific background and were able to provide a lot of the rigor to what we were doing to the project at hand. We worked long and hard on this project. We reviewed tons of studies from all over the world from different geothermal sites, from Iceland, from Philippines, from New Zealand. And it’s all gone into the study and the recommendations. Our top recommendation, as you heard already, has been that we need a comprehensive health study. What some of the previous testifiers are unaware of in their testimony was that recently our Working Group met with the Mayor, because he has not disbanded us, he has kept us together so that he can keep pulling us in for recommendations and feedback. And we didn’t like that 6.d, which has been 12 EXHIBIT B removed, and part of the reason for that, you see, is that the John Burns School of Medicine in submitting that recommendation, that proposal, totally ignored what we were saying in our study, in our final report. We have, therefore, asked that that be removed, and it has been. But we want to, I want to also say what we did in addition to that, is that we have drafted our own request for proposals for a comprehensive medical study, so that is in the works. Those of you who didn’t realize that and weren’t in on the particular information, I want to share that with all of you. We do want to see these other items done, because they set a baseline, and they address issues of public health, for example, the groundwater and the brine water pond sites. Those are on-line sump ponds; anything, they took up all their garbage with the chemicals and everything and just dump them right there, and there was no way of ever telling with our poorest kind of geology how much might have been reaching down and going into the water table and affecting wells. The well at the Green Lake had to be closed by the Department of Water Supply because it was contaminated. What else has been contaminated? Recently there was a fish kill down in the tide pools; no one knows if that had anything to do with contamination from geothermal fluids. The community needs answers to these questions. And we need them to be done properly by the proper parties who have the expertise. And because the Rule 12 says that you have to provide community benefits and mitigate the negative impacts of geothermal development, these things do. But we do want you to leave, you know, the door opened for the comprehensive medical study. Thank you very much. GONZALES: Thank you. Go ahead. PETRICCI: Aloha. Good morning. And thank you for hearing us. My name is Robert Petricci, president of Puna Pono Alliance and also a member of the Adler Health Study Group. When you heard about, you know, we went to the Council and we, they approved funding, they approved for a study. And the Mayor felt that that was the inappropriate way to do it and that there was a process in place already to fund the study, which would be this body here, and he said that was in place at the time, and that was 18 months ago. When we came to this body, it turned out that there were, the rules, there were problems with the rules. And here we are 18 months later still trying to get through this and figure out how to do it. I’ve lived out in Leilani since 1981, and I’ve been trying to get a health study ever since. I don’t know if you are familiar with HGP-A, which was the original plant, but you probably are familiar with the blowout from 1991, which lasted for, I believe, 31 hours. And that’s just open-venting to the atmosphere basically was what the blowout was. Well, HGP-A used to open-vent to the atmosphere, and they do it for two weeks at a time, and we are talking about 1,100 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide, which is, it’s hard to even imagine. And so they released this into the community for eight years. It was an experimental plant that was supposed to run for two years. Instead, they kept it open because it was making money or they wanted information or whatever for eight years. And basically me and the rest of the people out there were exposed to huge amounts of all kinds of toxic chemicals, and we’ve never been able to get a health study. I’ve been fighting for a health study ever since. And so here we are again. And I really appreciate that the Mayor is trying to do this and all these other things that he is trying to do. The reason I sat on the Adler committee, and I know some of the other people, was because we wanted to get a health study. And here we are now, and we have everything but we still don’t have the health study. And a meta-study is a study of studies. And the Adler group was supposed to be a study of studies. So I want to find a way to move this forward. I’m also concerned about the process; if you get a claims adjuster that takes 90 days for him to evaluate, then comes back to you, that’s another 90 days. I mean we are talking about, we just keep pushing this thing down the road 31 years, 38 year, whatever it is. I mean, come on, if we are not competent enough after that much time to fund the health study right now, then you should resign, and get somebody in there that can 13 EXHIBIT B do this. It’s not that hard. And our group did write an RFP. And I understand there are issues, and I don’t think anybody is doing this on purpose or anything like that. The point is, let’s just do the study already. And we have a lot of information, we’ve submitted a proposal, the Adler group has an RFP, you know, we can help. We are ready to go. We don’t really understand why this can’t be figured out. As far as the John Burns School of Medicine, we asked them to write a proposal for a health study. Instead, they wrote themselves a contract for $50,000 for a meta-study, another study of a study. So now that raises a red flag for me with John Burns School of Medicine. And that’s really all I’ve got to say. Thank you very much. GONZALES: Thank you. We’ve got four more: Christopher Biltoft, Andrea Rosanoff, LaRee Hiltner and Elisabeth Green. Could you all raise your right hands, please. Do you swear to tell the truth before the Windward Planning Commission today? TESTIFIERS: I do. GONZALES: Thank you. Do you want to start on this end? All right. BILTOFT: Good morning. I’m Christopher Biltoft. I live in Kapoho Vacation Land, and I’m a retired meteorologist with air quality experience. And I’m kind of here, I’m trying to help the process. And one of the things I see is that we need some terminology, some definitions of terminology, for example, what you are calling monitors are actually samplers, and I would encourage everyone to try to use correct terminology when you are describing pieces of equipment. And I actually, I’ve made some copies of definitions of terms. If anybody is interested on the Planning Commission, I’ll be pleased that you have a copy of that. There are also the definition of monitor and monitoring system and so forth. The second thing I’d like to say is that purchasing a bunch of samplers is not solving the monitoring problem, okay? You can buy a bunch of samplers, but samplers are essentially bricks and they have about the same value as a brick. What is valuable is the data. The data that come out of the samplers, if the data are handled properly and archived and used in a model to change the data into information, that is what’s valuable. Information is valuable. Waiving a sampler around and loosing the data has little or no value, okay? So I don’t want to get into a lot of technical stuff, but again, I would like to have the opportunity to help with the process so that we do this right this time. We’ve been doing it wrong for several decades now. Let’s take the opportunity to do it right, okay? The second thing, comment, I’d like to make has to do with the meta-study, the health meta-study. I would just like to reinforce what the others have said. Meta-studies have been done. EPA has an extensive meta-study, which was used to develop acute exposure guideline levels. We should be using those acute exposure guideline levels. We do not need another meta-study. That’s basically, if there is plenty of time and money to hand out a little gift to the John Burns School of Medicine, that’s one thing, but I don’t think that’s the situation here; we have limited time, we have limited money. Spend the time and the money on a real health study, and establishing a real monitoring program and not waste the time and the money on something that is of marginal value at best. That’s all I have to say. GONZALES: Thank you. HILTNER: I’m LaRee Gashwiler (formerly), and I’m on the Health Study Group. And my background is civil and environmental engineering, along with electronics; so I’m one of the monitoring experts for this panel, health study panel. I worked for the last almost 33 years for the State of Oregon, Oregon OSHA, taking care of the monitoring equipment used by the health and 14 EXHIBIT B safety inspectors for Oregon, for all of Oregon. I was in the occupational health lab, which is an analytical laboratory analyzing samples from all of Oregon from all of the working environment. So I come to this panel study group with much experience on monitoring. When I moved here in March of 2010 with my husband following my retirement from the State of Oregon, I was literally shocked, to say the least, of what I found about this one industry. This is a very dangerous industry located in a very dangerous area of volcanically active area. And for the last 33, 38 years approximately, as I understand it, it has been a disaster. How could the United States of America, th even in the 20 century, allow this to be happening? This health study needs to go through immediately. Not only that, the monitoring equipment that has been used in the past, and is currently used today, is so woefully inadequate. And the reporting of the information from this industry has been left mainly to the industry itself. In my opinion, this is like asking the fox to guard the hen house and when the chickens are missing, ask him to write a report. You just can’t be doing this. We need good monitoring equipment that is maintained by people who have vested interest in the health of this community. Hydrogen sulfide gas is one of the gases that I helped to monitor for the State of Oregon for the working industry. It is a dangerous gas at any level; it does not make any difference what level it is. It’s not something we should be breathing, along with a lot of other things. So we need this program to continue, as we have been trying to get it on board, we need a health study to be done immediately. Enough with a meta-analysis. If they want to do it, fine, but only as a side view. We need the budgeting for good equipment. There are several categories of equipment, both stand equipment that’s long term, dosimeters, handheld; all of these are needed to help, to reinforce the health study. This is additional information that the health study would need to make a final conclusion. So I’m asking that you help us to get the budgeting started for this. This is a disaster for this community, and should never have happened. My monitoring and environmental, I have a Master’s in environmental engineering, along with civil engineering; I have Master’s in two degrees, and I’m telling you this is a disaster. This health study needs to go through immediately. We’ve given you all of the information. We’ve even helped with an RFP to get that started. So I’m asking you to help us with the budgeting. This is just should never have happened in this nation. It’s, it’s a total disaster. And the health, the sad part about it is, as it was previously said, the oil and gas industry, these big people, if you don’t think they are going to be watching us, they are; we are on a hot seat here in Hawai‘i. And I’m asking you to do what’s good for Puna, and let us get this thing going. We need the equipment, we need the support of the community, we need the data to do the health study. Thank you. GONZALES: Thank you. ROSANOFF: Hi. Thanks for being here and all of this. I appreciate the opportunity to tell you the little bit that I know. My name is Andrea Rosanoff, and I live on Mālama Street in Leilani Estates. But I’m not here as a resident; I’m here, I am the director of Research and Science Information Outreach at the Center for Magnesium Education and Research. I’m a Ph.D. nutrition researcher, and I do work in my field of study with meta-analyses, and I just recently published a meta-analysis in my field. And so I just wanted to talk just a tiny bit about what is the process of a meta-analysis and what does that mean. A meta-analysis is a statistical tool. It’s very useful. When you have a study here that’s maybe about ten people and a study over here that has 25 and one over here that has 15 and you need to have a larger study to get real information out of, if those studies are comparable, then mathematically, statistically, you can take the numbers from those different studies and run them around in the statistical formula, get a statistician, and they will come out with a number as if you had done a study with all of those, of those subjects, and so it expands your information that you have. It’s a very, very useful statistical tool, because you don’t have to do the 15 EXHIBIT B expensive thing of going and getting the animals or the people or whatever and doing the study. It enhances your information. Lately, it has become so popular in science now that it’s really being used all the time, and I’m afraid that it’s being misused. Because it is a tool, it’s a tool like addition, subtraction and so on, you know what I mean? And when you are gathering information, you need to gather the information with a knowledgeable view, not just of statistics, but of biology and physiology and chemistry and toxicology and geology and all these other fields that go into what does this study mean. And Mayor Kenoi rightly said, oh, the meta-analysis, what a great idea, it’s going to take all the information and put it into one place. Well, unfortunately, that’s not true. What a meta-analysis is going to do is they are going to gather a lot of this stuff, but they are going to exclude, they are going to have to exclude, a lot of informational studies. Why? Because they need numbers from each study to clunk into the formula to stir it around. And so they would be forced to eliminate studies, and we will lose the information from those studies, if we go this route, which is a meta-analysis at this stage. It’s not going to bring us the information that we seek. There is an idea out there that it’s going to, but trust me, after studying a series of studies for over 15 years, a meta-analysis cannot just be neutral; it can give us misinformation. The people go, oh, the meta-analysis says that it’s true. No, it’s not. And so I just want to give you that, and say that at our center I have a statistician, I can give him numbers and he’ll have a meta-analysis for me by tomorrow afternoon. He is really good. And if you have questions about a meta-analysis, please feel free to call us, and we’ll do our best to answer those questions. Thank you again. GONZALES: Thank you. GREEN: Hi, I’m Elisabeth Green. I have a Master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University. I want to thank you guys, for all of you, women and men, for beginning to hear some of the recommendations that we made, that you, the State, pay the Honolulu mediator to collect. I have experience, let’s see, we, you know, we have already performed the literature research necessary to know what mitigation is required to maintain the health of the people downwind of PGV. We have logged our symptoms with the clinicians and the Travises. I designed my own prevention and treatment system. I began to ask for reimbursement for my own mitigation 15 months ago. So I want to thank you for beginning the hearing process for this mitigation. Okay, so, I have developed breathing gases and life-support systems for major universities and corporations. I have plan design conducted, analyzed and reported experimental research with human subjects. So I have designed a health study more than a year ago for that I think the Asset Fund should be used, because it focuses on mitigation. It compares treatments and it comes up with a scientific determination of the proximal cause of the reported symptoms. And for that I will need a monitor. I am willing and able to help with monitoring. I live three miles downwind of PGV; I can keep the monitor on at all times. I can calibrate it with my own hydrogen sulfide calibration gas, but someone else here has more experience in calibration. And we need to identify reliable monitor operators. We don’t need a monitor that’s going to sit in a cabinet at the Civil Defense until somebody tells them that it’s time to use it. We need an entire monitoring system that is very statistics, sophisticated, the state of art monitoring and alarm system that alerts those in the area of the current and predicted hydrogen sulfide levels, that shows the dispersion models, maps on your Smartphone, shows where, gives you the alert at your location, if you have your location turned on, and also it’s connected with a siren for local residents using the Pāhoa siren, if necessary. And we need gas masks, which, of course, I use whenever I smell the hydrogen sulfide. Okay, now, I have tried to start this whole study for more than a year, but the Island’s procurement process precludes employment of biomedical engineers, biostatisticians and other talents some of which are in this room. Now, we are here because PGV has an open source permit to emit hydrogen sulfide in 16 EXHIBIT B excess of the Department of Health standards, nine to eleven times per year. See the Environmental Impact Statement. The National Institute of Health has already given John Burns School of Medicine, according to their website, $2.5M for research infrastructure, $3M for statewide research and education partnerships, and $1M for a Native and Pacific health disparities research, $160,000 for the Hawai‘i Island community lung assessment and scientific studies. The NIH is the appropriate source for the funding for John Burn School of Medicine studies. This fund, mitigation fund, should be used for our particular health study that focuses on treatment. Okay, so, if you’d like, I already submitted a synopsis of my, to the Mayor’s Office. I’ve already asked for the gas mask. I use them. They work great. I’ve had an incident on our property where somebody made a huge mistake they shouldn’t have made, just because I was wearing a gas mask and they weren’t. I’ve got a letter dated back this up; I’d like to have a chance to present it. I want to thank you again for hearing the PGV problems and for beginning the process of hearing our claims. GONZALES: Thank you. Any questions, Commissioners? HENKEL: I do. GONZALES: Mr. Henkel. HENKEL: I’m not sure whom I address this to, but as a layman, what are the components of a comprehensive health study that a lot of people are asking for? Can anybody? GREEN: Well, for example, mine includes treatment, and it includes analysis, it includes -. It’s, it start-. Is there somebody else who’d rather answer this? Comprehensive means trying to include everything. Now, what I do is I make it as limited as possible in the variables, so I try to control as many variables as possible. Human beings are very complicated. We need to make sure that we have the right control subjects, the right design. We want to make sure that it takes into consideration the entire health of the person, not just their lungs, not just their cardiovascular system. We want to make sure that the treatments are pretty much a sample of all the treatments that are effective for this particular thing. So we can’t afford this right now, but we will pretty soon have a hyperbaric chamber on this island hopefully. And we already have, there are already people who are getting treatment for hydrogen sulfide exposure. ROSANOFF: I would just like to say in my opinion I would like it to include not only respiratory and, of course, death, which is a gross statement of it, but respiratory and neurological things, and include cognition and memory of low levels, of continuous low levels of people living in this area. I would consider that part of a comprehensive health study to include that. And then, again, finding a control area, because we don’t have numbers from 38 years ago in Puna, we are handicapped by that. That’s why we have to start as soon as possible, because people are growing and moving into the area and we need to have a baseline of these health statistics for the area as soon as we possibly can. And then we will need to have, find a control group that to compare it to, maybe somewhere off this island, maybe on Kaua‘i, I just don’t know. That’s what the RFP should include in it so that you can compare these numbers of these fine, fine differences in health study where you have to have some good statistics to find small changes. HILTNER: One of the recommendations from our Health Study Group was the central nervous system; this is one of the areas of the health study that we are duly concerned about, and is in our report. And I think René can give you more on that. She is very experienced in all this. 17 EXHIBIT B GONZALES: I just want someone to answer Commissioner Henkel’s question. We can’t, I don’t want to hear from everyone in the room. SIRACUSA: Well, I can answer as far as the Study, because the two women on the end were not part of the Study Group, and I assume that Greg’s question was regarding what the Study Group considered to be a comprehensive medical study, health study. So I have it right here in our recommendations, and I can quickly read it off to you to address the question from the horse’s mouth so to speak: “1. Undertake a comprehensive health effects study. Using robust scientific methodologies, the County should commission a comparison group study to test four hypotheses: First, Central Nervous System degradation of the sample population will likely be more pronounced as a function of highest peak exposure to H²S. Other symptoms, particularly respiratory effects, may be more pronounced as a function of length and extent of exposure, as well as time since exposure. Second, Central Nervous System and other negative health effects from exposure to emissions including H²S will be greater in areas of highest exposures. Such exposures will be a function of meteorological conditions and emission rates over plant history. Third, heavy metal and other chemical contamination from geothermal energy production sources may have spared into the soil and into water catchments and affected drinking water supplies. This spread of heavy metals could cause health effects to residents in proximity to geothermal plants. And finally, as a consequence of noise and vibration, residents who have (a) lived closest to geothermal project development; (b) directly experienced geothermal gas releases; (c) have been evacuated; and (d) or have experienced the highest noise and vibration levels may be more likely to show anxiety disorder symptoms.” These are the things that are in the, actually, in the recommendations. It’s Pages 9 and 10, for your reference. Thank you. HENKEL: How do you collect the data for that? Do you go door to door? Do you ask people to come in to tell their effect or what? SIRACUSA: Part of that would be determined by the team that gets the RFP. And as I said, we have, you will, you will get to see that RFP, because we have developed it already, but I don’t have a copy of it with me. But it spells out things very, very meticulously. And you will get to see that when it is presented to you later on down the line. But there is a process and part of what the RFP will, you know, what they, those who responding to the RFP will state what procedures they plan to use. And I do want to say that one of the things Civil Defense is working on right now is identifying people within the affected community, who already have health problems, who would need help, say, in evacuating, if there were another event, and these are people who were like the sensitive indicators, people with respiratory problems, for example, or the disabled or the homebound. And so there will be different procedures that will be used to, you know, to get information from those people. And we also want to look at the young because the very young, including infants, are more susceptible. But seniors are also more susceptible. So this is a broad spectrum. And the RFP is also looking at, say, control groups in northern Hawai‘i Island or even Kaua‘i where there are different situations. The northern of this island gets volcanic emissions but not geothermal, and so that they can isolate that out and see how much is getting from what source or the other source. They will also have a control group on Kaua‘i, which doesn’t get any of those. And then those things can be compared and, you know, selected out, so that even people’s lifestyle things have to be selected out; if someone was a heavy smoker, for example, you know, that has to 18 EXHIBIT B be selected out when you are doing respiratory analyses. You’ll see more of that later down the line and probably in greater details, and you will be happy with it. GREEN: We plan to get it from clinicians and from other reliable sources as, you know, there is a lot of data here, and we plan to just bind them as reliable sources and we will compare them, too. I know that the Travises did a great deal of work that basically replicates what some of the physicians have done, and we would like to compare that. I think that that would be interesting. So a variety of sources and, of course, reliability will be considered. But you will only be paying for the mitigation, because once we make a scientific determination of the proximal cause of their symptoms, then you can as judges decide whether you are going to pay for that part of the study or not, and their treatment, for example. But, you know, the problem is people can’t afford their treatment and their insurance can pay for only some things some times. So we really need your help to get started. I think it costs $25 per subject, to recruit subjects into a study, just to make sure that they are going to go through with it. And so that’s something that -. The Travises have already done some work in this. We have a lot of talent on this island, and I think we can do it ourselves. It will be nice if there were a way to hire people here to do this kind of work. But I really, I look for a job here doing this, and it’s, it’s not there. We are creating this job right now as you speak. Thank you. GONZALES: Thank you. And thank you, René. Do we have a Cory, Cory Harden? Cory, our last testifier. Would you raise your right hand, please. Do you swear to tell the truth before the Windward Planning Commission today? Thank you. Please use your microphone. HARDEN: Good morning. And thank you for your service on the Planning Commission. I don’t have a lot of expertise like all these other wonderful folks, but I’ve been kind of following the issue and going to as many meetings as possible. I really appreciate the Mayor taking the lead on these projects. I support doing the items under No. 6 as soon as possible. While carefully weighing the concerns that have been raised about the claims adjuster and the meta-analysis, I think it’s really too bad that problems like that old HGP-A well that is kind of falling on you because other agencies are not dealing with it, like the state Department of Health, Department of Land and Natural Resources, Planning and Economic Development, they are not really dealing with it, University of Hawai‘i, HELCO, and Natural Energy Laboratories; so it’s kind of falling, it’s rather a heavy burden for you folks. So thank you for taking it on. And I think we really need to know about health impacts with the geothermal zone restrictions eliminated and so much pushing for the geothermal expansion to maybe send power by cable to O‘ahu. It seems like anyone anywhere could wake up to geothermal drilling next door. And there is no flacking measure, which people may think would help to slow things down; but a lot of times people have a way of going to the State or to the Feds to override what the County has done. So I think the sooner the health studies get done the better. Thank you. GONZALES: Thank you. That concludes our public testimony. KANUHA: Mr. Chairman? GONZALES: Yes, sir. Mr. Kanuha. KANUHA: Seeing that we’ve had testimony from the public related to the items on the agenda, I was wondering if there is a representative from the Mayor’s office, who would like to, you know, kind of wrap up on what the comments were. 19 EXHIBIT B 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 specific claims at this point. The Mayor’s office is headlining this effort. The specific submittal of the claims, we know what the information is, but there is a specific format that they have to put it in and they are in the process of doing that. So that’s why this point in time for the hiring of the claims adjuster is just that, so that, you know, we don’t confuse the process any further by waiting for the claims, the specific claims, to come in in the format that’s called for in the rule, and then we’ll get the claims adjuster. As you heard, there is a lot of information out there. There is a specific approach that how they want to do this. But I just caution you not to make a decision based on what the specific items are. What we are providing you this opportunity for is that we anticipate specific claims coming in based on the information we have, but your determination is just whether to hire the claims adjuster or not, and not to use this preliminary information for the determination. Okay? You guys all good on that? GONZALES: Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Director. With that, I’d like to entertain a motion. HENKEL: Excuse me, Mr. Chairman? GONZALES: Yes, sir. HENKEL: Could I make a motion to go into a brief executive session to discuss with corp. counsel the scope of what we are doing here, the scope of what our decision will involve? GONZALES: We need a second. MIYASATO: I’ll second. GONZALES: Any objections? All in favor? ALL COMMISSIONERS: Aye. EXECUTIVE SESSION – The Commission went into executive session at 11:38 a.m. The Commission came out of executive session at 11:45 a.m. by a motion made by Commissioner Miyasato, seconded by Commissioner Henkel, and unanimously carried by a voice vote of all members in attendance. GONZALES: All right, now, the Windward Planning Commission is back in session. If I remember correctly, we were, I was asking for a motion. MIYASATO: I’d like to move to make a motion that we authorize the hiring of John Mullen & Company to do our, be the claims adjuster. HENKEL: Second. GONZALES: Any discussion, Commissioners? No discussion. ARAI: Okay, calling the roll. Commissioner Miyasato? MIYASATO: Aye. 21 EXHIBIT B ARAI: Commissioner Henkel? HENKEL: Aye. ARAI: Commissioner Heaukulani? HEAUKULANI: Aye. ARAI: Commissioner Moses? MOSES: Aye. ARAI: And Mr. Chairman? GONZALES: Aye. ARAI: Mr. Chairman, motion carries with five aye votes. GONZALES: Thank you. The discussion ended at 11:49 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Noriko Sauer, Secretary 22 EXHIBIT B