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geothermal. No one denies the blowout; everybody got to see it on TV, a rolling mess that went on
<br />and on and on. Now the place still leaks. It still has all of the problems that any industrial site has.
<br />Undeniable. A health study, we did one. Dr. Legator from the University of Texas at Galveston, he
<br />was the preeminent person in epidemiology at the time. The Puna District was part of a five-area
<br />study. The man studied an oil and gas refinery area, he studied a wastewater plant, he studied a
<br />landfill. I don’t remember what the other one was, it may have been a meat packing facility. Now,
<br />what did that get the guy? It got letters to the dean of the University of Texas university system
<br />from our senator, then Senator Inouye, threatening the funding of the entire university program, if
<br />the man continued. I saw the letter. This is not just about this little 38-megawatt thing sitting down
<br />there. This is about you are taking on the oil and gas industry, you are taking on the wastewater
<br />industry, the municipal wastewater industry, anybody who generates hydrogen sulfide. I mean, they
<br />can bury you in paper that says that it has no effect, that everything is fine. You can’t count the
<br />billions of dollars that these people take in in a day, much less a year. And that’s what, these are the
<br />people we are picking on here; it isn’t just little old geothermal. So I would like, change of topic, I
<br />would like you to go back and review Rule 12 in terms of, you’re talking about hiring yet another
<br />person to look into the relocation of people.
<br />
<br />GONZALES: Mr. Olson, I have to ask you to wrap it up, please.
<br />
<br />OLSON: Okay. Well, I mean, you’ve got, what, six different things on one under 6 and one on 5,
<br />and we are supposed to cover the whole thing in three minutes and that’s going to be the total topic.
<br />You get what you get, folks.
<br />
<br />GONZALES: Thank you, sir. I’d like to call up four more people: René Siracusa, Tom Webber,
<br />Steve Philips and Mr. Petricci. Tom Webber? Tom L. Webber? No? Oh, Tom Luebben.
<br />
<br />PETRICCI: Is it all right if Tom Travis goes before me?
<br />
<br />GONZALES: Sure, come on up. That will be that. Mr. Petricci, you can stay up here. We’ve got
<br />room for four. Okay, can I get you all to raise your right hand, please. Do you swear to tell the
<br />truth before the Windward Planning Commission today?
<br />
<br />TESTIFIERS: I do. Absolutely.
<br />
<br />GONZALES: All right. Where do we start? Do I start with you, sir?
<br />
<br />PHILIPS: Yeah, I’ll start.
<br />
<br />GONZALES: Name, where you are from, and you’ll have three minutes.
<br />
<br />PHILIPS: I’m a, was the chairman of the Geothermal Asset Fund Rules Committee. And the first
<br />thing I’d like to say is that we wouldn’t be in this mess today, if we weren’t discriminated against,
<br />property owners in Puna, if we were allowed a contested case hearing like every other development
<br />in the State of Hawai‘i, except for geothermal development. I worked on the roads for six months
<br />with the County. I think, Duane, you were involved a little bit with that, or you were the planning
<br />director at the time, or you know something about it. Anyway, we worked on that for six months,
<br />met with the County once a week. The night before the rules were adopted, Kevin Balog, who was
<br />a commissioner at the time, rewrote the rules, and those rules were passed without any input from
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<br />EXHIBIT B
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