2014-09-04 Hearing Transcript-Mayor - GAF Study

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effects that it’s having on our children and our future unborn children. This study is so vital. Thank you. MIYASATO: Go ahead, you can use that one. You can use the other mic. RITSEMA: Hi. Hi, my name is Shana Ritsema. I live at 13-667 Hinalo Street, Pāhoa. That’s Lanipuna Gardens, very close to geothermal. I’m a single mother of four children. I love the area that I live in. It’s a beautiful place. There’s all kinds of families and elderly people and children, and I believe that we are being poisoned by geothermal. I was affected by geothermal th because of the blowout on August 7. I was sick. All my children got sick. We had the respiratory. Also, what I noticed is that I had tingling in my arms for about a week, a week and a half. They would fall asleep easily. They would be tingly. I wasn’t sure what was going on, and then at this last PGV meeting that they had recently, I realized that like these were symptoms of the hydrogen sulfide poisoning. So, I do believe that I’m being affected. I’ve talked to all kinds of different kinds of people in the community, and they all feel that they are being affected. I believe that also I’ve just been told by Mike, the one that runs the PGV that there are lots of flammable materials being held at the plant, and currently there’s a lava flow right outside Pāhoa, and I believe this is immediate. That we need to shut down the geothermal or be very, get these people to move out their chemicals or these explosive things. I mean, this is a community of people. Our lives are at stake. Our safety is important. I’m a taxpayer. I pay my HELCO bill. I don’t support geothermal. I want me and my children to be safe. I need to live in that area. It’s an affordable place. I don’t want to have to move. Please protect the people. People are more important than money. Thank you. PETRICCI: Aloha, you’ve heard some pretty compelling testimony today. My name is Robert Petricci. I live at 13-430 Pohoiki Road, about a mile from the PGV power plant. I’ve lived near that power plant since 1981 before it was built in 1990. Before that, was HGP-A. Harry Kim, Duane Kanuha, Renē Siracusa, Jon Olson, Russell Ruderman are all people that have been here from the very beginning. So, first on the, on the health study, I originally, I was on the Mayor’s, the Adler committee, the Mayor’s committee, and I originally supported the RFP. However, things have changed, and as a member of the Mayor’s health study group, I’m perplexed that I was not allowed to see the RFP. The RFP was, I was told that I couldn’t see it, and I, so it’s really hard for me to come here and support an RFP that is secret from the committee that supposedly designed it. I also think things have changed in that the, the Adler Committee found that there were health impacts related to geothermal prior to 1991, but that after 1991, it was inconclusive if there had been health impacts. I believe that with the latest accident and the hundred plus people now that are telling you that they are having health impacts, that it has been established that there are health impacts since 1991. So, to design a study to determine if there are health impacts seems to me to be premature. I think we need to do an investigation of what happened similar to what Goddard & Goddard did after the geothermal blowout in order to design a health study that will actually get to the root of the problem. We’ve already I believe, as a member of the health study group, I believe that we’ve already determined that there are health impacts related to geothermal, so I don’t think we have money to waste doing something that I think we already know. 12 EXHIBIT F