2016-06-02 Hearing Transcript - GAF Civil Defense

Home

HEAUKULANL Very well. Welcome. Good morning. You, we recognize most of you so you know the rules. Please speak into the microphone. Give us your name, where you reside, and please limit your testimony to three minutes. And you can start in any order that you feel comfortable. HARDEN: Hi. I'm Cory Harden for Sierra Club Moku Loa Group, and thank you for your volunteer service. Please support this funding request. The current air sampling method is based on a dispersion model chosen over 25 years ago. It's the dangerously outdated basis for PGV's emergency response plan, and the model is a polluter's dream that's unlikely to ever find a problem. PGV released 3939 pounds of hydrogen sulfide during Tropical Storm Iselle, sickening over 130 people. The samplers failed to detect any problem, partly because PGV lost power and had no backup power for the samplers. This despite the common knowledge that if PGV lost power, a toxic release could be triggered. At first, PGV and Department of Health, DOH, denied any problem. DOH finally acknowledged a problem and fined PGV a pittance, $23,700. PGV, in turn, said it planned to appeal. No one offered any meaningful special assistance to people who were sickened. Currently, there are too few air samplers around PGV, probably sited too high to detect hydrogen sulfide which tends to remain down near the ground. Data from the samplers is averaged over one hour periods so they might miss spikes. There's no quality control to determine if samplers are correctly calibrated or even if they're working. No one is regulating airborne siloco [sic], silica particulates from PGV. Little information is released to the public about chemicals other than hydrogen sulfide that PGV is releasing into the air, and DOH does not require PGV to file toxic release inventory reports. It's a polluter's dream, a neighborhood's nightmare, and part of 35 years of environmental injustice. Funding today's request will provide a sound basis for an updated and meaningful emergency response plan, basis for future air monitoring, and basis for the Geothermal Public Health Study. Thank you. HEAUKULANL Thank you. KUYKENDALL: Aloha. My name is Paul Kuykendall. Thank you for reviewing this matter. I live within a mile of PGV, and so it's near and dear to our hearts. We were—we were home when Iselle happened, and to give you an example, this sort of modeling program, if, if, it'sif the modeling is updated, and we could get to a point where the neighborhood could know real time what's happening at the plant, for example if there's a release, what's happening, you, many of you may have visited Volcano National Park. They have a system where they know what's happening with the vog which is a much bigger problem because it's dispersed over a larger area. And, they know which areas are gonna have problems. 4 EXHIBIT C