2018-03-28 Meeting Minutes (EMC)

Home

be there to do so, because the facilities are not going to be useful where they are. They would be spending money on something they can’t save. The structures to be served won’t be sustainable because high tide comes in the front door. The government and private sector should start looking at whether they’re spending money on something that won’t be useable in the timeline it should be. Director Kucharski said Planning Director Yee has been briefing the County on the studies being done and potential impacts of a sea level rise, on this island and throughout the state. Each island is a little different. The County is looking at what the potential impacts are going to be based on the worst case scenario predictions. There is no answer yet on what will be done. The impacts in the Count of Hawaiʻi will be significantly less than those predicted on Oahu because of Oahu’s near shore development. Chair Bennett asked if it would be possible to have Mr. Yee or one of his staff brief the EMC on this, and Director Kucharski said he would ask. Chair Bennett asked Director Kucharski if he could also prepare a status report for the next meeting about the seawater intrusion into the sewer along Aliʻi Drive, if there was anything to share the EMC did not already know. Director Kucharski replied with what the DEM does know: One of the areas that broke last year on King Kamehameha Day is being fully repaired with an internal system. It will have an injected line into where the cast iron line is. They are taking a look at all the force mains that have cast iron. These mains were installed in the 1960s throughout Kona and Hilo. It is a $13 to $14 million replacement program on their CIP schedule to move forward on. They had to shuffle funds to take care of the Kona intrusion because it wasn’t budgeted. There is current bill to modify state law to allow counties to go onto private property, such as a hotel, to confirm there is an intrusion. There is also a bill going through the final readings that would allow us to require someone connected to the sewer to do an infiltration study for their connecting line and repair it if an intrusion is found. Commissioner Osborne asked for Director Kucharski to send them the bill so they can submit testimony. Director Kucharski said that for Kealakehe R-1 system, they are in the midst of the design phase. The goal is not to dispose of any of the water, and if they can get the reuse properly done, disposal and nutrient reduction is going to be unimportant because it won’t occur in the ideal world. Preliminary designs are under way, and the indications in the pre-planning and pre-design stages show a minimum of 90% reduction in the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous going into the discharge. If there is a major rain event it may not be possible to get 100%, because they won’t be able to run everything through the UV system and will have to do some chlorination. Chair Bennett said he is interested in seeing the data on how effective the blue rock is going to be in trapping phosphorous. The chemistry is clear there is a finite capacity for the iron in the blue rock to bind to the phosphorous, and there are other confounding factors. He would like to see some real world models, run for several months, where wastewater is put through the crushed blue rock. 6