2018-04-25 Meeting Minutes (EMC)

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ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAIʻI MEETING MINUTES Wednesday, April 25, 2018 9:04 a.m. to 11:36 a.m. Aupuni Center Conference Room 101 Pauahi Street, Suite 1 Hilo, Hawaiʻi 96720 Commissioners present: Richard Bennett, Ph.D., Chair Jon Olson, Vice Chair James Fritz Susie Osborne Luana Neff Rick Gaffney Staff present: William Kucharski, Director Keyra Wong, Deputy Corporation Counse Mary Fujio, Secretary Also present: Several members of the public 1. CALL TO ORDER Chair Bennett called the meeting to order at 9:04 a.m. He stated to everyone that the EMC’s role and responsibilities are oversight of the Department of Environmental Management. They are to provide advice to DEM and the County as appropriate. They are not a decision- making commission and do not have the authority to make policy decisions or to approve or disapprove projects. He wanted to make that clear to everyone present. He then introduced Rick Gaffney, a newly appointed commissioner, and asked him to share some of his background. Commissioner Gaffney said he has been a student of environmental management for a long time. He started his working life as the sea grant agent on Maui, and a major event was when Mayor Carvalho proposed building a sewage treatment plant in a wildlife refuge. He did not think it would ever happen, but it did happen, and the plant today is a huge negative for Maui. Everything went wrong, mainly due to using steel pipes and pumps in a salt water environment. He now has concerns about the ocean adjacent to Honokōhau Harbor, as years ago it was categorized as class AA, the finest quality in the state. Today it is categorized as impaired. Some of the things that contributed to its degradation are within our control, so he is anxious to help assure the protection of the ocean. That is his primary focus: conservation of the ocean and advocating for it, because it can’t speak for itself. He added that he was born and raised in Honolulu, has a political science degree from Oregon State University, and won a fellowship from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.