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minutes 10-27-99Page 11 of 48
<br />the millions of dollars annually, to pay down the debt load, and that comes from the General Fund,
<br />which, basically, is everybody, and the concept behind that is everybody’s reaping the benefits of the
<br />wastewater system so therefore, that’s a way for the public, in general, to be paying. Now how that
<br />would get shifted to Water Supply, I have no idea how the heck we would do that, and the ownership of
<br />the assets. Milton’s right, there’s no way I could imagine the sewer fees could be raised enough to pay
<br />down the debt load on that. We might be talking about doubling the sewer fees, so their only option
<br />would, essentially, be to raise the water fees, Or, I suppose, the other alternative is to leave the debt
<br />service with the County now, and future capital improvements could be funded as you go. But that is
<br />certainly a problem and it requires some real study.
<br />Similarly, responsibility for previous agreements, in particular, grant conditions that the County entered
<br />into for construction of our, primarily the Hilo, Kealakehe and Pepeekeo Plants. We’d now be asking the
<br />Department of Water Supply, a semi-autonomous agency, to be responsible for those grant conditions. Is
<br />that fair? I don’t know. That’s a tough one, also.
<br />For the record, in preparation for this meeting, I did put a post-it on various e-mail boards for the Water
<br />Environment Federation, the American Waterworks Association, and, I forget the name of it, but it had
<br />something to do with County government, Association of County Governments, or whatever, and I
<br />asked what other agencies’ experiences had been. If anybody could shed any light about the advantages
<br />and disadvantages of merging these utilities, and I only got about five or six responses, and basically,
<br />they were all positive, for what it’s worth, with the exception of one, who stated that we should be
<br />careful because, in their opinion, the EPA, during the grant times, when they’re funding facilities
<br />through grant monies, one of their goals was to avoid water and wastewater combining, and they would
<br />write these conditions in, or somehow they’re included in the conditions. I wasn’t able to find those
<br />conditions, and I spoke to DOH, and they were not familiar with that, but it’s really kind of hard to track
<br />those conditions down because they often reference various Federal regulations, which then refer to
<br />other Federal regulations, so there may be some catch there, but that’s a possibility that may be a
<br />problem. But yes, most people seemed to think it was a good match, for whatever it’s worth.
<br />RAY: Was there any input in regard to a Department of Environment, the model of wastewater and solid
<br />waste, that seems to be popular to some degree?
<br />BOUCHER: I didn’t really, specifically ask that question. One of the agencies did have all their utilities
<br />combined, including the electric and all. They thought it was very efficient but, no, I didn’t ask, at least
<br />on the internet, that. Although with this paper I wrote, I did try to quickly come up with a few
<br />advantages and disadvantages to that option because that question does continue to pop up. Milton
<br />presents it. I’ve thought of it, also. As far as advantages of joining wastewater and solid waste, there can
<br />be limited advantages, in as far as handling waste products such as the sludge, if we ever did get to some
<br />sort of a large scale composting operation to divert serious portions of our solid waste stream. Having
<br />our sludge be part of that process would certainly be helpful, so there’s something to be said about
<br />thinking of them in the same light. Also, with the FOG, Fats, Oils and Grease, Maui County has a
<br />mechanism. Part of it is turned into diesel fuel, and part of it is processed, then helped to use to heat, and
<br />it’s used in the composting process also.
<br />RAY: Do you know, their departments aren’t combined, are they?
<br />BOUCHER: No, they are not. And, I guess, the idea’s is, if we’re talking about the paradigm of the
<br />water cycle being the overall view, looking at it, maybe the view from this one is looking at it as this is
<br />environmental management, whatever advantages there are to that. There’s something to be said for
<br />trying to have a society conceptualize in it’s mind what we’re trying to do with this. It’s not a sewer
<br />system where we’re just trying to get rid of stuff and hide it somehow, or bury the waste in a landfill and
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