2018-06-27 Meeting Minutes (EMC)

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3. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS Chair Bennett noted that two people had signed up to testify. The first is Jerome Warren, who would be speaking on agenda items 4a and 7a. Mr. Warren spoke about the County’s budget shortfall due to the lava disaster and said all departments must cut back on expenses. The Department of Environmental Management is top heavy with bureaucrats. The recycling program educates people on how to identify plastics. This is not a vital service, and everyone has learned it all before. The recycling people do not educate, they indoctrinate. The general public has heard their rhetoric and dogma ad nauseam. Pretty soon, people are going to do the opposite just to show they have free will. Regarding the Nāālehu sewer plant, ʻMr. Warren said the County is in a budget shortfall and does not need to build this unnecessary plant. Doc Buyers took over the plantation years ago and ran it into the ground. Harry Kim did Doc Buyers a huge favor by taking over C. Brewer’s obligation to operate Nāālehu’ʻs old gang cesspool, and at a tremendous cost to the County. Now there is a new development plan for Nāālehu, and ʻ Harry Kim is doing the plantation-connected developers a tremendous favor by installing their wastewater infrastructure. Kaū Royal Coffee and Tea developers have a ʻ plan for Nāālehu was ālehu, but the public is not informed. Backtracking to April, Nāʻʻ supposed to be informed about the treatment plant, but there was a lot of false information given. The County’s consultants didn’t answer individual cesspool questions, and there was a dude in the audience who started answering the questions with false information. The meeting was non-productive. All this started with Dora Beck a long time ago, when Harry Kim first took office. She should be at these meetings, answering questions. He would encourage a councilmember to request that this Nāālehu boondoggle be audited, because it is giving people ʻa lot of grief. Chair Bennett called up the next speaker, Sandra Demoruelle. Ms. Demoruelle spoke about the proposed treatment plants for Kaūʻ and asked why the people of Kaū don’t know what is happening. ʻThere is a 2007 FEA that has never been withdrawn, and yet the County is moving from having one LCC replacement project to having two wastewater treatment systems. There has never been an examination. There has been no EIS to date for these two new-build water treatment systems. Every new-build water treatment system is supposed to have an EIS done. Therefore, she has filed a lawsuit against the EPA, because the EPA has oversight of the project. The community expects openness and a publication of notice in TEN. There has been no documentation as to why the project was changed from doing the LCC conversion. The EA for that was approved by everyone.