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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -4 October 12, 2018
<br />The department has 23 separate water system around the island. We man that,
<br />operate and maintain that with about 160 staff. We service approximately 43,000
<br />customers, with a population estimate at about 115,000. So slightly more than
<br />half of the island's population. Average daily water consumption, 25 million
<br />gallons per day. Operate and maintain over 1,000 miles of pipeline, 75 sources,
<br />210 water tanks, and over 80 booster -pump stations.
<br />For this current fiscal year, our operating budget is about $54 million, of which
<br />approximately $20 million is budgeted for power. So that's how much power we
<br />use. So energy is high in our priority as far as how to manage that a little bit
<br />better. Along with that, we have a $96 million, five-year CIP budget.
<br />All year 23 public water system fall under the Safe Drinking Water Act. We need
<br />to be in compliance with the Federal and State drinking water requirements to
<br />ensure that our customers, our community, has access to safe drinking water at all
<br />times. Basically, if we do our job right—bottom line, we get taken for granted.
<br />You open your tap, water should come out. You fill up a glass, you shouldn't be
<br />afraid to drink from it and worry about getting sick. We like to think that when
<br />you get your water bill, it's probably less than your cell bill, HELCO bill,
<br />telephone, cable, cell phone bill, thinks like that. Currently, we're still only
<br />sending out a bill every two months. So a bi-monthly cycle.
<br />So here's some DWS 101. Water system components. What infrastructure
<br />actually comprise or snake up a water system. So from source to tap basically, we
<br />have first the source, which is wells—mostly wells. We have a few springs, a
<br />tunnel that we have on standby, and one surface water treatment facility in
<br />Waimea that typically feeds into a storage tank, gets transmitted through water
<br />pipes to a distribution system made up of more tanks, pipelines, boosters, service
<br />laterals, and ultimately meters.
<br />So just show you some pictures of some of our components. So this is a picture
<br />of a well. So contrary to what maybe a lot of people may think is these are quite
<br />sizeable units. If you see the picture on the left, those are pump bowls. Many
<br />stages of pump bowls. That one in particular is about 26 feet long. The
<br />accompanying motor is about 13 feet long weighing close to four tons. So these
<br />are not stuff you can buy from Home Depot, bottom line. So you know,
<br />sometimes we've been asked why it takes so long sometimes to repair a well. It's
<br />because they don't stock this on a shelf anywhere. It's a, you know, they build it
<br />when you order it kind of thing.
<br />So that's a deep well, and this is a storage tank, typical storage tank. Some of you
<br />may have seen them around in your neighborhoods. We try to blend them in with
<br />the surrounding as best we can, but they're big concrete structures, so we paint
<br />them and that's about all we can do, okay, inside and outside. So you know, there
<br />are some concerns about how do our tanks handle earthquakes. So the older ones,
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