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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN CRCOC 2026/03/03 (2024-2026)Committee on Communications, Reports, and Council Oversight 17' Session Hawaii County Building 25 Aupuni Street Hilo, Hawaii March 3, 2026 CALL TO The regular meeting of the Committee on Communications, Reports, and ORDER: Council Oversight was called to order at 10:00 a.m., in the Council Chambers, Hilo, by Ms. Michelle M. Galimba, Chair. ROLL CALL: Present: Ms. Michelle M. Galimba, Chair Ms. Rebecca Villegas, Vice Chair (via videoconference from Kona) Mr. James E. Hustace, Member Mr. Holeka Goro Inaba, Member Ms. Jenn Kagiwada, Member (came in later) Mr. Matt Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Member (came in later) Ms. Ashley L. Kierkiewicz, Member Ms. Heather L. Kimball, Member Mr. Dennis "Fresh" Onishi, Member STATEMENTS The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, FROM THE Statements from the Public on Agenda Items. PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS: The following individual registered to speak and came forward when called by the Chair: Josephine Keli`ipio: Comm. 735; comment. COMMUNI- The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, CATIONS: Communications. Comm. 735: REQUESTS A PRESENTATION BY PACIFIC DROUGHT KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE ON CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE VARIABILITY, AND DROUGHT PORTFOLIO RELATING TO THE LAUPAHOEHOE NATURAL AREA RESERVE From Council Member Heather L. Kimball, dated February 3, 2026. Comm. 735.1 ; and From Council Member Heather L. Kimball, dated February 12, 2026, transmitting replacement presentation material from Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange. CRCOC-17 March 3, 2026 Motion to Close File: Ms. Kimball moved to close file on Comm. 735. Seconded by Ms. Kagiwada. CHR. GALIMBA: Council Member, Kimball. MS. KIMBALL: Yes. Thank you. So I had the opportunity to bring these folks here today from the Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange (PDKE), to provide an overview of the tool that they have, a climate portfolio tool. We were discussing, before the meeting started, last year was the second driest year on record and in my district in particular there were three times the number of typical wildfires in a typical year. So, obviously it's been a little wetter lately, but I thought that this might be useful for all of you to be aware of for your districts. So I will let Mr. Christian Jardine introduce the members of the exchange. Thank you, Christian. Can you step into the mic. Please talk directly into the mic so Rebecca can hear us. (Note: At this time, PDKE Co -Lead Christian Jardine came forward to address the members of the Committee.) (Note: At this time, Mr. Longman came forward and provided a PowerPoint presentation to the members of the Committee. For viewing of the subject presentation, see the DVD copy of the meeting proceedings on file in the Clerk's Office or online at http://hawaiigounty.gov.granicus.com. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation is made a part of the record, see Comm. 735.1.) MR. JARDINE: Aloha everybody. Mahalo for having us today. We very much appreciate this opportunity to share some tools that The Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange has produced over the last couple years. My name is Christian Jardine, I'm a Co -Lead of the Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange and I'm going to introduce Ryan Longman, who's information is on the first slide, Cherryle Heu and Derek Ford. Cherryle and Derek are the engines of PDKE and really make a lot of these tools possible. And to keep it super brief I'm going to pass it to Ryan to kick this off. Thank you. (Note: At this time, Ryan Longman with the University of Hawai'i's Sea Grant College Program came forward to address the members of the Committee.) MR. LONGMAN: Aloha. Good morning. Thanks for having us today. So, yeah, I'm Dr. Ryan Longman. I work at the University of Hawaii in the Sea Grant College Program. My former title is the University Consortium Director of the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center, but I also wear a couple other hats as a Director of the Hawaii Climate Data Portal (HCDP) and the Co - Lead of the Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange with Christian and Dr. Abby Frazier from Clark University. Page 2 CRCOC-17 March 3, 2026 Really happy to be here today to share with you a couple of the tools we've developed. I work across the whole spectrum of the climate data cycle, so we install climate observation stations across Hawaii with the Hawaii messinic program, we develop data storage and data access, but this is unique part of the data life cycle. At Drought Knowledge Exchange where we take data and we've collected and mapped, and turned it into relevant knowledge products and tools that folks on the ground can use, it's a really an exciting part because it's already applied science. So, really happy today to tell you a little bit about it. (Note: At this time, PDKE Geospatial Data Analyst Derek Ford came forward and provided a PowerPoint presentation to the members of the Committee. For viewing of the subject presentation, see the DVD copy of the meeting proceedings on file in the Clerk's Office or online at htti)://hawaiigounty.gov.granicus.com. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation is made a part of the record, see Comm. 735.1.) MR. FORD: Thank you. Thank you, Christian and Ryan for the introduction. Thank you all for your time this morning. So, I'm Derek, The Geospatial Data Analyst for PDKE and I'm going to tell you about our Climate Change, Climate Variability, and Drought Portfolio, or just Climate Portfolio for short. Sounds like you've all had a chance to check out the portfolio for Laupahoehoe. So, if you have, you can see that there's a lot of information there, it's about 40 slides long. But I'm just going to kind of break it down a little bit and explain what is going on with the tool. (Note: At this time, HCDP Climate Data Analyst Cherryl Heu came forward and provided a PowerPoint presentation to the members of the Committee. For viewing of the subject presentation, see the DVD copy of the meeting proceedings on file in the Clerk's Office or online at http://hawaiigounty.gov.granicus.com. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation is made a part of the record, see Comm. 735.1.) MS. HEU: Good morning, Council Members. My name is Cherryle Heu. I am a Climate Data Analyst, and I'd like to share with you all a different tool that the Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange has also been working on. It's similar data including the hundred plus years of rainfall data that Derek has mentioned. But we wanted to focus on a more specific community, especially on Hawaii County and that will be the ranching community. So we launched to what's called the Hawaii Rangeland Information Portal (H-RIP). (Note: At this time, Ms. Heu came forward and provided a PowerPoint presentation to the members of the Committee. For viewing of the subject presentation, see the DVD copy of the meeting proceedings on file in the Page 3 CRCOC-17 March 3, 2026 Clerk's Office or online at http://hawaiigounty.wov.pranicus.com. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation is made a part of the record, see Comm. 735.1.) MS. HEU: With that, I believe Ryan and the three of us can take questions. Thank you. MR. LONGMAN: I'll just add to that, one other thing can be used with this for, ranchers can purchase an insurance product if they know that it's going to be dry in the future. We're working with their Risk Management Agency (RMA) and they have actually launched the PRF (Pasture Forest Rangeland) insurance product on Hawaii last year, is the first year that it was launched and it had a lot of success and now they're going to expand that to the other islands. And I think ranchers can use some of these tools to make a decision on whether they might want to purchase it or not, looking at the past climate records and things. So we're supporting RMA on putting that product out. We're not selling insurance. But we're trying to make it available for folks. MS. KIMBALL: So I'll just say that I hope it's pretty obvious why these tools might be useful for us. Given the business of what we do particularly around land use but I, we only have a few minutes. So please, if you have any questions, and I'm sure they're going to be available if you want to follow up later. CHR. GALIMBA: Thank you so much. Council Member, Hustace. MR. HUSTACE: Thanks, Chair. Just a question, having a little challenge getting into the rangeland portal and kind of pulling up some of those, that may just be me. What was the determination on selecting some of those grids? MS. HEU: Yes. So, a rancher can actually go to a form, it should be available on the home page, and you can literally click anywhere in the state. And what I do is in the back end. I create a one -by -one mile square and that will populate it on the map. So anyone can create as many grids as they want onto that map and bookmark as many websites as they want; it's all free and available to them. MR. HUSTACE: So these are agricultural partners requesting this information to you then. MS. HEU: Yes. MR. HUSTACE: To kind of have this information out there. MS. HEU: Mmhm. MR. HUSTACE: Okay. Thank you, Chair. Page 4 CRCOC-17 March 3, 2026 CHR. GALIMBA: Thank you so much for your presentation. I was actually working on something, like an agricultural plan for my ranch. So I'm going to use that right away. And I'm sure I can also use it for, you know, land planning for public projects, as well as for my own private use. So thank you so much for being here and for your work around this. Actually, I wondered if one of you wanted to address that question of the testifier about if you had any ideas of why we had that switched last year, where there were abnormal amounts of rain on the Kona side, in the midst of a very punishing drought on the east side. MR. LONGMAN: I mean I'd have to look at the data to see how abnormal it was. But typically to the comment, and this is someone who has lived there for a while, so they're making empirical observations. But typically the Kona side of the Big Island is the only place in Hawaii that has a summer maximum of rainfall. So summer rainfall in Kona is not an unusual thing, perhaps it was more last year. And that rainfall is driven by return flow from the trade winds and again I'd have to —I've learned not to make speculations on things that I don't know about. So I'd have to really look at the data to address that, but I think that the crazy conditions we've had were driven more by changes in atmosphere of circulation, deviations of the trade winds, and really not particularly because of man-made climate change. I don't know anything that would connect that. CHR. GALIMBA: Okay. We have our next committee coming up soon at 10:30 a.m. So I'm going to close this down unless anyone else has any questions or concerns. All in favor on closing file on Communication 735, please say "aye." Vote on Comm. 735: The motion to close file on Comm. 735 was carried by the Tiledl following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Hustace, Inaba, Kagiwada, Kaneali'i-Kleinfelder, Kierkiewicz, Kimball, Onishi, Villegas, and Chair Galimba — 9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. Page 5 CRCOC-17 ADJOURN- MENT: Approved: March 3, 2026 There being no further business, Chair Galimba adjourned the meeting at 10:27 a.m. Ms. Miche M. Galimba, Chair Communications, Reports, and Council Oversight Committee MG/mp S1Sluv (Date) Page 6