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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN AWESC 2017/07/17 (2016-2018)Committee on Agriculture, Water and Energy Sustainability 4th Session West Hawaii Civic Center 74-5044 Ane Keohokalole Highway, Building A Kailua-Kona, Hawaii July 17, 2017 CALL TO The regular meeting of the Committee on Agriculture, Water and Energy ORDER: Sustainability Committee was called to order at 10:42 a.m., in the Council Chambers, Kailua-Kona, by Ms. Eileen O'Hara, Acting Chair. ROLL CALT.- Present: Ms. Eileen O'Hara, Vice Chair (via videoconference from Hilo) Mr. Aaron S. Y. Chung, Member (via videoconference from Hilo) Ms. Maile Medeiros David, Member Ms. Karen Eoff, Member Mr. Dru Mamo Kanuha, Member Ms. Susan. L. K. Lee Loy, Member Ms. Jennifer Ruggles, Member Absent & Excused: Mr. Herbert M. "Tim" Richards, III, Chair Ms. Valerie T. Poindexter, 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: Shelley S. Mahi-Hanai: Comm. 349, comment. ACTING CHR. O'HARA: I'm going to reach out to the folks over in Kona. I think it might be easier if someone from that side would chair the presentation that's on the agenda, simply because of the delay in our communications. Would someone be willing to step up and do that? MS. DAVID: Okay. I'm Finance Chair, so anyone have any desire to serve as acting chair from this side for logistics reasons? No? Well it's kind of easier from here because of thealright, then as no one has any objections, being Finance Chair, I can chair the meeting if that's okay with you, Ms. O'Hara. AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 ACTING CHR. O'HARA: It's fine with me, as long as we don't need a motion, Clerk. MR. HENRICKS: No motion necessary. ACTING CHR. O'HARA: Okay, great. Thank you, Ms. David, for your willingness. Relinquish Chair: At this time, Acting Chair O'Hara relinquished the chair to Ms. David. ACTING CHR. DAVID: Thank you. Let the record show that I am assuming the Chair of the Committee on Ag, Water and Energy Sustainability. Mr. Clerk, can you please read Communication 349, please? COMMUNI- The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, CATIONS: Communications. Comm. 349: REQUESTS A PRESENTATION BY KEITH OKAMOTO, MANAGER - CHIEF ENGINEER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF WATER SUPPLY, REGARDING KONA'S CURRENT WATER EMERGENCY From Council Members Karen Eoff and Dru Mamo Kanuha, dated July 3, 2017. Motion to Close File: Ms. Eoff moved to close file on Comm. 349. Seconded by Mr. Kanuha. ACTING CHAIR DAVID: Go ahead, Ms. Eoff MS. EOFF: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you Manager -Chief Engineer Mr. Okamoto, for being here today and for bringing your staff I think probably the best thing to do would just to go straight into your presentation. Is everything ready, technologically? MS. EOFF: And make sure your microphone's on. First you could introduce yourself and then we'll move on to your presentation. (Note: At this time, Manager -Chief Engineer of the Department of Water Supply Keith Okamoto came forward and gave 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. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation is made a part of the record, see Comm. 349.) ACTING CHR. DAVID: Thank you, Mr. Okamoto, for that presentation. Ms. Eoff or Mr. Kanuha? Page 2 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 MS. EOFF: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Manager -Chief Engineer for the presentation and for addressing a lot of the questions that I think we've been hearing, especially Council Member Kanuha and I since it affected basically our two districts. But I think it's a good discussion for the entire island just because we can always be better at conserving water and knowing how precious a resource it really is. So you have answered quite a few of the questions, but just to maybe restate a couple of things so that the public may better understand some of the problems we've encountered and why they couldn't be fixed faster. So the main question I had in receiving is why we don't we have spare parts for the pumps or spare pumps. I know you just explained that, given the size and the complexity of the design of the pumps, it's not easy to store a pump like that. But you've said that you will be trying to have a spare pump for the more critical wells on hand, is that what we're going to be looking forward to then? MR. OKAMOTO: Yes, correct. Part of the priority or our criteria that we're using to develop the priority spares is there may be opportunities for interchangeability with the motor. So if you have a 600 horsepower motor, it could be used in various locations. The pump is the unit that really is site specific, depending on how high it needs to lift the water. So we're looking at that as a priority. Another priority is if—we have 23 separate water systems around the island and some of those water systems just have a single source. Kona actually is fairly robust, in other words, it has 13 sources. So even when we had the five down, with peoples' efforts, people still maintained water. So that shows a system with inherent redundancy within the system. But there are some systems out there with just one well, so that's basically no redundancy. So in those, that's kind of a no- brainer to have a spare pump and motor on hand. The other spare pump and motor criteria is another one like Hale Ki`i, if it services critical facilities like a hospital and things like that. So those are three main criterias for spares. And again, it's just a balancing act. We need to use our resources wisely, but at the same time, have them available where they're needed most. MS. EOFF: And because water is such a critical need in our community, is dependent for the most part on the County's water sources, I think that's really helpful to know that you're addressing it in that way. Another question that came to me quite often was why are the golf courses still green and are they having to cut back at the resort areas? And I think basically that would mean Kohanaiki and Kukio in my district. I know the answer to that, but maybe if you could just let people know, and also at the same time, maybe the contribution that, especially Kohanaiki has done in providing or helping the County provide water. Page 3 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 MR. OKAMOTO: Well you probably know more about Kohanaiki than I do. Basically, a lot of those—well Kohanaiki for example, doesn't use our water to irrigate the golf course. They have a, actually their own source, which they desalinate for irrigation. I believe similarly with Kukio, and even—so basically all the golf courses in the area do not irrigate with our potable water. So they've already taken the right steps. I also want to take this opportunity to thank certain businesses from small to large. We worked closely with Kona Car Wash Express and they actually recycle their water several times. That's a model car wash from our perspective here. We even found out about a single guy who does detailing. He suspended his business for three days on our last event. So he finally gave us a call and we said, "Hey, you know you just employ your best practices, use a bucket, use a hose with a nozzle, and you're good to go." So there are a lot of people who stepped up. DLNR (Department of Land and Natural Resources) put up additional signs at the harbor, that's our understanding. But yeah, going back to the golf courses, other businesses, there's a lot of people who really stepped up, so we want to thank them. MS. EOFF: And I think that people that knew and were aware of the request to at least restrict irrigation and cut back 25 percent did cooperate. Luckily, we were having a kind of a wet season. It's been raining quite a bit so it wasn't really detrimental to anybody's, that I know of, operations. But I think the—maybe the other user that was questioned was NELHA (Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority), who is a big user. But I had discussions with that operation, and maybe you could just enlighten us a little bit about their efforts too. MR. OKAMOTO: Right. So our understanding is primarily, Cyanotech really made some significant adjustments to their operations and were able to, from their side, indicate that they were able to cut back their domestic water use by approximately 27 percent in that vicinity. So after Keahuolu, the fifth well went down, we actually had just installed a new water meter to service the entire facility. So we took an initial reading, and we had the opportunity to take daily readings because we had staff out in the areas driving around. Hopefully, with the additional presence, we're hoping to see increasing compliance, which I think we did see. So we're able to read the NELHA meter daily, from the 29th and 30th of June through July 2nd° and we did see a decrease from the prior usage history. So that indicates that what they were telling us was in fact actually implemented by them. So we're still going to stay on them to use water wisely because they are one of our highest users in the area. But their efforts they did put in a significant effort to reduce their use. Page 4 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 MS. EOFF: So I'd just to say thank you also to all of our community for helping us in the situation, and I'd just like to emphasize that the most important thing is that you're going to make plans for the future so that we don't have any dire emergencies, since people do depend so much on water for their life. I actually lived on catchment for most of the 30 years I've been in Hawaii, but recently have—our subdivision has County water now, but you learn a lot and you realize how much water you can conserve if you try. It's not that hard, especially just 25 percent. So for now, I just urge everybody to continue to help out so that we don't put extra burden on the wells that are functioning, and I hope you'll let us know as soon as the second one is repaired. I think people are feeling the ease now of the dire situation we had the last few weeks. I'm going to yield now and let Council Member Kanuha ask some of the questions he may have been hearing too. ACTING CHR. DAVID: Thank you, Ms. Eoff. Mr. Kanuha. MR. KANUHA: Thank you, Madam Chair, and mahalo Keith and your team for being out here. I know you guys are going to have community meetings coming up to inform the public more about what's going on and how to and exactly what you told us today. One of the main questions I always got, besides the ones that Karen already asked was—and I know we went through this process in the last several years about Kona and specifically, what the State was trying to do here in this area, the Keauhou aquifer, seeing whether we have enough water as a resource to provide for the public and if they need to manage these wells, or whatever it is they're trying to do. In terms of the public aspect, they want to know, is there enough water within our wells and within our aquifer to provide for, not only current, what we have now as a population, but in the future for future developments here in this area? So that's one of the main questions I always got. It's easy for me to respond back to them because I went through the whole process of that. But I mean it is a very unique area, and there are a lot of questions and hypotheses about what exactly is underneath and the aquifer and what is there. But in terms of that question, what's the answer for that? MR. OKAMOTO: I kind of like Karen's questions better. But seriously, we went through that whole Keauhou Aquifer situation. We updated our water use and development plan, and basically, the findings from that plan indicated to us that the amount of the water in the aquifer, and there's a whole lot more unknown about the aquifer's hydrogeology and things like that than what is really known. But what we do know about it is the sustainable yield is 38 mgd, million gallons per day, in this particular aquifer. And in the foreseeable future, with all whatever we could find, as having any potential possibility or level of approval for future development in the area, we didn't include those that didn't even have LUC approval, State Land Use Commission approval because as we all know, if you don't have that off the bat, there's really no guarantee that your development can move forward. So we took all the realistic—but it was a sizable amount and Page 5 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 even with all that added up all together, and we compared three different scenarios, full, whatever we could find, put it all together with no timeline, it still showed us in the safe realm of the sustainable yield. And then we did a reality check with comparing that against—say we took population growth and applied that growth rate to water needs, and even with that, for decades down the road, we'd still be in a safe area as it relates to the sustainable yield. So we're very comfortable with the amount of development for the foreseeable future, but at the same time, like Ms. Eoff said, this is a resource that everybody needs to understand is critical. We're an island state, so it's a finite resource and we all need to use it wisely, especially in areas that are drier. Because on the wet sides of the island, we're talking about hundreds of millions of gallons a day compared to 38 here. So anyway, so to answer your question, we're good for now, but at the same time, we don't—going back to the current restriction, we don't want to ease off too much at this point. We're still under a restriction, we still have four wells down. The next one should be ahead of schedule, knock on wood, prior to end of July, being back on line. But that one still doesn't bring us out of the woods because we still have three down. So these wells are like straws in a glass. So the aquifer sustainable yield is like the capacity of that big cup, and then these straws are individual withdrawals from this big cup. So at the same time, those straws are limited in their capacity but also that we want to re-emphasize that although that cup is fairly large, that cup is also limited in its capacity as well. Does that make sense? MR. KANUHA: Yes. Thank you. And as we look into the future of how we, us as a Council, we go through with our development plans or look at possible developments. Water's always the critical one and we always look forward to the reports coming back from either yourself or the commission, on how to move forward with that, because Kona, or the leeward side, is the drier side. It is critical in understanding how the system can handle increased population, and this is kind of a wake-up call to see exactly what can handle, how much water is out there, and what we can actually use to make sure our population is taken care of. Health and safety is my number one priority, and I know it's our Council's main priority and to provide that water for the future generation is going to be really important and really critical in how we look at what's going on. I also wanted to ask, you said you installed flow -restriction devices on the extreme overuse accounts. Do you guys have any authority or methods of issuing fines or is it just shutting off water to those that overuse them? MR. OKAMOTO: Yeah. So we don't have a fining mechanism in our arsenal at this point. So I'm sure that's a topic for discussion we can bring up with the Water Board. But I guess our approach has always been we wanted to promote conservation on a voluntary level via education and things like that. Already in Page 6 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 our rate structure we have a four -tiered system. So basically, if you're in that fourth tier, it supposed to hurt your wallet a little bit, a lot more, actually. So in other words, the first tier is kind of discounted, so if you're super awesome at conserving water, you actually kind of get a discounted rate. The second tier is where most normal residential household operate in. Third tier, you're typically above what the normal household or business meter size is and if you're in the fourth tier, then you're one of those that we probably put a flow - restriction on. So I'm sure that's things will—we'll have that discussion. MR. KANUHA: And I absolutely agree that our main thing here is to conserve water. I think it's a big wake-up call to each and every one of us that we need to look at methods of water resource management, especially here on this side, because it doesn't rain as much and we don't have the streams that can provide a lot of this water. But moving on forward, we are pushing that R1 conversion so that would help with certain water uses, which would be a big help. I mean water needs to be that resource that we can use over and over again and not have to use the potable water for a lot of these different things that we use it for. How closely is the department working with the commission in implementing a lot of these system evaluations? Or what's the method of moving forward with the commission on that type of stuff you're talking about? MR. OKAMOTO: Just to clarify, the commission you're asking, is that the State Water? MR. KANUHA: No, just the Water Board. MR. OKAMOTO: Water Board? Okay. So basically, we keep them informed, typically on our CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) projects. Every month we meet, so every month there's a discussion on our CIP projects. We recently passed our budget, which includes a five-year CIP. We bring forward to them things like initiatives that we're working on. So again, we could be better at explaining to them some of the details on what we presented to you folks today. We have actually one of our board members present I believe. If I can, introduce Nestorio Domingo, he's a recently appointed Water Board member. So I think we communicate very well with our Water Board. I think we can probably do better still and some of the things that we brought forward to the board at other times were our efforts with—we tried to partner with Hawaii Community Foundation, with their fresh water initiative, I'm a Council Member with that. We're also partnering with the State Water Commission on drought committee. I'm the chair of the island's drought committee. We're part of the water audit and the water loss committee and we're also partnering with the UH (University of Hawaii) on that $20 million grant, and a good chunk of that is to study Keauhou and get Page 7 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 better understanding of our geology and our aquifer. So there are a lot of things going on but we probably could communicate that a whole lot better. MR. KANUHA: I'm just trying toI know our position on the Council of how we communicate with Water Supply, but the public might not understand the relationship between Department of Water Supply, the Water Board, and how it is a semi -autonomous type of body. So just trying to figure out the oversight of the Department of Water Supply and how it all functions within County government. So that's kind of where I was wanting to ask. And these questions are more of an educational aspect of informing the public about why, and how come, and how we can work together to make sure that this doesn't happen again, and really to push for better outreach and education to the public about how we move forward. So that's kind of the line of questioning I'm moving towards. MR. OKAMOTO: Okay, so maybe if I could add to that then. So basically, if you're from the public, and I probably should have done that off the bat, but we have our separate funding so all of our operating -100 percent of our operating budget is basically from the revenues from our water bills, nothing from the general fund from the County. So basically, the situation that we're in is all on us. It wasn't through any issue with the administration or with the County Council, it really was all on us. We do consider ourselves part of the County family but basically, this situation is all on the Department of Water Supply. So we need to own that, we need to be better because of that, and we are committed to being better because of that. Because we all are in the community together so hopefully— MR. KANUHA: And real quickly, for a certain policy to help with water conservation, water management, how, whether it's a policy to say County bathrooms have to be retrofitted with the—at least for urinals or something, the non -water flow type of thing. How does is that some of the things that you could be helping with the Water Board to push certain policies, or does it need to be a Council's—that could be a policy or a law from the Council side? Who provides these types of suggestions and policy decisions to say that this is because of our need to look at water resource management, we're going to be doing this as a County, the Water Board or Department of Water Supply, or is it from like our side, can we do that kind of thing? MR. OKAMOTO: I think there are opportunities at all different levels. So from the State level, of course there's legislation to encourage conservation. And even with building codes, making the requirement to adopt the current building code with low -flow fixtures and things like that. So I think things like that are already in place. Maybe at the County level, we always work closely with our Planning Department, Department of Public Works, it's always been a team effort. I've been here 20 years, it's always been that way. So I think if we continue to do that and get better at communicating, even with the Community Development Plan Page 8 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 process, things like—everybody likes nice, green shaded trees, covered lush walkways, and things like that, but I think we can do a better job of educating that in certain areas, let's take a look at different types of landscaping. So we can work with the Planning Department in that regard. MR. KANUHA: Absolutely. Even look at the Civic Center as a method of using plants from the area, endemic species or native species that don't need, especially in this area, don't need a lot of water. Yeah, I have a piece of grass on my property that turned brown in the last several months, but thank you that it started raining again. But even looking at that, do I really need that piece of grass? For sure, we all love that to keep our houses nice, and tidy, and everything, but certain things, we can all look at to better manage our water. Just a quick—you're saying stuff about the pumps and the pipes and the warranties, that the warranties might expire, it might not be the best—maybe not expire but what are the warranties on these pumps and pipes? MR. OKAMOTO: The pumps and motors typically carry a one-year warranty. MR. KANUHA: Oh, okay. MR. OKAMOTO: So if you don't use it within that one year—if it doesn't perform, tough luck, you got to go get another one. MR. KANUHA: And then price, I don't know if you said, I might have missed it, but what's the price range we're talking about? MR. OKAMOTO: For a full repair, so in other words, like the four repairs that we have currently under way, they range from $350,000 to $700,000, depending on the scope. If it's just a push/pull reinstallation, a pump motor, power cable, then it's more the $300,000. If you need to do significant amount of top -side electrical work, then that would increase it to the $700,000. So just for the pump and motor, $200,000 for these larger—like the Honokohau one that we just recently procured. MR. KANUHA: And when they're at full operation, how long do you expect them to last? I mean obviously, a warranty's for a year, but I mean 10 years? Eight years? MR. OKAMOTO: I mean we're hoping for five to seven, but on some of these, and it'swe got to scratch our heads a little bit on some of these because some of these, six months and they've gone down. So really, what's the cause of that? So some of these—two of the wells actually that we have under repair, they went down mid -2016, so we kind of paused on those repairs because of the warranty issue because you still want to be fiscally responsible. If it's a fault of somebody Page 9 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 else, we don't want to foot the bill. But when the other wells went down, we just had to proceed with the repair. So we haven't quite figured out why some of these are failing in such a short time. We're expecting five to seven or at least four to six out of them. So we're actually going to—we have a professional services contract out that will help us maybe review some, in detail, some of these top -side equipment to see if there's something that we're missing. But yeah, six months is not acceptable, but we've seen that a couple of times already. MR. KANUHA: I know it was brought up that this is kind of like a perfect storm situation where they all, and I wouldn't want to use perfect storm, but it was a situation where this all happened at this specific time period. And I know we're just working to make sure that this doesn't happen again, because it's just hard to have this happen with all of them again, just to see how we move forward is great. I'm really looking forward to working with you folks, even though semi- autonomous, we're here as a resource as well, whether you need community engagement or community education about what's happening like that, please don't hesitate. And I know you guys have done that to make sure that we do get it out to the public as fast as possible. Since my five minutes are up, I'm okay for now, but I really want to thank you guys for being here, and hopefully, we've all learned something extra from this discussion. I'll yield at this time. ACTING CHR. DAVID: Thank you, Mr. Kanuha. Ms. Lee Loy. MS. LEE LOY: Thank you, Chair. A lot of you folks know that I came from the Water Board, so I'm a big fan of the Water Board. These guys work extremely hard, and I just appreciate them presenting the information because it's extremely complex. And one thing, just for the pump and the motor, passing that stuff around, those things are extremely heavy. And in our presentation, they provided the total weight, which is 36 tons without the water. And I just want for food for thought for a lot of people, one cubic foot of water is 60 pounds. So you guys really need to understand the energy and the pumping efforts that these pumps and wells have to do just to move one cubic foot of water. And so I applaud what they're doing, it's not easy. All too often, and I learned this on the Water Board, we take water—you know we turn it on and it's there, so we never really think how it gets there. But I really wanted to thank you and I thank my colleagues for bringing this up. And then what I do want to offer to the Water Department is I think Na Leo offers like free public access, so there's another vehicle there for you folks to share your story. That's another area you folks can use. So thank you. Thank you for this conversation. Page 10 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 ACTING CHR. DAVID: Thank you for that, Ms. Lee Loy. Hilo Council Members? Thank you, Mr. Chung. MR. CHUNG: Thank you. And I want to thank Mr. Eoff and Mr. Kanuha for bringing this up because as Ms. Eoff mentioned, this is something that has generated some interest island wide. We get these frequent advisories, text messages about the situation in North Kona, and it really must inconvenience a lot of the citizens over there. And it's uplifting what Keith stated about those members of the public who are really going over and above what's being asked of them. So of course, we want to thank them. But I think one of the benefits of having this presentation is not only to disseminate information, but to address and possibly dispel some rumors or concerns. First of all, Keith, is it true that when the fifth well went down, your department deployed two water trucks, one to Hina Lani and one to West Hawaii Civic Center with potable water? MR. OKAMOTO: Yeah, actually we deployed one to Hina Lani and then we installed a spigot station off of a fire hydrant on Ane Keohokalole, between Kealakehe High School and Kealakehe Parkway. MR. CHUNG: Okay. And then when well five, that fifth well came back on line then it was no longer necessary to utilize that truck? MR. OKAMOTO: Correct. MR. CHUNG: Okay. And again, this came to my attention by a citizen, not so much—it wasn't really a criticism, it was more a suggestion if it was in fact true. But that person stated that they saw this truck, I'm going to use the word dumping for lack of a better term, but dumping the water on the Queen Kaahumanu construction site, and that person was just wondering if true, whether that water could have been better used for irrigation purposes. And it's more in terms of a suggestion because if the situation arises again, maybe if the water could be used for irrigation, I don't know. Do you want to address that? MR. OKAMOTO: Okay. I'm not—I wasn't aware of that. But that does bring up another point because a lot of—part of that temporary water service that we suspended, a lot of that was being used for construction, dust control. So maybe that was the intent for that disposal of that water at that time. Because a lot of the contractors stepped up as well and suspended their dust control activities. So we can look into that though. MR. CHUNG: No, and that makes sense. And as I said, I don't think what was told to me was meant as a criticism. And now that you explained, and I kind of figured that it had to be for dust control, that's why I didn't really want to use the Page 11 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 word dumping, but it was sprayed or put there at the construction site. Yeah, if you could just follow up on that, I'd appreciate it. Thank you, Keith. MR. OKAMOTO: Thank you. ACTING CHR. DAVID: Thank you, Mr. Chung. Ms. O'Hara, would you like toyou have any questions? MS. O'HARA: Not at this time. I really appreciate the presentation. There have been a lot of questions asked, especially about why we don't have spare parts on hand. But as Keith knows, we talked about this, I had the experience of running one of our small, private, actually public water systems. We have 21 or 22 on island which services about 500 households, and I'm well aware of the complexities of having a well pump go out. And I appreciate all their efforts to try and develop alternative ways to find spare parts, besides just having them on the shelf. And it's true, holding these things in inventory is problematic. So having a good network to reach out to find parts that will work for our system when in need like this is a really wise thing to keep current. So I appreciate that you were doing that. Thank you. ACTING CHR. DAVID: Thank you, Ms. O'Hara. Anyone else? Ms. Eoff MS. EOFF: Thank you. I believe you mentioned that you've either hired or contracted somebody to look into maybe what could have caused so many—all of the pumps to fail at the same time ironically, or if there was actually a cause. So is that something you could report back to us if you can determine that? MR. OKAMOTO: Yes. So, just to clarify a couple things, so I think a common misconception is that all four went down at the same time. They didn't all go down at the same time, they just—because of the duration it takes to fix one of them, we have four down right now. The other one, yeah, we'll definitely be able to report any conclusive findings. There's so many working, moving, and non- moving parts in the operation of these deep wells, so what we're hoping to see with this—we have a professional services contract in place for a power system study around the island, so what we intend to do is to ask them to provide a quotation to do additional work to look at some specific sites. You know, on our top side electrical protective equipment to see if it's robust enough, is it big enough, strong enough? These are things that we, on the initial design had an electrical engineering firm design these components. So from our perspective, we thought they were fine, but we're going to take this opportunity to have this third party do a more thorough review. So if we do find that we can or we need to beef up some of our top -side components, and that looks like a possible solution, we'll let you folks know as well. MS. EOFF: Thank you very much. Page 12 AWESC-4 July 17, 2017 ACTING CHR. DAVID: Thank you, Ms. Eoff And I believe there's no one else. Okay. Well I'm last so Manager -Chief Engineer Okamoto, thank you very much for that presentation and your staff I think a lot of the questions that I've been hearing have been answered and I know that you will be giving another public presentation in the next few days. MR. OKAMOTO: Thursday evening. ACTING CHR. DAVID: Yes, would you—it's this Thursday, here at the—okay, at 6:00? 6:00, okay. And I'm sorry Ms. Ruggles, did you have any questions or I'm closing? Okay. But anyway, thank you very much for the presentation. Vote on Comm. 349: The motion to close file on Comm. 349 was carried by the Filed following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, Eoff, Kanuha, Lee Loy, O'Hara, Ruggles, and Acting Chair David – 7. Noes: None. Absent: Committee Members Poindexter and Richards – 2. Excused: None. Page 13 AWESC-4 ADJOURN MENT: Approved: July 17, 2017 There being no further business, at 11:50 a.m., Ms. Lee Loy moved to adjourn the meeting. Seconded by Ms. Eoff and carried by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, Eoff, Kanuha, Lee Loy, O'Hara, Ruggles, and Acting Chair David — 7. Noes: None. Absent: Committee Members Poindexter and Richards — 2. Excused: None. ACTING CHR. DAVID: We are adjourned. Mahalo everybody. Z Ms. Eileen O'Hara, Vice Chair Agriculture, Water, and Energy Sustainability Committee EO/jm (Date) Page 14