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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN AWEEMC 2019/11/05 2018-2020 Committee on Agriculture, Water, Energy, and Environmental Management th 12Session Hawaiʻi County Building 25 Aupuni Street Hilo, Hawaiʻi November 5, 2019 CALL TO The regular meeting of the Committee on Agriculture, Water, Energy, and ORDER: Environmental Management was called to order at 2:30 p.m., in the Council Chambers, Hilo, by Mr. Herbert M. “Tim” Richards, III, Chair. ROLL CALL: Present: Mr. Herbert M. “Tim” Richards, III, Chair Mr. Matt Kaneali‘i-Kleinfelder, Vice Chair Mr. Aaron S. Y. Chung, Member Ms. Maile Medeiros David, Member Ms. Karen Eoff, Member Ms. Ashley L. Kierkiewicz, Member (came in later) Ms. Susan L. K. Lee Loy, Member (came in later) Ms. Valerie T. Poindexter, Member Ms. Rebecca Villegas, Member CHR. RICHARDS: One thing I did want to do before we get started. I do have something coming before us at the end of the agenda, and it is Resolution 301. There is an amendment to that, I just want to put that forth. I had a procedural mistake that I made, it’s not the Clerk’s Office. And so there is a substantial amendment in the packet, so just to let people know. 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 individuals registered to speak and came forward when called by the Chair: Cory Harden: Comm. 531; and Res. 301-19 (Comm. 462), comment. Sherry Mees: Res. 301-19 (Comm. 462), comment. Georjean Adams: Res. 301-19 (Comm. 462), in support. Mary Afable: Res. 301-19 (Comm. 462), comment. Jon Olson: Res. 301-19 (Comm. 462), comment. AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 Kristine Kubat: Comm. 531; comment and Res. 301-19 (Comm. 462), in opposition. Koohan Paik-Mander: Res. 301-19 (Comm. 462), in opposition. CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you. I will close public testimony, and we’ll move on to the agenda. I’m going to re-arrange the agenda little bit to help us deal with a few things, taking them out of order, I’m going to take Communication 546 please, Clerk. COMMUNI- The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, CATIONS: Communications. Change Order As directed by the Chair and with no objection from the Council Members, of Business: the following items were taken out of order. Comm. 546: NOMINATION OF MELISSA ROSE CARDWELL TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT COMMISSION From Mayor Harry Kim, dated October 18, 2019, submitting for the Council’s review and confirmation of the above nomination. Requires Council Confirmation by: December 1, 2019 (Section 13-4(l), Hawai‘i County Charter) Vote on Comm. 546: Ms. Lee Loy moved to recommend confirmation of the (Approved) appointment of Ms. Melissa Rose Cardwell to the Environmental Management Commission. Seconded by Ms. Kierkiewicz and carried by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff, Kaneali‘i-Kleinfelder, Kierkiewicz, Lee Loy, Poindexter, Villegas, and Chair Richards – 9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. Executive Assistant to the Mayor Rose Bautista came forward to introduce and provide a brief narrative of the nominee to the members of the Committee. Council members spoke in favor of the nomination. Chair Richards informed Ms. Cardwell that she need not be present for final confirmation at full Council. CHR. RICHARDS: Okay. Moving on, we’re going to move into our presentation. Because we’re running late, we’re going to rearrange a little bit. I’m going to go into the presentation on the thermal conversion. We’re flipping a Page 2 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 little bit because I understand there may be some airplanes we need to catch. So Clerk, 559, please. Comm. 559: REQUESTS A PRESENTATION REGARDING THERMAL CONVERSION OF ORGANIC MATERIAL SYSTEM From Council Members Valerie T. Poindexter and Rebecca Villegas, dated October 17, 2019. Motion to Close File: Ms. Poindexter moved to close file on Comm. 559. Seconded by Ms. Villegas. CHR. RICHARDS: Go ahead Val, take over. MS. POINDEXTER: Yeah. So the TCOM (Thermal Conversion of Organic Material) system project, is a partnership with the UH Shidler College of Business (University of Hawaiʻi). And we have the Director here from the Pacific Business Center Program (PBCP). I’d like to introduce him, and he’ll take it from here and that’s Dr. Tusi. Can you come forward, and I guess you have to get on the mic to introduce yourself. And if you can introduce the people who are—I guess maybe be we can—can we get a mic? Is Sunshine here? Sunshine can you run the mic to him, so that he doesn’t have to go, instead he can stand there and then he’ll go back and sit. Sorry. And they always start with a protocol, seems like a day of protocol, today. Dr. Tusi. (Note: At this time Director of PBCP Dr. Tusi Avegalio; Developer and patent holder for TCOM Michael Lurvey; and Director of the Innovation Center Project under the PBCP Khalid Dodin came forward to address the members of the Committee.) DR. TUSI: Thank you. An ancestor of mine arrived here, was brought here centuries ago. His iwi’s in the ground. So are the iwi of many of my ancestors. It would be inappropriate for me to be here and not humbly engage in a protocol, acknowledging them, seeking their blessings and thanking them for watching over Hawaiʻi. (Note: At this time, Dr. Tusi’s representatives performed a Hawaiian protocol including pule and chant.) DR. TUSI: Thank you very much for the introduction and greetings. I’m Dr. Tusi, Director of Pacific Business Center Program at the University of Hawaiʻi, Shidler College of Business. We’ve been working in the region for well over 20 years, and we’ve been looking at working at solutions to try to engage chronic problems. Waste is one of them, resilient communities. Looking at distributed systems, versus centralized systems. Looking at regenerative processes, rather than linear economic development processes. We’ve come up with a variety of expertise, and among them was looking at technology that can Page 3 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 engage the regenerative process. We’ve established in partnership, a multipurpose business incubator. And with us here we have the business manager Khaled Dodin who will address what the incubator does. But I think to use utilize as much time as possible, giving it to our scientist in residence and inventor; Vietnam Veteran, he looks like one: Michael Lurvey MR. LURVEY: Aloha. Sorry, maybe I’ll move it further away, my voice does carry. Thank you for inviting us, and thank you for this opportunity to express what it is we’re working on and what it is we’re doing. And to offer you the opportunity to learn about some new technologies, though they been around for quite a while. Everybody calls me the inventor. All I did was take existing technologies that have been, some of them have been around for thousands of years. Others have been around hundreds of years. A few of them have only been around 100 years. But I combined them into a single system. Initially, we began by trying to make keawe charcoal, because that was a very low-hanging fruit and easy to do. We progressed through many iterations over the last couple of decades to improve the system, improve the process, and most of all develop a way for local communities to do things themselves. To take it beyond just cleaning up waste and to take it beyond just trying to make a profit. We’ve evolved the entire system into a resiliency system. We look at disaster, we look at what’s going to happen, and we look at the disasters that both nature and man are doing. You’ve had a lot of people get up here and talk about plastics. Yeah, well they should define which plastics they’re talking about to begin with. The first one is oil-based plastics. I agree with everything they said. Something not to deal with. However, plastics were first invented using plant-based based material. We have figured out that if you follow that process, you can still keep the lifestyle you want with biodegradable systems that can break up and clean up. Right? We can make medicines, we can make many products. We can make the monomers, which are the first bases of the chemical compounds that can be used to manufacture a lot of different things. So we have a short film taken some years ago when we were running our plant down in Campbell Industrial Park on Oahu. If you have that, I’ll shut my mouth and then let the film play. (Note: At this time, Mr. Lurvey and Mr. Dodin provided a PowerPoint presentation to the members of the Committee. For viewing of the 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. 559.) Page 4 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MS. POINDEXTER: Excuse me Michael, just real quick over here. Sorry, I was going to ask if, you know, they have the presentation, I was going to try and ask if it’s okay, if we can start a discussion. MR. LURVEY: Sure, I’m done. MS. POINDEXTER: If anybody has any questions that you could answer. But I want to yield to my colleagues, and I don’t know if Rebecca you wanted to start off with anything, okay. So thank you, Chair, for that opportunity. CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you, Val. So do you have any follow up questions you want to have? MS. POINDEXTER: No, I’ll just ask if—because I’ve been to the presentation. We’ve visited at the site, you know, so I’d like my colleagues to have the opportunity to ask any questions. CHR. RICHARDS: Okay, so first I wanted to thank you and Rebecca for bringing forward technologies. I think it’s important that the public understands, this is not a conversation of whether we are adopting this, this is a conversation of exploring what is out there. And that’s what a lot of the conversations are going to be had, coming forth. This is about trying to find out, because we don’t know what we don’t know, so we’re trying to figure out what we don’t know. So interesting technology, and listening to some possibilities. Questions from other Council Members? Oh, alright go ahead, Karen. MS. EOFF: Thank you. And thank you very, very much. I don’t really have a question right now. But following what Mr. Richards just said, I just feel inspired that you brought us something that is more Pacific Island friendly. And we’re just not looking to, like you said, industrialized nations. Because I’ve always felt that’s part of the problem with a lot of the ideas that come to us, not just in waste reduction but in any concepts that we keep relating to the United States Mainland. And this is just an island in the Pacific, so to be starting to think about things that are Pacific Island mentality, it’s just refreshing. So you caught my interest. I don’t know that much about, you know, all of the details but I’m sure we’ll learn more. But I just appreciate the presentation, so mahalo. MR. LURVEY: Thank you, mahalo. CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you, Karen. Council Woman Lee Loy. MS. LEE LOY: Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I’m actually echoing what Ms. Eoff is mentioning. You know, we’re an island, so I really like to compare apples with apples. So the fact that you’re introducing products to us from other islands, I think it’s wonderful. And so I’m just comparing apples with apples. You mentioned like this container, this 20-foot container. Talk to me a little bit about Page 5 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 what that footprint looks like, and what kind of space we need, what kind of zoning is necessary, what kind of water needs are necessary. I just want to understand some infrastructure needs. And again, like Mr. Richards said, you know, the door is wide open for all kinds of solutions. I just want to ensure as we move some of these conversations forward, that some of our infrastructure is in place or if there’s a need for us as a body to start accelerating some of that. So that we can stand that up, and then you guys can unpack this technology to help us. MR. LURVEY: Our system is a closed-loop self-contained system, so it takes very little room. We use between three and five 20-foot containers, that are pretty much bolted up right next to one another. So you’re looking at like 20 by 20 foot square, right? If you do the food processing, you’re adding another 16 by 20 foot area. We produce our own fuel, we produce our own power. The unique thing about our system is we have to put in about 25 to 30 kilowatts of electricity that we do off as the generators inside the containers to run our heaters for the first run of the day. After that we no longer have to energize the heaters, right, because the exothermic reaction it’s a giant pressure cooker. So when the stuff is in there and heats up on its own, that heat that it’s generating, some of it goes right into the plate on the bottom, which keeps the thing hot and keeps it cooking. So we no longer have to energize it. So now we basically have excess energy or we shut the generators off, right. Because we no longer have, the system no longer has a need for it, so you can export it out as baseline energy. Some of the heat that we produce well, can go to the dryers and whatnot, right. You can make air conditioning, you can do a lot of different things. We recover little over 90 percent of the potential energy, and elements that are in the waste that we process. When we reduce it and when we convert it, we’re just portioning it out into different areas so we’re not wasting anything, right. But it’s an entirely self-contained system. And a lot of people would, when they would come to our site and go, “Oh, we want to see it operate, we want to see it do this.” Well, we put the canister with the feed stock in the processer, we closed the lid, and that’s it. Right? It’s like looking at your pressure cooker on a stove, “Oh okay, let me see what it’s doing.” Well you don’t see anything until it’s done. MR. DODIN: My name is Khaled Dodin, I’m the Project Director for the multi-business incubator running with the Pacific Business Center. And one of the things that we noticed, to answer the infrastructure footprint in an easy way, nd Michael is an Airborne Marine, okay, and I’m a veteran of 82 Airborne, U.S. nd Army 82 Airborne Division. And part of the mentality in design for Airborne operations everything has to go in the back of the C-130, and go around the world. And one of things that Michael’s design had in mind that everything you see there can be packed up put in a container put it in the back of the C-130, and Page 6 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 we can take it down range where we have a lot of problems that can go three ways. This is kind of a new thing. So the mobility and the capacity deploy with very small capacity. That’s what you’re going to see if you go over hopping around the Pacific. You’re going to see small holder farmers, you’re going to see infrastructure that is at various points of development and not a lot of space. And you have to be able to come in there quickly, and take the only thing that we need, which is the waste. From that waste, the process will convert it to added-value products that have commercial value in the international market, based on the carbon economy, the new economy that we’re in. And renewable fuels that all us to run generators based on energy, and also allows us to run atmosphere quarter harvesters. Water’s a big deal in the post disaster, in the disaster preparedness paradigms that we’re looking at. Having access quickly to water that is potable, is one of the pillars of disaster recovery. And the beauty of what this Marine had come up with is that it raps a bow around a number of solutions to the various problems that happened when things are down. You know, you have a disaster, there is no baseline electricity, there is no clean water, and there’s a lot of waste. How can we take that and make out of that the resurgence. And that is the basis for prize actually that we just got recognized for, for Economic Development. CHR. RICHARDS: I want to redirect the conversation a little bit, because we’re coming back to understanding the technology not all the follow-up attributes. And so Council Woman Lee Loy is this answering your questions? MS. LEE LOY: Oh, absolutely. And I did have one other question. And the rest of my colleagues know this because the district I serve actually ends up with a lot of the waste. MR. LURVEY: Kind of in a cul-de-sac. MS. LEE LOY: No, right in Hilo. MR. LURVEY: Oh, the dump? Yes. MS. LEE LOY: Yeah. And so the other concern we had when we were standing up a composting facility was the smells, that some of this has. And I was just wondering what that looks like around—and partly because I had my community go out and visit a composting facility. But it was at a very different temperature range. So again, comparing apples with apples I just wanted to better understand that we’re at the same environment as far as humidity, or temperatures. Because composting facilities showed us something in Oregon, and we know its cold up there. So we didn’t get the same smells that we would get in Panaʻewa. And again, just comparing apples with apples. Page 7 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MR. LURVEY: Well the thing is that we set our equipment up at the source point, right, so that you don’t build large landfill areas, right? So since your cutting off the feed stream, you reduce that at that level. Now if you’re talking about mining an existing facility, in other words taking the garbage out and processing it, yes, there’s a way to do that without exposing it to a whole lot of odors. Because most of it’s already capped off, right. If you remove the cap and start digging into it, yes, you’re going to release a lot of odor, a lot of gases, and a lot of things. If you go into it sideways like in a tunneling affect with augers you extract out the material and you process it without making a lot of smell. And there’s another little thing, actually it’s about this big, and it’s known as an ozone generator. And it pumps out ozone, right. Ozone kills off almost all odors. And so sewer plants, landfill areas, the processing facilities like H-Power, they’re all installing them to cut down the odors. So the technology exists, you know, it’s just a matter of utilizing it. But preferably you don’t send things into a pile into a centralized system, you do distributive systems. MS. LEE LOY: Yeah, thank you. And again, thank you, Mr. Richards for this. Yeah, I’m more than happy to keep an open mind. And part of it too is we have other Department of Health regulations that don’t provide for mining, out of our landfill. So, you know, as we kind of look towards solutions, we need to look at legislative policies to make sure that they line up. And so I really I do appreciate the presentation. I’m looking at it and it’s totality from legislative perspective. Because there’s going to be a need to share not only maybe local codes, but our State codes. MR. LURVEY: Of course. MS. LEE LOY: And so lining all of this up is going to take some time, and I just want to understand it. But thank you so much, for your presentation. And we can take a lot of this offline or even shove it over to Environmental Management or the Commission and task them with an actionable plan for us. And look at some of these innovative solutions, and come back to the Council and let us know what’s working, what kind of monies are needed. MR. LURVEY: We’re just trying to educate, now. That’s all we’re doing is saying here’s a way to look at things a little bit differently than the traditional systems. CHR. RICHARDS: And that’s exactly right. Rebecca. MS. VILLEGAS: Thank you, Mike, for being here again today. I was super excited to be able to attend the meeting and this presentation, and then also go to Oahu and see the technology. You know, one of our constituents presented quite Page 8 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 a lengthy list of questions. And just in the interest of I know, I believe you got this list of questions and in your prior conversations you’d answered a lot of them. So I just wanted to kind of throw a few out here real quick if you could just answer them for me. There is easily an assumption that this would be a put or pay out system where the county would end up being liable for a certain amount, providing you with a certain—and mind you this is all theatrical because we’re not at that point. But the way that your business operates, we would be required as a county to provide a certain amount of waste. And if we didn’t provide it then we would have to pay a penalty or fine, is that the way your business model—? MR. LURVEY: No. But I’m going to let Khaled— MS. VILLEGAS: Thank you for confirming. You don’t have to go in, I’m trying to get the answers because these are worth some of the— MR. LURVEY: What we’re looking at is helping you guys get established to earn money on your own. So that you generating comes that pays for this, that you can do your own employees and generate other cottage industries. So this is for economic development, it’s not for us to come in and say pay us money to you know. MR. DODIN: I think Council Woman, this question and I think this is an important question. And it comes a lot, because there is a misconception in a lot of places. This is a new thing, this is an incineration. And the case with incineration you have a large capital infrastructure, okay, with a large capital investment coming in, and if you don’t provide that much, with that operating cost of course the expelling fees and all that stuff. And this is exactly what you try to avoid. You know, this approach specifically wants to target incineration to eliminate it, you know, eventually hopefully we move away from that old outdated mode, where that is applicable. In this case, that is not this case at all. As a matter of fact this system is based on this small holder in an island, the small farmer the small cooperative that—or the people who have a transfer station. A small size and they want to put something where there’s minimal investment and the waste pattern is generating from the commodity products, the operation and the growth. And so it’s going to going to take that process of incineration and eventually shift it on its head. It’s upside down. CHR. RICHARDS: I’m going to have to break in here. Our recorder’s going to run out. We’re going to have to take a short recess while we do this. So again, I’ll remind you that we are not here to approve or disapprove a technology, we’re here strictly information. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a recess right now so they can reset the clocks here. So we’ll be in recess for three minutes. Page 9 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 Recess: At 4:10 p.m. the Chair called for a recess. Reconvene: The meeting reconvened at 4:13 p.m. CHR. RICHARDS: We have quorum in the room, so we are back in session. Council Woman Villegas, did you have any follow-up questions? Again, this is not about approving a process, it’s about understanding a process. MS. VILLEGAS: Thank you again. Okay, so just in quick brief, because we are very late in the day. I’m super excited to hear, number one, that technology like this exists. If humanity can build and create and chemically produce all of the products that we have produced, it makes me excited that we might be able to unproduced them or un-make them. I think about it like a cookie. It you gave me an oatmeal cookie and I gave it to you and you put it in your thing and it made the oatmeal cookie kind of back into what it was made of, it’s way over simplification of this process I know; however, it gives my heart some warmth that there are some solutions out there. After being in New York and with the United Nations and people from indigenous countries all over the world; after being on Kamilo Beach and seeing the amount of marine plastic; and what and how do we deal with it; turning our waste into potential commodity and creating kind of micro- economies with kind of small scale utilization of a technology like this, provides an opportunity. We are on an island and we shouldn’t be shipping our waste thousands of miles for someone else to deal with it anyway. By no means though do I ever want it to be perceived that it also kind of puts a rubber stamp on it’s okay for us to keep consuming millions and millions and millions of tons of plastics and other crap that we do. We have to change that paradigm as humanity. But thank you for bringing this technology forward, for all that you’ve shared, for the passion that you have, and for your willingness and desire to work with the Big Island, with the head of Environmental Management, and to open these conversations to explore the opportunities to meet some of the needs that we have in a dire capacity on this island. So thank you again, and I believe these questions were actually even sent to you, so I would encourage you. I believe the constituent was Cory Harden. And we have some incredible minds in our community who are leery of a lot of these kind of magic wand technologies, and viably so. So the more that we communicate, the more that questions can be answered, and you know, accurately addressing any concerns, I think is just really great. MR. DODIN: I really appreciate the vigor that the members of the community are engaging this, and the engagement and the questions and the testimonies that we heard. Because a very important part of this process is how we’re going about it, and the—I have the (inaudible) working with Dr. Avegalio and his colleagues in the University of Hawaiʻi, specifically to work with veterans who are just like Page 10 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 Michael is, you know, have innovations and are at that early state of capitalization. Along with incubating the efforts with community organizations. MS. VILLEGAS: Thank you. MR. DODIN: The engagement has to happen with the community. You have to start from family. MR. VILLEGAS: We’re currently witnessing what happens when that doesn’t happen and a technology comes in that may have positive scientific outcomes; however is not in alignment with the local community. MR. DODIN: Right, the process is organically grown, and it has to come from the community, and that is what we’re trying to do at the Pacific Business Center incubation effort. We bring a teaming agreement of community members, innovators, business providers, local participants from the community, and they have a local implementation. This is an island innovation, it was made on an island, it was made for islands, although it will map very well in larger places, but this is the focus of it. And you know, its implementation has to happen this way. To your point about, you know, making new thing from—one of your testifiers I believe from Waimea spoke as a chemist. He spoke about how chemistry can convert waste into other things. This is really the engagement process with the community, who should be leery. They should be very careful about these large footprint projects where hundreds of millions of dollars on massive incineration projects in— CHR. RICHARDS: Again let me redirect. We’re talking about the process, not embracing this, okay. So I appreciate that. MS. VILLEGAS: With that, I yield. Thank you. CHR. RICHARDS: Any other comments? Matt. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: You said you had a modular system, something like four to 16 of your chambers, or your containers, is that correct? MR. LURVEY: Well, there’s one container that holds the processor, or each processor. There’s one container that holds a miniature refinery. When we cook, then the pressure cooker, everything comes out as a really hot gas. When it comes in, we filter it, we catalyze it, we change it, we convert it into different things. Then there’s one container that’s that office storage room. The whole thing runs on a small computer. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: So small system, your baseline, what is cost? Page 11 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MR. LURVEY: Well— MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Just estimate, just give me a number. MR. LURVEY: A complete system if you have to prep your feed stocks, like if you have to do shredding and briquetting and all of that. When you include everything all in together, you may be upwards of $5 million. But if you don’t have to do that, well then you don’t need all that other equipment. If you’re not going to be processing food, well, why be buying all that other stuff. You can say yeah, an overall system that includes everything, yeah, $5 million. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Three tons an hour? MR. LURVEY: Depends on the feed stock. But you can do—some things are heavier than others. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Run it eight hours a day, and we would max out at three tons, that’s per chamber, per hour. MR. LURVEY: Yes. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: And you can do up to 16 chambers, or did I misunderstand that? MR. LURVEY: Oh, you’re thinking of that blueprint. Yes, you can hook up as many processors as you want. You’re going to have to increase your refinery aspect, right, because you’re increasing your volume. But yes, it’s expandable, it’s scalable, it’s modular, and it’s pretty much a plug in place. So that if—you know, I try to tell everyone that we work with start out small. Start out with the smallest unit, right? Learn it and grow into it. Then you can just add on other processors, to a certain point. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Okay. That’s my questions. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. CHR. RICHARDS: Okay, before I go back to you, Rebecca, we are running really, really late, and we’ve had people waiting for an hour for Planning. So what we’re going to do, if you have a quick comment we’re good. Then we’ll finish up here and then we’re going to recess Ag, Water, Energy and Environmental Management, go to Planning to take care of our nominations, so we can be respectful of people’s time. So with that, I’m going to ask you to keep it short, because we’re not deciding on adopting this. Page 12 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MS. VILLEGAS: Just one thing that I wanted to mention before we—one of the things that caught my attention with learning about this technology was in times of crisis, the able-bodied and the strong are usually out helping in other capacities, and this technology was developed so that the elderly and the children could operate it, is that correct? MR. LURVEY: Yes, that’s correct. MS. VILLEGAS: Thank you for confirming that. CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you for keeping that short. With that, we’re going to wind this up here. I appreciate the information. The big takeaways are it’s a potential of managing our waste stream, it’s scalable, fitting in a C-130, a 20-foot container, I’m aware of that. I’ve actually worked in shipping bison in a C-130 in a 20-foot container. But then also, it looks at our needs for scalable and the potential technology is a proven technology, it’s not prototype at this point. MR. LURVEY: That’s correct. CHR. RICHARDS: Which is a big thing that this group needs to understand going forward. I think I can categorically say nobody up here is qualified to make the determination of this is the best technology, but we are qualified to make the determination that this is a viable technology. So with that, what I, like I said, want to do is we’re going to adjourn this to be respectful of Planning and then come back. Excuse me. Recess, not adjourn. Slow down, pump the brakes. MS. POINDEXTER: Excuse me, Chair. Can we vote to close the file so that this can be done? CHR. RICHARDS: Yep, yep. We’ll close the file so then they’re pau. Then we will go into recess and then we’ll come back. So with that, we have the motion on the floor, it’s been seconded. Close file, take the vote, all signify by saying “aye.” Vote on Comm. 559: The motion to close file on Comm. 559 was carried by the (Approved) following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members David, Eoff, Kaneali‘i-Kleinfelder, Kierkiewicz, Lee Loy, Poindexter, Villegas, and Chair Richards – 8. Noes: None. Absent: Committee Member Chung – 1. Excused: None. Page 13 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you very much, for the presentation. I’m going to recess. We are in recess. Recess: At 4:24 p.m. the Chair called for a recess. Reconvene: The meeting reconvened at 6:57 p.m. CHR. RICHARDS: We’re coming out of recess on the Committee on Agriculture, Water, Energy and Environmental Management. I’m looking forward to budget hearings because those days go shorter than what these days seem to be going. That being said, we have on deck Communication 531. Comm. 531: REQUESTS AN UPDATE BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT REGARDING CHANGES TO THE 2-BIN COUNTY RECYCLING PROGRAM From Council Member Matt Kanealiʻi-Kleinfelder, dated October 3, 2019. Postponed: October 15, 2019 (Note: There is a motion by Ms. Poindexter, seconded by Ms. Eoff, to close file on Comm. 531.) ; and From Environmental Management Director William A. Kucharski, dated Comm. 531.2: October 23, 2019, transmitting a revised PowerPoint presentation. Motion to Close File: Ms. Poindexter moved to close file on Comm. 531 and 531.2. Seconded by Ms. Eoff. CHR. RICHARDS: Okay, we have a communication from Department of Environmental Management (DEM). On deck is Director. So Bill, won’t you take it away. (Note: At this time, Environmental Management Director William A. Kucharski came forward to address the members of the Committee.) MR. KUCHARSKI: Okay. Bill Kucharski, Director, DEM. Seldom am I in front of you when I can say there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is we have changes to our recycle program. The good news is we’re not from Planning. I will turn this over to Greg Goodale, the Chief of Solid Waste. (Note: At this time, Solid Waste Division Chief Greg Goodale came forward to address the members of the Committee.) Page 14 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MR. GOODALE: Good evening. Greg Goodale, Solid Waste Division Chief. So as the Director said, there’s been some big changes that have occurred in our recycling program. This PowerPoint just kind of walks through not only the history of the program, but just some of the changes that have occurred recently. (Note: At this time Mr. Goodale provided a PowerPoint presentation to the members of the Committee. For viewing of the presentation, see the DVD copy of the proceedings on file in the Clerk’s Office. A copy of the PowerPoint is made a part of the record. See Comm. 531.2.) MR. GOODALE: Okay, so I went through that as quickly as I—but any questions? CHR. RICHARDS: Thanks, Greg. Appreciate that. And I actually appreciate you guys staying in until the ninth inning, the bottom of the ninth. So with that, I’m going to open this up for questions from any of the Council Members concerning—oh, sorry. MR. KUCHARSKI: Just wanted to make one comment. Bill Kucharski, DEM. There were comments earlier about the fact that the glass was not being collected or the funding had been reduced. That is not really correct. We get our funding for the glass recycling from the State, and that is still in full gear. So we’re using that. The other point that may be subtle is that the County does not do any recycling. The County contracts for recycling. So any time you want to make a change, you have to go through all of the procurement, which means nothing goes quickly. So just wanted to go in and just add those couple of points. Thank you. CHR. RICHARDS: Okay, appreciate that, Director. So Matt, back at you. You brought this communication forward. Do you want to start with the questions? MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Chair. Bill and your team, I really appreciate you waiting for this long. I mean, this is like day two. This has come out, we deferred it to this meeting, and you’re back. I just appreciate you waiting past everyone else’s Committee, and even going out of your way to wait again till the end. So thank you for being here. Questions. Sorry, it’s late. Well, what are we doing now? Who are we working with? How are we making progress on recycling? I know you touched on it a little bit. Do we have any contracts? Are we working on new contracts with anybody locally? MR. GOODALE: So the contract we have right now that takes care of what we call the existing two-bin recycling is still with Business Services Hawaiʻi. It’s the contract that we initially signed with them in 2016. So as I said, this is the third option year that we have for them, but basically the bottom line is the contract changed because of the amount of commodities they could collect. So we’re able Page 15 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 to keep the same contract, but as I said, we are going to put out a request for information (RFI) to find out if there are other folks that may be able to participate. I will say this: in our past few solicitations for this program, we’ve only received one proposal and it came from Business Services Hawaiʻi. So in the past we also, in an effort to try and make it potentially easier for another contractor, we split it into two separate zones. So basically East Hawaiʻi-West Hawaiʻi. So just in case somebody couldn’t take on the whole island, we thought we’ll at least try and do it with it East Hawaiʻi-West Hawaiʻi, and we still only got one. So again, like I said, we’re not opposed to making efforts to try and change some of these things around to try and attract additional vendors to the playing field. We know that competition means typically much better pricing and, you know, better efficiency in some cases. All those kinds of things. So again, as we put out this RFI and potentially the subsequent request for proposal (RFP), our expectation is that we would hopefully see some additional participation. But you know, it’s kind of like you also can’t put out all the same stuff and hope for the same result. You know, we know that we’re going to have to change it up a little bit in order to be able to see attraction of some of the, maybe, additional vendors come to the table. It can’t go out the same exact way and then just expect to get the same stuff. MR. KUCHARSKI: Part of the comment—this is Bill Kucharski—there have been comments of, “Well, Business Services are still taking one and two plastics.” Well, when they take those, they’re clean. They look at them and say, “Hey, I’m not taking this. You need to clean this.” Part of the problem they have is the contract that they had said, “You do not get paid for any material that you cannot show has gone to a permanent recycler.” So they had to show how much of the material they shipped off. And if they can’t ship off, then they get paid nothing. What they don’t use, they have to give us $108 per ton to dispose of in our landfill. So it’s not like they just decided, “I’m not making enough money.” We’ve caused some of our own problems by being over enthusiastic in what we—we want everything to be recycled and it just can’t be sometimes. MR. GOODALE: And I’ll piggy-back on it. You know, as the Director said, when you get a contractor that only gets paid by what they can prove got recycled and they get a bin that’s 25 percent rubbish, they have to deal with that rubbish. That’s on them. They’re only going to get paid for the things they know they can recycle. So if they’ve got to pay for 25 percent rubbish, that’s a cost they have to bear because the contract only says, “You get paid for what you recycle.” MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Thank you for saying that, because I was wondering about that, if they’re still taking it, why aren’t we. So there’s actually Page 16 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 a problem in the receipt of what’s coming in then, that is causing a problem down the line with Business Services. MR. KUCHARSKI: I believe that’s a fair statement. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: So if we were go back, if we had somebody watching what was coming into the recycling bin, would you be willing to revisit recycling. MR. GOODALE: So again, it kind of gets into the economics of this whole thing. Because you know, when we’re already paying upwards of $250 per ton, and then you add a full-time position to stand there and monitor, now you just add to that price per ton. If you’re going to do that times 16 stations—you know, this was something we actually looked at to try and actually put on the contractor to have them do more of the oversight, because they’re the ones that have got to pay for the contamination, so they would have a vested interest. One of the issues we got into was kind of Civil Service, you know, because we already have County folks at the site, and to have somebody else there that’s kind of duplicating service, it becomes a difficult situation. So, you know, we have looked at different things. As a matter of fact, our recycling staff have been trying to talk with folks in the community that might even be willing to do this on kind of more of a volunteer basis. People that are interested in having the program be viable. You know, Hilo at one time—I don’t know how many folks have used that, but people at one time, they did have Leo’s Club from the local high schools. They were up there on the weekends sometimes doing some of that. Helping folks get their bins up to the recycling, but you know, talking to people what goes where and that kind of stuff. That helped us out quite a bit. But you know, getting more and more of that kind of stuff. But when you rely on this thing happening on just a volunteer basis, it’s difficult. But you know, the cost, if you’re going to pay somebody, like I said is going to take the cost per ton from $250 per ton, could be well over $300 per ton by the time you’re done with that. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: So how many tons fit in one truck when we take a truck over to Kona? MR. GOODALE: Well that’s kind of an it depends answer, but like when you’re looking at say a recycling, a cardboard bin, you’re not looking at a load that’s very well compacted. So that load may only weigh like three tons. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: I’m thinking just general trash. When you take a trash bin and you drive it Kona. Page 17 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MR. GOODALE: When we haul our rubbish from the sort station in Hilo over to West Hawaiʻi, we’re getting in excess of 20 tons in a 120-yard trailer. So we’re getting between 20 and 25 tons in those trailers. And that’s, you know, we’re packing that down. We’re trying to achieve as high a rate of compaction that we can in those trailers. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: I was looking at your 3,100 tons more rubbish that we’re expecting to take in because we’re not recycling, and I’m just going to equal that out to how many truckloads that would be. MR. GOODALE: Like I said, that’s basically like one percent, though, of our total waste stream. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: But it’s still an increase in our trucking. MR. GOODALE: Still—yeah, it still is. I mean, it’s spread out over many months, but at the same time, yeah, it’s an increase. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Is that part of the cost breakdown you looked at when you looked at what we would be saving by having more personnel? MR. GOODALE: I don’t think that was really penciled out when we took into consideration the extra—I mean the reality is the 3,100 tons are actually going to go the landfill at a much lower cost than what we’re paying on the recycling side. So actually, I hate to say it but it’s a cost savings. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Sad. I’m worried, because we were—and the Environmental Management Commission’s job is to look at how to decrease waste stream, and that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. By doing this, we’ve actually increased our waste stream which is a step away from where our direction should be. Yeah, we can dig landfills. Yeah, we can build them up. We’re covering Hilo and we’re sending everything to Kona, so we have to have a solution. Part of what talked about earlier today would be pyrolysis, TCOM, and just finding the ways to get it out of the landfills. This is a step away. Is there a way to work with Business Services? Can we just say—or can we work with them to get what’s recyclable to them instead, instead of just throwing it away? “General public, just throw away your plastics because we don’t take them at the landfills anymore.” Is Business Services willing to do that? MR. GOODALE: Well I mean we haven’t had that kind of specific discussion with them. I mean, the contract relation we have with them is kind of more around trying to serve the entire network of stations that we have. But I mean, I Page 18 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 honestly don’t know what their contractual relationship with their buyers, of those types of plastics. I know they are one of our main vendors as it were for the HI-5. But as the Director said, the materials that are coming in through that program are all clean. You know they’re being highly scrutinized by the folks that are paying you for your HI-5’s. So it’s all clean plastic. It’s a completely different type of waste stream, because the waste that they were getting, or the recycling they were getting from us in the two-bin, they had to literally hand sort those materials out across a conveyor belt, which is highly labor intensive for them. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: So what I’m getting at is if people are taking it to Business Services but in a better state that what we’ve got in the recycling bins at the County, can we proceed with being on the greener edge and have Business Services—or just work with them to keep that stream of recyclable materials going to Business Services instead of just going to the trash? MR. GOODALE: Well that may end up being part of the way the new procurement gets written. I mean, it’s going to again be a matter of the willingness of the vendor to either accept—you know, and that’s where the conversations come in. I mean, that was one of the things we did actively pursue with them, trying to get them to keep this contract at all. Actually, they wanted to pull out of it altogether. They were prepared to just basically walk away. We were able to sit down with them over the course of several meetings and arrive at a contract that they felt like they could live with, which was basically the glass, the cardboard and the brown paper bags. So you know, this does represent collaboration from the County to the contractors, trying to keep these things from going into the landfill. Because you know, we feel strongly about it. We don’t want to see these materials that don’t need to go into the landfill, going into the—yeah, I mean so that’s our incentive and so like I said, this is what we were able to—out of the whole thing, we were able to salvage this, but we’re not complacent. We’re going to continue to try and work on getting additional things. I mean, we know that when we can get our overall compost facility to fruition, we’ll be able to send a lot of the paper. You know like newsprint and office paper is going to be able to get into the compost facility and get turned into compost. The good thing for us is it stays here on the island and it doesn’t have to get shipped off to one of the Asian countries or anywhere else. It’s going to stay right here in Hawaiʻi. So we want to be able to look toward more of those kinds of things. Things that can stay here on the island, can get processed, and do some usable thing and not have to be dependent upon getting shipped elsewhere. I mean we realize that we are kind of in a position out here where we sit that everything that we get comes from someplace else. So it’s all the packaging and everything else. So now it’s up to us to have to deal with that, you know. Page 19 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: I agree. That’s a great statement. I totally agree with that, and that’s why we’re kind of stuck. We’re on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2,500 miles away from everybody. Whenever it comes here, it stays here. They don’t care what comes here, but we deal with it on the back end. MR. GOODALE: That’s right. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: So I really appreciate that comment. There’s a group called Puna Precious Plastics that’s been trying to take in plastic and re-make it into other products. I find it very interesting. I told my son that was going to be our summer project, to make that chipper. I have—most of the stuff is pretty easy to put together. I like what they’re doing in my artistic brain and also in my common sense, reuse-recycle brain. So are we able to support them at all? MR. KUCHARSKI: We have actually reached out, Sanne has, and referred them, like for instance to R&D (Research and Development Department) that has small business loans, to help them start a business. I do want to put this a little bit into perspective however. The last time we did a source breakdown was 2009, and we took our solid waste stream and we broke it down into components. Right now we’re generating about 130,000 pounds of plastic every day. That’s going to be a big chipper. When you take a look at the two waste streams and you just take paper and plastic, paper is about 340,000 pounds a day that we take in and we generate. So when we’re taking a look at what can we do, it’s more than—let me take a—I’ll take a couple thousand pounds a day. That’ll be a big effort. That’s going to be a little bit. We’re still going to be left with a lot more. That’s where we come in and say how do we deal with that. I encourage all debris users that we can get, their repurposing. They’re coming in and dealing with this issue. The issue is just really big, even for this small island, when you compare to our size. MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: I like knowing that we’re going to work with them. It may be small, but it’s something. The more people that can find a use for other products, the better. I’m glad that we’re able to do that. CHR. RICHARDS: Matt, can I interrupt for a second? MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Yeah. CHR. RICHARDS: No one else has asked any questions yet. So can we come back to you? I’ll come back to you, I promise. I just want to open it up to other Council Members. Are there any other Council Members that have any questions? I’m seeing Council Woman Lee Loy. Page 20 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MS. LEE LOY: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the minute, Matt. I wanted to look at, you mentioned some of the strategies, challenges and opportunities with the Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan, and that’s something that’s going to be kind of going through its rigors as far as the commission’s work, and then up to us for review by the Council. Without seeing it, then maybe as a suggestion, has that plan been written with actionable items on a pathway or roadmap or framework, kind of identifying some of the low-hanging fruit, short and long range plans, and then even funding? MR. GOODALE: So the plan, you know, obviously when you write a plan, you want to write it for some outcomes. So yes, the plan has outcomes that we—so the group that put together this report, I mean it’s a group of folks that come from all sorts of different types of businesses, industries, science, you name it, from all over the island that helped us to formulate the plan. So one of the first things they did was they looked at what the old plan said. They evaluated all the different aspects of that, then to be able to set ourselves in a direction to move forward. The good thing is that a lot of these different economic situations were coming out during the time of us writing this report. So everybody is very well aware of what we were looking at in terms of the recycling markets. So when you see this report come to you, yes, there will be, you know, within the executive summary and that type of thing, there’s going to be some specific recommendations of what the County should be heading towards. Some of them may not be in you traditional sense. I mean, looking at these things on lifecycle analysis is not a typical thing in a lot of these types of recycling studies. But again, given where we sit in the world, those are some of the things that we really need to take a hard look at is, you know, how we’re affected by all these things. Not only from what’s coming into the island, but again, what’s going out of the island. So the answer to your question is yes, there will be specific outcomes expected. MS. LEE LOY: Okay, Mr. Kucharski. MR. KUCHARSKI: I just wanted to say that one of the things, particularly with what’s going on right now with the traditional view of recycling and having that sort of saying let’s take a look at this, one of the things that we don’t want to do is we don’t want to be doing the wrong thing really, really well. I think we need to know what it is and what the effect is that we’re having. That’s one of the reasons the Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan called for a lifecycle cost. That’s something that’s done in a lot of different jurisdictions. But that lifecycle cost not only being dollars, but also a carbon footprint. What if—if our goal is to do better for our environment, we ought to know whether what we think is the right thing turns out not to be. So some of the things from Page 21 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 the Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan are like that. Come in and make a concrete statement as to how going to evaluate things. MS. LEE LOY: I thank you for that. And I’m actually, you know, this side has talked about deliverables and outputs and measurable for the longest time, and so I’m actually getting kind of excited to hear that even some of the departments are talking about, you know, utilizing some of their plans, whether it’s long-range master plan, General Plan, or for you folks, the Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan. That they’re being driven by outcomes. I also had a question regarding the new contract. Maybe highlight again, because clearly there were some lessons learned. We really didn’t see the trend of the market disappearing as far as taking some of that recyclables. I was just wondering what that new RFI would look like, to hopefully provide enough wiggle if the market changes again. MR. KUCHARSKI: Procurement is an issue as to how specific you are with your scope and what you’re looking at. We can make some changes, but I haven’t seen many fluid County contracts. Not to say that can’t be done, but they tend to be pretty specific because they’re essentially a fixed-price contract or whatever. The contractor has to know what they’re doing. When we come up for our option years, we can come in and deal with some changes. But doing it less frequently than annually might be a little difficult from the procurement side. But that’s not to say that we’re not going to try, right Greg? MR. GOODALE: We always try hard. MS. LEE LOY: And I think we touched upon that with Business Services. There was really kind of a meeting of the minds, and a real kind of hard push to stay at the table and collaborate. And that walks me into the current collaborations, which I think are all very great. You know, utilizing our schools, feasibility studies. But as a suggestion, and I’ve mentioned this before, is there a way for us to leverage other municipals, other county’s recycling so we can talk about maybe tonnage from the entire State level where we could invite more people to kind of help us manage the waste a little better. Because there’s opportunities not only here, but on Maui County and Kauai. Honolulu City and County is a little different because they have H-Power. So they’re handling their waste stream a little different. But has any consideration been given to leveraging other municipal’s waste? MR. KUCHARSKI: We can talk to other counties. I’m not certain exactly how we would do that, but that’s something that we can sit down. Because there are different ordinances. Like Honolulu says they won’t accept someone else’s waste. And we have situations in solid waste. It tends to be very sensitive. When you’re coming in on the recyclables, I think that’s what companies like Business Page 22 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 Services do, they consolidate with the other islands. But whether we derive a benefit from that, I’m sure we do, but if we did it directly, I would—I won’t say it. I think we’re probably doing as well having a business for profit negotiating rather than the County. MS. LEE LOY: Great. Help me with this, because I’ve heard this in testimony, where someone mentioned, you know, shipping our waste to H-Power. But if I recall correctly, there is some statutory. But now you just mentioned it right now, which was some ordinance that prohibits other municipals to ship. I actually see some huge environmental concerns about putting our trash on a barge and shipping it across to another municipal, but can you help me identify what ordinance that is, or what HRS (Hawaiʻi Revised Statutes) that is? MR. KUCHARSKI: I think it’s a City and County ordinance. I’ve asked that. I’ve never looked at it. I’ve never seen it, but anecdotally, it exists. If we were to send anything, we would not send what we call the putrescibles, the organics. It would be things like plastics and glass, or construction debris that is combustible but is not going to—you’re not going to know when it leaves our island, you can smell it on Oahu. So we would use the non-putrescibles. That would be the only thing that would go. But we’ve not really considered that or approached the City and County with it. So that’s something that’s a hypothetical that is out there, but not something that we’re pursuing in any direct form or indirect form. MS. LEE LOY: Thank you, Gentlemen. MR. GOODALE: I mean any of the materials that are going for recycling now goes from here to Honolulu, and then on to Asia. So as the Director said, you know, it’s not the putrescible, but it’s container loads of recyclable material. So essentially finding maybe the home for the material is only a few hundred miles away and not a couple thousand miles away. But it all represents things that we have to look at. MS. LEE LOY: Well thank you, Gentlemen. Yeah, just a lot of conversation on this. Chair, I yield. CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you. Council Woman Kierkiewicz. MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Matt, for putting this conversation forward. Thank you guys for sticking around, it’s ten to eight. You know, when Matt brought up Puna Precious Plastics, I’m glad he did. I know a couple of folks that are behind those grass roots effort, so it’s nice to see the community stand up in that way. It got me thinking about the high plan business model. Have you heard of that? High Plan? So it’s an annual business competition, $25,000 grant award where they essentially fund a new idea or help a local company expand their business. And I wonder if that might be a unique Page 23 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 opportunity for us to put out to the public. Submittals, you know, get proposals, small proposals, to figure out what we can do right now with our waste stream. I mean, I know your comment earlier about Puna Precious Plastics and that is just a small piece of the overall waste stream pie, but I figure we’ve got to start somewhere. The more that we can do here on the ground and be less reliant on off-shore entities taking care of our trash, I think we’d be in a better situation. MR. KUCHARSKI: Thank you. That’s a good idea. We don’t do funding for those kinds of things. R&D usually does that. We’ll talk with them and come in and see if that’s something that we can push and put out there. Because if you don’t take 100 percent—we’re not in an all or nothing. I’d rather have a something and something left than an all or nothing. But I think that’s something that we could pursue and encourage small businesses to start, because they’re going to need that money just to go through the DOH (State Department of Health) process. MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Yeah, okay. Just wanted to put it out there. Then I’m looking at the current copy of the Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan, specifically Section 3 where it talks about source reduction. And what’s through the whole document is there are a lot of overarching sort of recommendations, and then smaller actions that can be taken. I’m wondering if the next iteration will prioritize actions. MR. GOODALE: Yes, it does. MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Okay. And does it do sort of like an impact analysis in terms of economics—well also like what is the impact of environment or culture or our economy if we do or don’t act? To kind of justify where it falls in like the priority tree. MR. GOODALE: So basically, one of the primary recommendations is that any of these things need to go through that analysis to make a determination as to how it falls on that scale. You know, is it that after you’ve evaluated all these different aspects of it, is it not only diverting the most? Is it the most environmentally sound? You know, are all these questions being answered about whatever that selected direction. So those are things that, you know, from our end that kind of represents some of a course change, in that we want to try and make that one of the primary decision making factors is, how is this going to effect the overall health of the—I mean, you know, because obviously diversion affects a certain aspect, but carbon footprint represents—you know, I mean we look at things like the issue with the sunblock. I mean, it affected people, you know, far more with the reefs than they thought, but you know, it was from a thing that was supposed to protect you, but people weren’t taking into consideration the full gamut. And that’s the kind of Page 24 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 thing that we’ve got to put back onto our items, is that full analysis of how all these things are going to affect across the board. But yes, those things are prioritized in what we believe are the most crucial. MS. KIERKIEWICZ: That’s great to hear, because we’re looking at these recommendations. You have things like requiring waste reduction plans from the private sector. Also expecting that of the County. A pay as you throw program. You know, encouraging the visitor industry to be more green. There’s so much that we can do and need to be doing. So I appreciate hearing that there are going to be priorities, but I’m also hoping that it’s set up against a timeline. Right? This is like a 10-year document so over a period of time, we need to be chipping away at this. So it’s going to require money, but I think as you’ve seen, there are a lot of people in the community that care and want to pay to do the right thing, because they’ve seen what sheet decisions have gotten us. MR. GOODALE: One thing I just want to weigh in on is yes, we right these—we do this report once every 10 years, but we also have to face the reality that council can turn over every two years, and the Mayor turns over every four years. With that oftentimes it can set a whole new direction on some of these things. So with these plans, we do try and establish a direction and we try and keep a course heading in that direction that the plan says, but sometimes, that may be a little more difficult. So you may try and establish timelines and those types of things for these things, but when you have those types of obstacles that may get in the way, I mean you know, in the current situation there hasn’t been those types of obstacles in terms of trying to implement these types of programs. But you know, those things can occur. I’ve been in government a long time and I’ve seen those things happen where you’re going in a direction and all of a sudden, whoop, you’re going in a different direction. And it may be without much warning or time or even money to do it. But all of a sudden, that’s the direction you’re going to go. So I just want to make sure, you know, that people realize that yes, we have a plan, we’re going to try and abide by that plan, but there are a lot of other factors that fold into that. MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Maybe that’s an opportunity for our body to lean into some legislative tools that help us to codify that so that there is continuity beyond administrations, because I totally hear what you’re saying. But we just don’t have time. We’re running out of time. Thanks, you guys. This is really good and I just wanted to add to your outreach list a couple other ideas for education. Maybe doing a spot on Na Leo TV. People love watching that. And then also hitting up all the various rotary clubs, exchange clubs, doing some kind of speaker circuit to get the private sector on board with these efforts. And then you know, again, in terms of the Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan, I’d love to see the commission take a bigger role Page 25 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 in helping us to do a lot of the legwork and implement these strategies and recommendations. That’s all. I yield. CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you, Council Woman. Other comments from anybody, or questions? Seeing none, Matt, do you want to go back on deck? MR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: I think in general we’re talking about our kid’s, kid’s, kid’s kids. So I don’t care if it comes down to admins or council member decisions or whatever, just we need to move and get it back out of the waste stream, or find ways to get it not coming in. Do something. I’m listening to Aaron over here, look at his face right now. No, he had a good point. I think you said, “I said this a long time ago.” Didn’t you say that? Yeah, and he’s right. This caught us by surprise. Well, I was surprised, that’s why I asked you to come and kind of talk to us a little bit. But we all know, it’s kind of—globally, it’s kind of messed up, our situation right now. But we are on an island, and this is—I mean, we have limited space here. So whatever I can do to help you, Bill, you let me know. Or this Council can help you, then let us know. Just, I’d like to see us move faster than slower, and I’m not real big into planning, planning, planning. I’m like, there’s got to be some instant solutions we can find. So let me know if I can help. I’m the Vice Chair for Ag, Water and Energy too, so this caught be caught me by surprise. My bad, I should know. But I’d like to help you find some solutions for it. MR. KUCHARSKI: Thank you, and in spite of the kinds of issues that we bring up, we’ve always found support and a great deal of interest in this topic. I think it’s very important for us; it’s very important for the entire community. So thank you for being helpful. CHR. RICHARDS: Okay, is there anything else before we get done? I’ll just make a few comments. Bill again, Greg, thanks so much for coming in. This is teeing up for a little bit further conversation, rather pointedly. You know, we heard lots of testimony. Like Aaron said, we talked about this a long time ago. The short answer is yeah, we have. Some of the things that have been stated previously—and I really appreciate the fact of lifecycle comments, because those are so important. And our carbon footprint overall, we pat ourselves on the back that we’re trying to recycle. And just pick a commodity, a plastic, when in fact by sending it out of our County, we may actually be incurring a worse carbon footprint than if we just left it here. But that means we have more rubbish over here. So then what? So that’s why coming up with a plan, we’ve got to look at it big and what Matt said, it’s not about us, it’s not about this generation, it’s really not even about the next generation. We just say 100 years of room, we have plenty of room for the Page 26 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 next couple of generations. But that’s not the point. The point is we’re running out of room and we have to make that difference. Up in a WIR (Western Interstate Regional) in Spokane, they chose incineration as opposed to burying in a landfill even though it cost them more to run their waste to energy program over just solid waste burying. I found that kind of interesting because they chose that to deal with their problem, setting aside all the other environmental things about incinerators. So anyway, again, appreciate the information. Thank you so much. We have a motion on the floor, ready to vote on the floor. Ready to vote on closing file. All signify by saying “aye.” Vote on Comm. 531: The motion to close file on Comms. 531 and 531.2 (Filed) was carried by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff, Kanealiʻi-Kleinfelder, Kierkiewicz, Lee Loy, Poindexter, Villegas, and Chair Richards – 9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. CHR. RICHARDS: File is closed. Thank you Bill and Greg. Moving on, we have Order of Resolutions. Return to Order The Chair directed the Committee to return to the order of business. of Business: ORDER OF The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, Order RESOLUTIONS: of Resolutions. Relinquish Chair: At this time, Chair Richards relinquished the chair to Vice Chair Kanealiʻi- Kleinfelder. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Clerk, let the record reflect that I’ve taken over as Chair for this meeting. Page 27 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 Res. 301-19: URGES THE DIRECTORS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND THE DEPARTMENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT TO COLLABORATE AND DEVELOP A PLAN FOR A WASTE STREAM REDUCTION TECHNOLOGY FOR RENEWABLE AND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY GENERATION FOR THE COUNTY OF HAWAIʻI Seeks to address an increasing supply of solid waste through a waste stream reduction technology mechanism that would conserve County funds, reduce the use of fossil fuels, and improve environmental conditions on Hawaiʻi Island. Reference: Comm. 462 Intr. by: Mr. Richards Postponed: September 17 and October 15, 2019 (Note: There is a motion by Mr. Richards, seconded by Ms. Eoff, to recommend adoption of Res. 301-19.) ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: The motion is on the floor already. MR. BROWN: You guys can jump right into discussion. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Okay. Tim, would you like to lead us in discussion? MR. RICHARDS: Thank you, Chair. Yes, I have a communication, 462.11, it’s in your pinkies. You received it about 12 hours ago when we started the meetings. This is amending Resolution 301-19. It came to you in this manner. There was a little procedural stutter-step that I made as far as bringing this forward. What this does is it addresses a lot of some of the—oh, motion to amend. Motion to Amend: Mr. Richards moved to amend Res. 301-19 with the contents of Comm. 462.11. Seconded by Ms. Lee Loy. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: And we’re going to have discussion now. Continue, Sir. MR. RICHARDS: And you can read through that. I’m not going to read the whole thing, because everyone on the Council is obviously able to read. I will touch on the title, “Resolution urging the Directors of the Department of Environmental Management and the Department of Research and Development to collaborate and develop a plan for” dropping “a,” “waste streaming management and reduction technologies, to include renewable and alternative energy generation for the County of Hawaiʻi.” Page 28 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 The intent of this resolution coming forth is to help out Environmental Management. We’ve been through a bunch of presentation. Actually, Matt’s done a good job bringing some of them coming forward. The bigger picture is we have a waste stream problem, and we are doing nothing—well, that’s not true. We are not doing enough to effect it. It’s a garbage in, garbage out literally. Yeah, a lot of fun. We don’t start any meetings till 8:00 o’clock at night. The long and the short of it though, taking all kidding aside, what we’re trying to do, one of the amendments, or one of the proposed amendments in this, I’d initially put in 300 tons of waste coming into our landfills a day. The Director has corrected that to 600 tons per day. So it’s a lot worse. No, it’s all part of the deal. I did add another Whereas, and that was based upon the resolution that came forth concerning the—stating the environmental crisis and typifying that. What this resolution is—I think it’s easier probably to start by what it is not. The resolution is not a plan of what we are going to do. What this resolution does is it empowers Environmental Management and Research and Development to get together to start with a fresh clean sheet of paper and start coming up with potential plans, and have that come forth. It empowers them to work with Environmental Management Commission to have them vet it. We are not the experts on Environmental Management. We know what some ideas, but this allows them to go through the process, and we really need to have them go through it because I’ve worked with some of those commissioners, and I am—boy, I’ll tell you what, talk about a brain-bank of great people to work with. And what this does is allow them to start with a fresh sheet and think outside the box; think what-if. You know, we’ve just heard Bill and Greg discuss our waste stream concerns, comments going forward. What we think conceptually the right thing to do, may in fact not be the right thing to do. If we’re truly concerned about the carbon footprint going forward, how are we going to manage that? That’s one of the things in here, is it discusses that lifecycle that we’re talking about. Whatever we’re talking about, whether it’s plastics or whatever the case may be; papers. What we do with that. And again, one of the biggest problems is we are a little landmass out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that runs into problems with our recycling. We’re going to have to think bigger than that. And part of our problem is we have a relatively small population base. A lot of this recycling comes down to economies of scale. If we can’t quite get it there, it’s going to cost us a lot more to do something with it. Now, is that a good or bad thing? That’s a decision we will have to make as a community going forward. The point is we’d better address all of this stuff and come up with a long term plan. You know, the comment about legislating in silos, we are so guilty of that all the time, and this allows kind of opening up the silos so one side can talk to another and get some things done. Page 29 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 Talking, you know, listening to some of the comments today. Cory Harden—a long time ago today now—made a comment about decreasing the waste. That’s also got to be part of it. It’s not just managing the end stream, but it’s also reducing the waste stream coming in. Which paradoxically, if we reduce our waste stream coming forward, we may actually impact some of our recycling capabilities on the other end. Because if we reduce our waste stream coming in, it may not make some of our recycling possible, which is one of the paradoxes. Is there going to be a quick fix on any of this? I know some of the concerns for the TCOM that we heard about today, some people are deeply concerned about that. The point I think on that again is this is information coming forward. That’s not whether to validate or invalidate the process. What that does do is it shows us something that’s out there that may be something that we should be considering. And that information should be coming from our Environmental Management and R&D as they work together. We heard from Ms. Kubat about the, again, recycling, that we are down to the one’s and two’s and paper. Again, she made the comment about economies of scale. Where are we with all that? This is what we need to do when we look at the full lifecycle of our waste stream coming forward. So with that, before I go any further, Bill come to the table and just make a few comments about this. Because this is not something I created myself. This is something I worked with Environmental Management. And this has gone back and forth numerous times, to have a bunch of comments. There is one other floor amendment I’m going to proposed because after reading this about how ever many times we’ve been through, we did find one thing under the last Be It Further Resolved that I’m going to want to change that from our fossil foot print to our carbon foot print. But I’ll proposed that in a little bit. But Bill, can you make some comments on this for us, please? (Note: At this time Environmental Management Director William Kucharski returned to the table to address the members of the Committee.) MR. KUCHARSKI: Yes, sir. Bill Kucharski, Director, DEM. In my opinion, this resolution could not come at a better time. The issue that we’re facing with our recycle stream is one that I think if we want to be sustainable, if we want to come in and make us as a people, as an island, as a state, get us into a sustainable mode, we need to understand what sustainable means. That means using everything that we can to its fullest extent. As I look through here and take a look at what’s being asked, what’s being asked is to examine alternatives to what we have as a resource and a waste stream. Where did this start? It started with R&D and Riley Saito came in and said look, we can take the gas from Puʻuanahulu and we can generate hydrogen from that Page 30 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 gas to use for our buses. Now, if you put organic material in a landfill, you’re going to collect maybe 25 or 30 percent of the gas that’s produced. That’s what you’re going to collect. You’re going to lose the rest in different processes. Things that are not going to decompose, you’re not going to get anything; the plastics, the metal. The metal’s just going to rust out or break down; the plastics are going to be there for a really long time. And so you come in and say if the gas from that landfill is a resource, if we did something else with that material but bury it, what kind of resource would we have? What type of source would we have to produce a clean energy? For me, I’d take a look at trade-offs. If we did something that had a place that had a point source that would be generating a syn-gas or syn-fuel or whatever, and you had one location there, but the impact was that we had an island that was no longer burning fossil fuels when you drove, or that HELCO was not burning fossil fuels when they produced electricity, for me that’s a good outcome. And that’s an outcome that I’d like to see. I don’t know that we can get there from here, but I think we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the citizens of the County to take a look at what can we do. And again, I have no idea what the answer is. I do have an idea as to what the problems are. As an engineer I like numbers, I like to move through, and I like to make evaluations. What the Solid Waste Division is doing with their scoring sheet for lifecycle cost, that’s something that will be done absent any kind of technology. Part of the thing of having a valid review of technologies is if you set the success criteria before you look at any technology. So you have a technology neutral analysis and then you go through the numbers. Then whatever those numbers come out, they come out. So I have no idea what the final answer is going to be, but I think we have an obligation to ask those questions. So for me, I personally think that the resolution is appropriate give the situation that we’re in now, and particularly if this is something that can help us get—move us to a hydrogen economy, which I think is clean. You burn hydrogen, you get water. For me, that’s better than getting CO 2 and unburned hydrocarbons, and other things into the air. So this is something I think that we should look. When we plan, we need to have data to know what the plan is. The question was asked, “Are you evaluating these alternatives.” This is one way to evaluate those alternatives. There’s a cost involved, and it’s not just money. It’s environmental impact, it’s what we’re doing, and since we import about 90 percent of the material that goes into the landfill, looking at that not as a problem but as a resource of something that in some form or fashion we need to get to, mentally and as we work through. Those are my comments. MR. RICHARDS: Okay. Thank you, Bill. And Bill brings a point home. Matt, you brought it, this is about generations to come. We do import a vast amount of Page 31 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 stuff, and a lot of it ends up in the landfill. In previous conversations, about 50 percent of our waste stream is biological. Which, I learned a new word today, “putrescible,” meaning we can do something with that. MR. KUCHARSKI: And if you watched Princess Bride, you will know that they have a Queen of Putrescence. MR. RICHARDS: That’s off the record. MR. RICHARDS: Okay, I haven’t. Okay, so that’s what I need to do. But anyway, back to the conversation at hand. The point on that is if we remove 50 percent of our waste stream now and do something with it, we may be able to generate some energy with that. Now that’s still a combustion, we understand that, but that generation of methane coming out of our landfill is going to happen anyway. If I recall the numbers right, I think that’s 270 cubic feet per minute right now that’s coming out, plus-minus, and we are just flaming it off and just not capturing the energy. So again, the reason— ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Sorry sir, your time’s up. Anyone else? MR. RICHARDS: May I finish my statement? ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Alright, you can have a little latitude. MR. RICHARDS: Thank you, Chair. So again, the point for bringing this forward is to start making the big decisions with good information. So with that, Chair, I yield. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Mr. Richards. Appreciate your timeliness. Ms. Eoff. MS. EOFF: Okay, thank you. This is just procedural. One of the testifiers that because the title had changes, she thought it needed to be something. But I think that only applies to bills, ordinances. Another one was, did it have to go to the Environmental Management Commission first? But I think that also only applies to ordinances. So I just wanted to check and make sure I was right on that. MR. RICHARDS: Should I respond or should the Clerk? MS. EOFF: I think I got the nod that that’s correct. So okay. And then no, but I’m glad you brought forth this amendment. I think you did address some of the concerns that had been raised earlier, and so it’s a more inclusive sounding Page 32 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 proposal. And it’s not a, like you said, it’s not making even any decisions. It’s just putting out there that we need to have a serious discussion, and I trust that Bill will kind of lead us in that, as far as the Environmental Management Commission and his department, and I’m not sure who in R&D are the appropriate people, but— MR. KUCHARSKI: If I could add. Riley Saito. He’s the renewable energy person. MS. EOFF: So we have really great leadership there. Anyway, so I just wanted to thank Mr. Richards for the amendment. I’ll support that. MR. RICHARDS: Chair, could I make a quick comment just to answer her question? ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Of course, Mr. Richards. MR. RICHARDS: Why thank you. I did not bring this forward, wrapping in R&D, until I checked with the Director of R&D, and she said yeah, we’re good with it. So it’s not like we’re dumping on her. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Well, does anyone else have comments? Ms. Lee Loy, please proceed. MS. LEE LOY: Thank you, Chair. I’m actually rather shocked that Mr. Richards has not seen the Princess Bride. I’m going to be supporting this amendment, and look forward to pushing this forward. What I hear very clearly from our Director is this could not have come at a better time. And it really does provide you as the Director and the Environmental Management Commission a charge. A direct, right line on what they should be evaluating as not only to help us resolve and look for solutions around our waste, but with the Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan, and then working with R&D for possible funding or grant opportunities. I mean, thank you for saying that out loud. It could not have come at a more perfect time. So with that, Mr. Richards, thank you. Thank you for making the amendments. I will be supporting this, and look forward what will be coming out of Environmental Management. Thank you, Chair. I yield. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Ms. Lee Loy. Anyone else have comments, discussion, anything else? I have one thing to say. Well done on the resolution. And Bill, as soon as you say hydrogen I started listening. We’ll just leave it at that. But I liked it. I was very excited when you said that, so yes. So we are at a vote on the amendment, correct? Page 33 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MR. BROWN: Correct. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Okay, all in favor of amending Resolution 301 with the contents of 462.11? Vote on Motion The motion to amend Res. 301-19 with the contents of to Amend: Comm. 462.11 was carried by the following voice vote: (Approved) Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff, Kierkiewicz, Lee Loy, Poindexter, Richards, Villegas, and Acting Chair Kanealiʻi-Kleinfelder – 9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: And then going to the main motion, as amended, to forward Resolution 301-19, to Council with a positive recommendation, any discussion? Thank you. MS. POINDEXTER: On the main motion. So I know I’ve been getting emails and stuff about the new changes, and they ask that if, because they’re changes, can we postpone it and then allow them to come back and read that and then come and testify to it. Because I’m in support of the changes and stuff, but I think just in fairness to let them absorb what has been changes and be able to come and—I think you’ll get the support for it. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: You may respond to Valerie Poindexter’s comment. MR. RICHARDS: Thank you, Val. In an effort to move forward, I would like to move this to Council and I’d happily listen to it. Like I said, my intention is to work with Environmental Management and specifically I think we need to take this to the commission. Maybe only the two of us show up. And yeah, bring in Riley so we get the whole thing going. And I want to get this thing moving, Val, so I’d prefer not to postpone it at this point, but I’m wide open for talking store about this between now and Council. And if you have any concerns. I don’t want to do the amendment. I’ll do the amendment for that—it’s from “fossil” to “carbon,” because I think that more typifies what we’re talking about here. That being said, though, I want to keep it going so we cannot slow things down, like we’re very good at. MS. POINDEXTER: And I can support that. MR. RICHARDS: Okay, and I appreciate that. Page 34 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 MS. POINDEXTER: I’ll talk to my constituents, you know, about the changes. You have on record what your next amendment will be, so that’s good. Okay, thank you. MR. RICHARDS: One quick thing, Chair. If your constituents want to sit down and talk story, you and I can have a coffee hour or whatever with them and we can talk story about it. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Okay, any further discussion? Then we shall proceed with the vote. All in favor of moving Resolution 301-19 to Council, as amended, with a favorable recommendation? Vote on Res. 301-19: The motion to recommend adoption of Resolution 301-19, (Draft 2) as amended to Draft 2, was carried by the following voice (Approved) vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff, Kierkiewicz, Lee Loy, Poindexter, Richards, Villegas, and Acting Chair Kanealiʻi-Kleinfelder – 9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. BILLS FOR Acting Chair Kanealiʻi-Kleinfelder directed the Committee to proceed to the next ORDINANCES: order of business, Bills for Ordinances. Bill 109: AMENDS CHAPTER 2, ARTICLE 40, SECTION 2-207 OF THE HAWAIʻI COUNTY CODE 1983 (2016 EDITION, AS AMENDED), RELATING TO REFERRAL OF BILLS FOR ORDINANCES TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT COMMISSION Revises provisions relating to the 45-day period for review of amendments to Chapters 20 (Refuse) and 21 (Sewers). Reference: Comm. 532 Intr. by: Mr. Richards Motion to Approve: Mr. Richards moved to recommend passage of Bill 109 on first reading. Seconded by Ms. Lee Loy. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Any discussion? MR. RICHARDS: Yeah, just to give some background on this. One of the things that the Chair made mention earlier, and I was listening to that very carefully, this is in fact what that does. We’re talking about streamlining the procedure a little bit. This is something, once again, I worked with Director Kucharski on this, to help us streamline things going forward. One of the things when it comes to bills Page 35 AWEEMC-12 November 5, 2019 for ordinances that pertain to the Environmental Management that they must go through the Environmental Management Commission. The way things are set up now though, is that we have a little bit of a stutter-step that it must go through Environmental Management before we even start talking about it, which is kind of a little bit out of kilter. So the idea is this allows concurrent conversations to go forward so we don’t get hung up in long timelines. I’m going to let the Director comment on that a little bit. MR. KUCHARSKI: Bill Kucharski. The section of the Code on here had a little bit of ambiguity in it, because it said that any actions for amending (Chapters) 20, 21 had to go to the commission. But it said prior to any Council action. And that was taken by some as it went through Committee and then it went to the Environmental Management Commission and then it came back, but you couldn’t take a second vote. So what this does is it clears up that you can continue until— you can’t have final passage until you get either the 45-day period is past or we’ve received comments. It was a lot of additional words, but essentially what it does is it allows 45 days. The only other change is prior to this, if you didn’t get a response back from the Environmental Commission it was taken as a negative vote. Now it comes down that it’s simply a neutral vote. So this simply for me just clarifies the requirement for the Environmental Management Commission to take a look at this, to reply, and what happens if they don’t reply in time. MR. RICHARDS: So Chair, I think Bill did a better job of explaining it. It was so we could have the concurrent conversations, not slow things up. One of the things that was pointed out, the way it was written it could be taken as a negative recommendation, but depending on how a bill was written, a negative recommendation could mean a different thing than the intention was. So again, all the ambiguity, this clears it up, and this was working very closely Bill to get the wording right, so it made sense. ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Mr. Richards. Any discussion? Any further discussion? Okay, what it sounds like to me is you took the putrescence out of what was existing. Nicely done, Mr. Richards. MS. EOFF: Mr. Chair? ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Yes, Ms. Eoff. MS. EOFF: Do we have to refer this to the Environmental Management Commission now? ACTING CHR. KANEALIʻI-KLEINFELDER: Great question. MR. KUCHARSKI: Yes, ma’am. This is a modification. MS. EOFF: Oh, so that motion is the next motion. Page 36 AWEEMC-12 November 5,2019 MR. HENRICKS: This doesn't affect—it's about procedures. It doesn't affect the operations of the department of the commission's responsibilities. It's about the Council refers (inaudible). MR. KUCHARSKI: If I could say, if this doesn't amend Chapter 20 or 21, then is not required to go to the EMC (Environmental Management Commission). MS. EOFF: Oh, okay. Then we don't. ACTING CHR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Did that cover your concerns, Ms. Eoff. I like moving forward efficiently. I appreciate that voice from the stars that was guiding us in this moment. Okay, so we're just going to vote. All those in favor of forwarding Bill 109 to Council? Vote on Bill 109: The motion to recommend passage of Bill 109 on first (Approved) reading was carried by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff, Kierkiewicz, Lee Loy, Poindexter, Richards, Villegas, and Acting Chair Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder–9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. ADJOURN- There being no further business, at 8:33 p.m., Ms. Poindexter moved to MENT: adjourn the meeting. Seconded by Ms. David and carried by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff, Kierkiewicz, Lee Loy, Poindexter, Richards, Villegas, and Acting Chair Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder–9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. CHR. RICHARD S: We stand adjourned. Approved: ' 4, ` 19 13taotl Mr. Herbert M. "Ti rRichards, III, Chi (Date) Agriculture, Wate r Energy and Environmen.al Management Committee HR/j a Page 37