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Home My WebLink About2023-03-29 EMC testimony (3-27) Harden, CoryPO Box 1137 Hilo, Hawai’I 96721 March 26, 2023 Via e-mail 333cory@gmail.com to cynthia.evans@hawaiicounty.gov michelle.galimba@hawaiicounty.gov holeka.inaba@hawaiicounty.gov jennifer.kagiwada@hawaiicounty.gov mat.kanealii-kleinfelder@hawaiicounty.gov ashley.kierkiewicz@hawaiicounty.gov heather.kimball@hawaiicounty.gov sue.leeloy@hawaiicounty.gov rebecca.villegas@hawaiicounty.gov Aloha Councilmembers, We are wri�ng to urge that you focus on source reduc�on, reuse, and recycling to solve our solid waste woes, and reject discredited “waste-to-energy” proposals such as Resolu�on 73. Please especially focus on the old Hu Honua site, where ill-advised projects may be proposed by investors seeking a way forward. Instead, the site may work well for batery storage for renewable energy, or for hemp processing. Re. Resolu�on 73, it is extremely troubling that this sweeping proposal, to up-end the en�re County solid waste plan in three short years, was passed a�er only one brief Council discussion without an appropriate second reading. Supporters of the resolu�on and the Yummet company were obviously informed and organized well ahead of �me, while the public had less than a week’s no�ce. Proper review, by the Environmental Management Commission and a Council commitee, could have advised regarding the concerns below. There may be an ethics viola�on--we have been informed that Resolu�on 73 was writen at the request of Yummet and for its benefit. Hawai’i County Code, Ar�cle XIV, Code of Ethics, Sec�on 14-2, Standards. It shall cons�tute a conflict of interest for employees or officers of the county to... b) Use their official posi�on to secure special privileges, considera�on, treatment or exemp�on to themselves or any person beyond that which is available to every other person. Impacts were not evaluated. Greenwaste, now an example of circularity, given freely to people farming at a subsistence level, would be taken to make biochar. Farmers would need start paying for mulch, and it would be shipped over thousands of miles and wrapped in plas�c. And biochar certainly wouldn’t be free. “Waste-to-energy” cannot meet targets in decarboniza�on laws. Contracts with Business Services Hawai’i, Hawaiian Earth Recycling, and Waste Management would need to be rewriten—if possible. Ramzi Mansour, director of the Department of Environmental Management, commented at the March 8 County Council mee�ng that a steady stream of waste would be needed. But two “waste- to-energy” proposals (2008 and 2015) for Hawai’i Island were rejected, a�er months of divisive debate, because the island doesn't generate enough garbage to make it cost effec�ve. On O’ahu , taxpayers are paying penal�es to H-Power because O’ahu can’t generate enough garbage to fulfill the contract. Resolu�on 73 proposes burning agricultural and green waste to produce biochar. But Energy Jus�ce Network says: “Incinera�on by any name (including various staged incinera�on or "waste conversion" technologies, such as plasma arc, gasifica�on or pyrolysis) is not clean or safe, despite industry claims. Even with the increased requirements for pollu�on controls that came into effect since 2000, incinerators are STILL dir�er than coal in terms of air emissions. Incinerators s�ll turn trash into toxic ash and toxic air emissions. This reality is inescapable, as even with the most modern pollu�on controls, pollu�on levels s�ll exceed coal by nearly all measures.” http://www.energyjustice.net/incineration/ Biochar can be toxic. "Applica�on of biochar into soil does not usually have a toxic effect and very o�en s�mulate plants, bacteria ac�vity and invertebrates. The effect however is strictly determined by type of biochar (especially the feedstock used and pyrolysis temperature) as well as contaminants content. The pH, electrical conduc�vity, polycyclic aroma�c hydrocarbons as well as heavy metals are the main factor usually responsible for biochar toxicity." [underline added] Journal of Hazardous Materials, Volume 403, 5 February 2021, 123833, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304389420318227 Hydrogen, another proposed product in Resolu�on 73, is an “indirect greenhouse gas”. “…hydrogen is also an indirect greenhouse gas whose warming impact is both widely overlooked and underes�mated. This is largely because hydrogen’s atmospheric warming effects are short- lived – las�ng only a couple decades – but standard methods for characterizing climate impacts of gases consider only the long-term effect from a one-�me pulse of emissions. For gases whose impacts are short-lived, like hydrogen, this long-term framing masks a much stronger warming potency in the near to medium term. This is of concern because hydrogen is a small molecule known to easily leak into the atmosphere, and the total amount of emissions (e.g., leakage, ven�ng, and purging) from exis�ng hydrogen systems is unknown…. ” Climate consequences of hydrogen emissions, Ilissa B. Ocko and Steven P. Hamburg, Environmental Defense Fund, New York, NY, USA, published: 20 July 2022, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 9349–9368, 2022 Claims by Britany Zimmerman, CEO of Yummet, were not evaluated. Observers noted that CEOs of large companies with actual financial backers don’t spend 30 days on each of four islands chasing County resolu�ons with no force of law, never men�oning a physical corporate headquarters. Was Zimmerman six years old when she started working on her skills? In 2021 she said she'd been in the "20 under 35 cohort of 2020". So by 2021 she couldn't be older than 36. Then she "spent 30 years" working on skills. 36 minus 30 equals 6. "Britany has spent 30 years working on expanding her breadth of skills...Britany is a member of the 20 Under 35 cohort of 2020" bio from Thesis Defense by Brittany Zimmerman on April 30, 2021 https://blogs.und.edu/jdosas/2021/04/thesis-defense-by-brittany-zimmerman-on-april- 30th/ Zimmerman holds three patents, but all are held jointly, and apply to space, not Earth. htps://patents.jus�a.com/inventor/britany-lynn-zimmerman Zimmerman cited nuclear energy as “renewable”. Zoom meeting with Sustainable Energy Hawai’i, July 29, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQOVKWCs2vg at 26:50 minutes Zimmerman claimed "each of our facili�es can scale very large...we [looked at implementation] for example, in Savannah, Georgia, and that can scale to remove a billion tons of carbon dioxide directly from the environment annually." *somewhat unintelligible Zoom meeting with Sustainable Energy Hawai’i, July 29, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQOVKWCs2vg at 17:17 minutes But the 15 facili�es worldwide now doing direct air capture remove fewer than 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year. And it takes all the world's forests to remove 16 billion tons a year. “Direct air capture removes carbon dioxide from the air by passing it through liquid chemical solu�ons or by chemically binding it with solid filters. However, the 15 facili�es currently in opera�on globally capture only 9,900 tons of carbon dioxide each year.” UCLA Institute of the Environmental and Sustainabilty, April 1, 2021 https://www.ioes.ucla.edu/article/carbon-sequestration-a-critical-but-less-understood- piece-of-the-climate-puzzle/ “The world’s forests currently absorb around 16 gigatons [16 billion tons] of CO2 each year.” https://www.edf.org/article/carbon-capture-fight-climate-change-stop-climate-pollution Spring 2022 issue of EDF’s Solutions magazine The Yummet website says "Our concrete is cer�fied and showcased in the Department of Transporta�on MnRoad Facility." https://www.yummet.com/green-concrete But the MnRoad website does not men�on Yummet in its "Partners" list. https://www.dot.state.mn.us/mnroad/collaboration/index.html In closing, thank you for considering our concerns. For the future, we urge you to evaluate waste proposals thoroughly, especially for “waste-to-energy” and the old Hu Honua site. Mahalo, Chuck Flaherty, chair, Sierra Club, Hawai’i Island Group Note: Thanks to Mike Ewall, director, Energy Jus�ce Network; Hannah Hartmann, Master of Science Candidate; Steve Holmes, former Honolulu City Council member; and Kris�ne Kubat, director of Recycle Hawai’I for their valuable input.