aloha will the infrastructure environmental management committee please come to order it is monday november 16th two thousand and fifteen and it's about one hundred and thirty seven in the afternoon and let me give the roll call of who is present myself obviously chair li cochran and from east maui we have bob carroll good afternoon chair aloha and ms gladys baisa good afternoon chair aloha and we have mr don guzman good afternoon chair good afternoon and nonvoting but here visiting with us today is mr don couch good afternoon chair aloha be excused for today will be vice chair of this committee ricky hocomma and also stacy covello and council chair mike white will be joining us shortly from the administration we have corporation counsel rochelle thompson aloha and our staff legislative analyst jordan molina and also legislative secretary raina yapp and let me check in with our district offices in hana don lono are you there yes good afternoon chair this don lono at the hana office aloha don lanai ms denise fernandez good afternoon chair this is denise fernandez on lanai and amola kaim is elelkon good afternoon chair this is elelkon amola kaim thank you ladies for being there and members today we have three items on the agenda iem twenty seven restoration of maui's coral reefs iem forty termination of license agreement affecting lots one hundred and forty three one hundred and forty four and one hundred and forty five of the pukalani lots at kehua in pukalani iem forty two grant of sewer line easement to hospice maui incorporated which is in wailuku and at this time i shall set the parameters for testimony three minutes to testify please state your name and the organization you might be representing and also please stick to speaking on the items that are listed on the agenda today and at this time i shall open the floor for public testimony without objections no objections thank you very much so ordered and first on our list in the gallery to testify is mr greg lagoi testifying on iem forty two aloha everyone my name is greg lagoi i'm the chief executive officer of hospice maui hospice maui is sitting atop county leased land we leased from the county we are building a a five bed hospice residence and at the beginning of the process our engineer had gotten assurances from the department of health that we would be able to have our own individual wastewater system on site a septic system we're on sand cause we're on the sand hills during the lengthy process that also involved the environmental assessment we had to do the department of health changed and said that we needed to find a sewer access there is no sewer on mahalani street but across mahalani street from us is another county owned lot that is leased to lokahi pacific and on that lot there is a sewer lateral that we would have access to and so we are asking for the county to grant an easement to another branch of the county i'm not sure to whom but housing and human concerns is the branch that deals with our lease and then the easement would go across mahalani street and across the lot that is leased to lokahi pacific to my knowledge there's no controversy or issues at all involved and i'm happy to answer any questions that have to do with this particular question thank you thank you thank you mr lagoi members any need for clarification of our testifier seeing none thank you for your presence today next testifier in the gallery is robin newbold speaking on iem twenty seven and she is chair of the maui nui marine resource council aloha kedko i'm robin newbold chair of the maui nui resource council thank you madam chair for having us back to talk to your committee and i want to thank all of the committee members it's good to see you again it's been awhile so thank you for being here and for your interest in what's happening on our coral reefs since you passed the resolution to save protect and enhance the coral reefs of maui nui the maui coral reef recovery team has been busy researching twenty five years of research that's been done on the reefs and unfortunately has found that the reefs have been declining for the past twenty five years they haven't gone back further than that but in all likelihood it's even worse than we think excuse me today teken hammond who's the chair i'm sorry she's the coordinator of implementing the coral reef recovery plan will be talking to you about the outcomes of that study it's a real simple study we got it down to two pages one page front and back and then we have references so you can see all the different research studies that we cited that took into account as we came up with this information and on the back of that there's a page listing all the team members so all that information is available to you to make it even easier we did a onepage summary of all that so you can see at the top that the issues that we found that are going on with the coral reefs and then we didn't want to leave it at that we wanted to have recommendations for how we can turn this around how we can work with you and the county and the state to turn things around reverse this trim so i was gonna introduce members of the panel but since they're not sitting there yet we'll let them introduce themselves i would like to say one more thing though and that is that as part of our study we would like to find out how much people know before we talk to them about the status of maui's reefs and then how much they know afterwards see if talking to people is really effective so we have a survey and i believe that that's with your packet and on the front as the presurvey and of course ideally you would take that and you're just helping us with our database if you have a chance to go over that and then a post survey of what you thought before and what you thought after we talked with you so with that i'm gonna any questions otherwise i'll move onto the next person thank you ms newbold does that concludes your testimony members any need for clarification seeing none thank you ms newbold and the next testifier is tamara paulton speaking on iem twenty seven aloha chair and committee members thank you for this opportunity to testify today i'm in full support of the maui nui marine resource council packet and i just wanted to say i go in the ocean almost every day and it's really bad and having been alive for that long and i've never seen it this bad almost every time i put my face in the water i see a bleach coral in my area the last few years we've had more brown water runoff events than i can count if you've ever been to kapalua bay in the last thirty years you'll notice a huge difference within just the last five years it used to be so many collector urchins that you couldn't even count them all now you have to look for them and the diversity of fish is just not there i hate to speak negatively about honolua bay but being that it's a marine preserve you're not seeing the numbers and the amounts of fish that should reflect the marine preserve at this time we're working on getting it better and that being said there's not much that we individually can do for climate change and we can try and change the way that business does business i read a report that people that are making salt ocean salt not even refined iodized salt are finding plastic in their salt nowadays because there's so much little pieces of plastic in the ocean i can try forward you that at a later date i wasn't prepared but that was sent to me by a world expert toxicologist craig downs that you can't even make salt off the ocean anymore without finding little pieces of plastic so i would urge you to take action and try and stop the sale of microbeads in our products that they sell in this island environment try to stop the sale of sunscreens that have oxybenzone or ebobenzone they're just small little things that we can do promote the use of rash guards and it will make a big difference if everybody gets on the same page and makes our oceans and our marine life a priority thank you thank you ms paulton members any need for clarification of our testifier see none thank you for your time ms paulton okay and let's check in with our district offices in hana ms lono do you have any testifiers ms lono hana hello are you there yes this is don lono at the hana office and there's no one waiting to testify thank you in lonai ms fernandez anyone there to testify there's no one waiting to testify on lonai thank you and on molokai ms elkon anyone there to testify there's no one her on molokai waiting to testify thank you ladies for being there and anyone else in the gallery here wanting to testify please come down to the podium i don't see anyone so members without objections i shall now close the floor for public testimony no objections thank you very much and let's get onto our first item and this will be iem twenty seven and this is the and it's in regards to the resolution one thousand five hundred and nineteen that we adopted on february 18th two thousand and fifteen which we the council recognized the importance of saving protecting and enhancing the reef ecosystems of maui county for their cultural ecological subsistence and economic benefits and as we had our testifiers come we've invited back maui nui marine resource council to serve as resource persons for this committee's discussion here today and last time they were here was nine months ago on february 2nd two thousand and fifteen so i know we will probably have to set the room up for all of them to come and sit with us let me read the county communication it is county communication thirteen thousand three hundred and three from myself transmitting a proposed rezo relating to coral reef recovery plan for maui county and correspondence was dated december 16th two thousand and thirteen from myself transmitting a report from maui coral reef recovery team entitled a practical plan for the technical and cultural restoration of maui's coral reefs and this correspondence dated october 28th two thousand and fifteen from robin newbold chair of maui nui marine resource council and discuss the wait oh sorry maui nui's transmitting report entitled maui's coral reefs declining trends1993 to two thousand and fifteen so with that members we shall take a brief recess so we may set up the floor to bring down our panelists and have a presentation and some discussion we are now in a brief recess infrastructure environmental management committee please reconvene and thank you panelists for being here and let me just briefly say who we have available we have teagan hammon maui coral reef recovery plan coordinator i guess their names are pretty boldly shown in front of them mike fields senior scientist emiratis us geological survey aloha thank you for being here ekulu lindsey polanui hugh community manage makai area russell sparks maui division of aquatic resources and mark decos director hawaii association for marine education and research and today's discussion we shall be given a presentation and then we can follow up with questions and definitely some discussions as a committee with our panelists here today so i shall turn the floor over i guess to yourself teagan you're gonna take the lead on this one yes okay do we have microphones yeah i think it's a portable that can hand around can you guys hear me great okay thank you so much everybody for having us here and your attention on this really important topic my name is teagan hammond i work for a maui nui marine resource council coordinating the implementation of the coral recovery team and i really sit here on behalf of much greater minds than myself that represent the members of the council and the recovery team their names are listed on the back of the reef report that you received and i encourage you to familiarize yourself with who the members are as i'll do my humble best to represent their voices here the recovery team and the council endeavored in the last few months to write a report which summarizes a diverse set of data over the last fifteen years of what's happening in our reefs that's really hard for you guys to go out and find all that information and summarize it in one place and so the report that we've just presented with you represents that summary and we encourage you guys to use this as a resource and offer it to you as a resource that you guys can use to quote as you're talking and having your conversations with folks as well appreciate your feedback if you have any in ways that we can help make this more useful for you in the future let's see so for each of the speakers here before you we've assigned ourselves to address one of the five bullets of recommendations that have been made mine will be starting at the end number five to promote a collaborative approach to marine resource management around maui and this involves having briefings and building partnerships and lines of communication with each of you including developers and everybody in our community today we're gonna challenge you with these facts and provide solutions to discuss and identify ways forward we can work together on and we really hope to open up continued discussions with each of you guys for your input on how we can make these solutions more practical and realistic in our daytoday so quickly just going through the report as robin really greatly mentioned we have a summary that's just a single page and it has the five bullet points of the issues that we're facing and recommended solutions which each of the speakers will address so i'm quickly going to read these for you during the past two decades nearly one quarter of maui's corals have been lost of the site surveyed with half of maui's reef sites currently experiencing declining health as a note these are very highly advanced rates of decline this is not normal since one thousand nine hundred and ninety five the biomass or mount by weight of culturally and economically important reef fish species found on maui has declined significantly we are now second in line behind oahu as the lowest in the state the average amount of reef fish found around maui's reefs is second lowest of all the islands in the state that's the third point nearly ninety of water quality samples taken around maui in the period of two thousand and twelve to two thousand and fourteen have exceeded state water quality standards for turbidity nutrients and or bacteria as you all know water quality is extremely important for the health of our reefs the economic value of our state's coral reefs was estimated in two thousand and two at ten billion so this is a very important issue for all factors the value that american people hold for our reefs in hawaii is up at three thousand three hundred and fifty seven billion so these impacts are extremely important for us to address now the three primary drivers are the final bullet on the issues we're facing the impacts that we're seeing are due to introduction of landbased pollutants and sediments overfishing coupled with poor regulation and enforcement and the third is insufficient resting sites providing adequate time for recovery from the stresses that our oceans receive excuse me the next section the five bullet points of recommended health that each of these speakers will address is the need for building capacity at a community level to engage communities through the cmma process equally we'll talk more about that enhancing enforcement of current rules and regulations within maui's coastal waters is something that fishermen themselves as well call for expanding the network of coral reef areas under protection around maui with a target of protecting twenty by two thousand and twenty right now we're at less than two comparatively to the world this is very low than other places in the nation implement policies and practices to reduce flow of sediment and nutrients mark will address that and promoting a collaborative approach to marine resource management around maui i'm hopeful that our conversations can continue and we can keep figuring out ways forward this photo is actually where tamara was discussing this is fleming's beach park at a recent brown water event this photo is taken after a stop work order was lifted for a project moka and as you can see it's very alarming not a great place to get in the water with that i'm gonna pass the mic these pictures up here just show you guys the reef report and as you all have copies i'm gonna skip by them and pass the mic to dr mike field thank you thank you t aloha and thank you for the opportunity to sit here today and talk to you in brief what i'm going to do is show you a series of slides and talk about many of the things you know but i want to review why coral reefs are so important what's happening to them today and very importantly what the important actions are that you can take to change the direction of the way things are going so the role of coral reefs first of all biodiversity an extremely important function that they provide all over the world they cover only a half a percent of the sea floor but twenty five of all marine species food source a primary source of protein for most island nations and a nursery for the commercial species this one off shore coastal resilience protecting against tsunamis and large storms and there are other roles that coral reefs play as well cultural and recreational and there are many many they are very important so what we know is that there's a worldwide crisis going on with coral reefs it started in the mid 80s and it started accelerating in the mid nineties there are many causes but the main cause is by far are unsustainable fishing which moves the larger herbivores from the population reefs landbased pollution and that really means sediment runoff from island watersheds and now climate change these are the big three there are other things that can harm reefs but they're just bumps and cuts and bruises compared to these are the three that are starting to wipe out coral reefs around the world and now we know this problem has arrived in hawaii it hadn't for a while because there are colder waters here but now of course runoff and sedimentation has been a problem for a number of years there are some pictures from south molokai and the west maui but more to the telling of the pictures that have appeared recently in the press the one on the left is from the seattle times this is not just hawaii news this is a worldwide news what's been happening here the other pictures from iconic places of maui molokini and olowalu and many many others why this matters and i think everybody here is well aware of it but the point is that dead reefs are quickly flattened here's a picture of reefs that are bleached from the great barrier reef in australia and then destroyed when they're destroyed sediment covers them the reef will not come back it is gone and this is a lesson that there are places i could show you on the north shore of lanai where the reefs are gone and they're not coming back same thing on south shore of molokai so we lose probably forever habitat proficient invertebrates barriers for storm protection sites for family and community recreation the result of this is the economic and cultural value will be greatly reduced within one generation we're not talking about the year two thousand and sixty two thousand and eighty two thousand and fifty this is happening now and it's going to happen fast the chair of dnir suzanne case recently made the statement that if we fail to protect the coral reefs and lose them negative impacts on the overall ocean ecosystem and on hawaii's economy so let's look at these just for a minute the maps up here are the four islands and maui nui show you red and yellow the yellow is more than ten but less than fifty live coral the red is fifty to ninety you won't find maps like this in florida or most places in the caribbean they think ten is a lot of coral coverage hawaii is very lucky but the numbers are changing and they're changing right before our eyes so what i've done here on this map is map out nine reef tracks that total almost fifteen thousand acres a really enriched coral three south molokai two lanai and the other four maui kolabi even though it shows red recent mapping there shows that those percentages are overstated and there's not much coral in those locations so we look at these and we say that there's a lot there it's a very complex very rich reefs and there's a lot of it but they're all starting to suffer these impacts what can we do about it we can look at it and start to protect areas of it there are many ways to offer protection from communitybased up to mpas but protect it is the only way that it's gonna survive what we know about it these reefs is we have have enough information you have enough information to make intelligent decisions today we know the percentage of coral cover on the reefs we know the detailed topography we know the fish populations we can make maps that show the distribution of coral where it is and what's being used and how to best treat it in the future give you an example of that here is the iconic olowalu reef track and the map above it shows the results of some computer models we've also done actual satellite test models during the larval times when the corals are spawning the current flow from olowalu along west maui and over to molokai if olowalu reef dies so might west maui and part of molokai it is a seed as a mother reef for many of these other reefs so given the ongoing and increasing threats to mai nui coral reef complex can anything be done and we would say yes reducing all stressors other stressors over fishing and runoff and climate if we can't stop climate we can at least take the other two out of the picture give the corals a chance establish a safe place where they can battle the climate change as best they can setting aside fifteen to twenty or more so the fish can grow and and corals can fight warming is the only way this has been recognized worldwide most countries have anywhere from twenty to fifty of their coastal waters protected now and it's essential i can't emphasize this enough there is no other choice if corals are gonna survive warming the other threats have to be taken out of the picture and just to give you an idea of when people worried about protection this is a map of olowalu and there's a little box maybe not even very visible there that represents fifteen so it's a very very large reef and if you set aside fifteen there's still a lot of reef that is available for all the uses that we like to think of marine protected areas are important for fish as well as for the corals and this plot from alan freelander shows very clearly that there areas where there's pristine seas shown that the stars have much higher biomass than areas that aren't and the areas that aren't the small green boxes which include hawaii and most of the caribbean and western pacific those small boxes make up more than ninety nine of the world's reefs the large fish populations have been decimated and so go the coral reefs in following them in hawaii the open to fishing and partial protection shows significantly lower biomass or fish population than no take and communitybased protected areas we know enough to design protection areas now we know that full protection from fishing or community manage is essential we need a range of habitat complexities that need to take in consideration larval trajectories and where population spawn we need a variety of habitats from shoreline to deep including sand channels rocky areas everything's possible low of algae cover and representative wave exposures and finally i would add that mpas are effective tool for fisheries and conservation and are essential for coral reefs they still only account for less than one of the oceans but every country on earth is starting to embrace them mpas are most effective when fishing pressure's high nearby and these have to be scaled for human needs and i would end by saying that mpas will give you more fish and larger fish and i would say that if they don't then you take them apart and don't use them anymore but they will they'll give more fish and larger fish whether they will say coral reefs we don't know but we have to try because right now the reefs are not responding to all the pressures and we have to remove those that we can remove thank you thank you mr field aloha aloha i'll be speaking about the building the capacity and increase the number of community managed marine areas around maui to implement the coral reef recovery strategies through collaborative efforts so this is my backyard polanui hiu polanui is the name of the ahupuaa that we live in and the idea of bringing back balance to this place started with my dad at lindsey and my son kaelo riding a canoe looking at what was under the water the seed was planted then that we should do something and a few of us met with the local marine managed area the fijian consort that came in we met with them and found out what they had done so a bunch of us started to community manage hakai area and we have since grown into a network roughly speaking our efforts here at polanui have been ongoing for about five years and it goes from where pumana pool is to between lahana shores in five hundred and five front street and it's roughly a half mile off coastline two hundred and twenty two acres out to about sixty feet in depth and bringing back down as to this area and really understanding a lot of the stressors to it has been real challenging for the last five years so we are working towards the communitybased subsistence fishing area designation through dlnr and trying to add a a rest period about a fiveyear rest period to bring back the size and biodiversity of what used to be and outreaching to the many different groups that we have here in la haina and throughout all of maui nui and anybody future leaders to bring back balance and to have them understand why it's important to take care of these things because they were there long before us we've since created a maui nui makai network that includes six different groups we have namamu mules and kipahulu ohana in hana ourselves polanui in lahaina as well as wailuku simeme in kahalui harbor and you can see the points right here on the map so all of us are working towards bringing balance and that balance really is us and the humbug we make an ocean in the mountains so correcting these things we can do all the legwork in the ocean and on land but it's not without the political will that we can be successful so the comanagement throughout the process is an important thing for us to work towards haena has gotten great support and they're the first on the books for a cvsfa designation their mayor had supported them throughout the process so that was one of my asks here is to have the support from you folks as well as the mayor to move forward and this is what we've done it's awesome to have a plan but the majority of these plans get put on a shelf i represent the people who can do something with that plan make it happen so that future generations can enjoy what i had as a kid because right now it's barren get fish what kind of small we need more fish aloha my name is russell sparks i'm with the division of aquatic resources i've been working here on maui with the division for about eighteen years now and what i'm going to do today is i want to just quickly go through some relevant information about maui's reefs talk about some of our current management successes many of which probably happened because of support from the county council and the mayor at the time that we moved them forward and i hope cause i imagine a lot of you are questioning well this is state jurisdiction not county jurisdiction so how do we help well simple as resolutions or letters of support go a long way to the very confrontational controversial rulemaking process oftentimes so simple things like that could have a huge impact as well so i'll go through some of what we've been doing on maui i'll touch briefly on compliance and other changes social changes things that sizikola that talked about within the communities that at least give me hope and i think it gives a lot of people hope that we might actually move forward so as dr field mentioned there our ongoing stresses with our research just a few some disease bleaching algae blooms covering the reef these are graphs that simplify greatly coral cover on several of our reefs so basically all they're looking at is the percent coral cover and when you take a twodimensional picture of the reef over time and you can see on west maui in particular where we're doing a lot of management efforts there seems to be a fairly substantial decline over the last couple of decades other areas of concern maliah and also papalula point on the north shore showing what we describe as a total collapse of our reef ecosystems and the reasons for that vary i don't have time to go into it usually takes me a couple of hours to delve into this in detail so we'll avoid that but i do want to point out cause we're going to talk about resilience in the face of stresses and negative impacts on our reef i want to point out the bottom graph which is hana point just in wai'ahi canal natural area reserve in two thousand and five there was a bloom of crown of thorns sea stars and those guys came through and they munched pretty much most of the coral down so you can see a coral decline that went from in upper twenty probably like twenty five or twenty six down to less than ten down to around five in some places but then over the subsequent nine years or so came right back up to where it was before so the point there is reefs can be resilient they can bounce back they can deal with these stresses but ahi canal is a reserve there's no efficient allowance so there's very healthy marine fish resources it's also an area isolated from a lot of the land impacts that we have particularly in areas where people live so that helped that reef ecosystem bounce back from that stress moving forward today this is a picture from a molokini looking out along some of the salt benches there every single coral along that area is bleached this is a picture taken at olowalu of one of the really large old low corals some of these corals are four to five hundred years old and when you see them bleach out like this and then subsequently current photos have shown this coral and others nearly completely overgrown with algae so you're looking at a coral that right now what it's experiencing today is worse than anything it's experienced over the last four to five hundred years where we're throwing more at these things now than they've seen over that period of time and that's really alarming really concerning so bleaching this year was the worst ever recorded in hawaii and you've heard this already this is actually a new major stress for our corals up to this time last year there was some bleaching but this year was much worse so up until about now we've heard about it we've worried about it we've talked about it but now we're experiencing it and the longterm survival of these corals is gonna depend quite a bit on the ability for us to reduce these overall stressors things that dr field talked about already what i want to talk about then to give you a little idea of what's possible is the herbivore fishery management area kahekili prior to implementing this site we were seeing coral cover that was up around fifty sixty rapidly declined down to the 30s and we were noticing periodic blooms of algae which was providing probably the majority of the stress that these reefs overgrowing the coral causing stress knocking it back just to give you a picture of that if you started in one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine when we started our cramp surveys down to two thousand and seven there you can see how the algae periodically filled in and just get a general sense of what that decline and coral cover is you look at the coral is becoming a little smaller and patchier and separated out the other thing we noticed there was that fish biomass shown in this graph is about half of what it is on other sites around maui but also the maui sites are about half of what they are in some of the more pristine areas on the big island et cetera big concern there though is the orangy graph which is the parrotfish biomass was extremely low in this area with that information we set up the kahekili herbivore fisheries management area as a fisheries management area which prohibited the taking a three families of fish surgeonfish parrotfish and ninui or chubs prohibited the taking of sea urchins and prohibited fish feeding so that the fish would eat the algae rather than the peas and the other things given to them we continue to allow fishing in fact we encourage fishing this is not antifishing it's about simply the fish that are important to help protect the reef and if the reef ecosystem improves we would expect fishing to improve and we want fishers to experience that as well over a fiveyear period just looking at parrot fish these are the small body parrotfish there's several species but these are the ones that are are small they get to be a little over a foot in size and they live for about six to ten years you could see a rather rapid increase after the closure which is the dotted line on the left side of the graph up to nearly twice as much biomass and that has held more or less stable since that period when you look at large bodied parrotfish and these are actually much more important on the reef because of their size the size of their bite and the effect they have in controlling algae and stimulating other factors on the reef you see a slower increase these fish live longer they grow slower so that's to be expected up till about two thousand and thirteen after that point they dropped back down to what they were at baseline levels at the start of the reserve this is likely due to fishing so yes it's protected but unfortunately illegal fishing still happens and this is one of the biggest challenges we have in resource management is how we get compliance with the rules once we make them enforcement is certainly part of that i'm not gonna talk about enforcement cause i don't work for enforcement it's best to speak with them about the challenges of actually formally enforcing these rules but there's a lot of other things such as outreach education bringing people into the fold of all why we have these rules and why you need to comply with them as ekulu talked about community management as communities get more involved in the process working with us more aware of what's going on they changed the social structure as well so it's not acceptable to go out and poach and take fish it's looked down on it's shame so these changes take time but hopefully that's how we'll start to build compliance because knocking that back down sets us back another five years and makes it that much harder for us to get where we need to be short term successes with this coral hasn't changed much on these reefs but if you see that red line on the bottom that's crystal's carlanalogy that's the purple and pink stuff that grows on the bottom it's critically important on cementing our reefs together but it's also a landing pad for coral recruits so new coral recruits seek out this crystal's coralonology to settle and grow so you need to have that so anyway going back you can see how that has gone from nearly two up to about fourteen here's a picture this is what we're looking at you had coral in between the coral you had algae much of those areas now look more like this where the fleshy algae much less present but you see that purple and pink stuff on the ground setting that reef up for recovery so we're seeing that as an early sign that's very positive looking at it on a broader scale the green stuff there's the two graphs on the left are before the management went into effect and the two on the right are after and it just shows it on a general scale the increase in biomass of parrotfish with the green circles and then the crustal's coralanalogy is those pink circles so you can see how the reefs have filled in over time so that's just an example of what's possible as we change the ecosystem back to a more normal state on our reefs there's a lot of good things that have happened around maui that make maui distinct from the rest of the state we're the only place that has a total ban on the use of lay gillnets and that went into effect in two thousand and seven we have this kahekili herbivore fisheries management area that's showing a lot of positives and what's possible with the management and then more recently we implemented parrotfish and goldfish rules which include bag size and size limits and for parrot fish actually protect the terminal phase males of the two large species so if we can get compliance with these things we would expect to see more of biomass on our reefs and hopefully that would help provide some of that resilience it's not gonna do all of it though we do need to do just as dr field talked about we need to look at networks of marine managed areas to hedge our bets set up some of these areas for protection for the future community comanagement as ekulu mentioned critical things that we need to support and really help these guys out as they work through the management areas of their specific locations we could really use more county support with watershed management efforts we have the west maui ridge to reef initiative we've spent a lot of time and effort with numerous people including county representatives coming up with plans to deal with some of the stressors to the watershed in that area but it always falls back to needing more support from the county public works to maintain and manage and clean out the filters in the storm drains and things of that sort reuse and distribution of wastewater all of these things a lot of things come together where the county is a major player in how we manage our watershed so we just need to work better closer together in that and set these priorities and i'm gonna leave it at that i probably ran too long anyway but certainly glad to answer questions later thank you russell aloha thank you guys for allowing us to talk and speak to you guys today my name is mark decos i'm the director of the hawaii association for marine education and research and i'm just gonna touch on the landbased side of things we talked about the things that we can control the extraction and then the landbased pollution russell touched on a lot of the extraction stuff you've seen these photos we're seeing a lot more of these photos i've heard you guys are discussing this in your council meetings where we're getting much more discharge happening on the reefs sediment is the number one problem that's impacting our reefs that we have control over so i really started to look into why is this becoming more and more of a problem so sediment one hundred and one whenever there's a construction anytime you displace dirt you move vegetation development pretty much you're gonna allow those soils to be free to move down the mountain by wind or by by water so we recognize that and so we have we actually have pretty good laws to prevent that from entering the water we have the clean water act and when a developer applies for a permit they are required to get what we call the npds permit and the permit basically states we'll allow you to discharge but you have to meet the department of health's water quality standards right and those standards are pretty strict and if we look at what those standards are it's really hard to see there but basically their values of turbidity and nutrients and whatnot the threshold can't breach so we have all the laws in place to prevent that discharge from reaching the ocean so what is the problem well a lot of these permits we call the nps permit that allows you to go and disturb the earth they're selfmonitored so your requirement for compliance is to basically walk the grounds look at what we call bmps best management practices a lot of times they're sediment basins to capture that sediment in the water or they're silk fences there's a lot of different types but there's no actual monitoring of the discharge so if you're not monitoring what's coming out of the outflow points it really doesn't matter how well your bmps look you're still discharging impaired water so the difficulty here as well doh has so much of a budget so much staff they can't go and monitor and take samples of all of these discharge areas so how do we prevent that sediment which carries with it all the pollutants all the nutrients how do we keep at its source well they have automated monitors now so people are using them on the east coast and basically they're just sensors that you can put in front of a discharge area you can have them measure turbidity ph suspended solids you can add whatever sensors you want to them and you can attach a remote communicator basically through satellite or through a wifi signal you can send all that information in real time so either to the enforcement to the developer themselves so this is real time data that's coming in once they're installed you sit back sit in your office and you'll get a text message if there's a breach in one of the parameters very low cost once they're set up and like i said the current way of measuring we mentioned the water quality standards are ninety impaired in maui and just as bad in the other counties as well when you go and sample like they do now again it's once a month or a couple of times a year it's really hard to understand where the inputs are coming from doh has a mandate to manage that watershed you're getting inputs from development from natural sources from the ungulates disturbing the dirt there's a lot of different sources it's very hard to capture and figure out where all those sources are and develop what they call a pollutant budget if you set up these automators you're basically controlling and understanding what those points sources are contributing so there's no mystery there it helps doh to understand it and if you can look at rainfall data and very subtle changes if you get all of a sudden a sudden sometimes these basins or whatever are pretty good up until a rain threshold and then it bursts and you get a massive amount of sediment and just to remind the sediment once it's on the reef it's done you cannot mitigate after that you have to keep it from reaching the reef because once it's on there it gets resuspended over and over again by the wave action and that continues to kill and kill and kill the reef and any little babies can not settle on that soft bottom the coral polyps than the spawn so you don't get regeneration of new growth so again just lots of data can come in in real time very hard to go and sample during a rain event so a lot of times people don't get out there too long after this you can look on your computer any time you can get very sophisticated where these are longterm permanent systems that need some extra structure if there's theft situations you can put them in you have different ways of dealing with issues where these are remote stations that could be tampered with now the question is who does this how is it paid for and all that so my suggestion would be through the application the mpds permit you pay a fee so you could have a fee of fund the mitigation fund that helps with the monitoring so a third party so just like if you were to get an appraisal on your house we all like to get our own appraiser to basically elevate that value but now the banks you're not allowed we have a third party the appraisers have to meet a certain criteria you get them they do the evaluation so when a project and we're gonna have incredible growth here on maui in the next decade so there's gonna be a lot of more opportunities of events like this they're gonna be more and more common so how do we stop that from happening so if they implement a fee that goes and allows the establishment of these automated sensors you just basically park them out at the discharge spots and then when there's a breach that occurs the developer's notified immediately they can take care of it maybe there's a stop work order until they get it under control and the developer's paying for that service so there's no extra budget needed there's no extra manpower needed by doh and you understand exactly where and when these events are happening thinking a bit outside the box there are ways we can get a handle on these major problems and again the stuff that we can control is the stuff that we should be focused in doing something about now thank you thank you and any further person going to present or that's the end of the presentation okay well thank you very much panelists and at this point members we can open up the floor at this point for questions and answers discussion and all of the above mr couch well i'm not really a member so let them go first okay yes mr carroll thank you chair and thank you for bringing this forward today and all of the participants over here are truly appreciated what you've said over here when you bring forward is known and it's been known for a long time unfortunately the political will has not been out there especially at the state level it's disturbing the county we do what we can to control the pollution that you see on the screen we have the laws our problems was enforcement and it needs to go further but we need more support from the state the state needs to be more involved i'll give you two examples turtle many years ago in the 70s me and a group of people trying to get the commercial selling in with turtle to be illegal about six people went up there and said it's all right to sell turtle we stayed back down until the feds came inside and stopped it there has been no political will up there for the state to do what's necessary to preserve our environment when it came up to make spirit fish legal to sell we went to the state and we said hey our environment cannot take this extra load it's not good for anyone we went to dlnr dlnr would not give us the support they said it was too hard to enforce that is about as lean as you can get they supported the state at all levels all levels needs to be we need to get the public we need to get the people that are listening to this on a carpool we need them to go over there and support the positions that you have come up with here this panel and support the council and the state and even federal if necessary but we really need to get the public to come forward and to understand and to support what you will come up here with today because we need to do it all i appreciate your coming and i hope this is something that will go further and i hope that we can keep up the pressure there's no one specific person to blame all the decisions were made with turtle and everything else people give into not going on the right track because they didn't understand because there weren't enough people out there that were pressing for it and all that needs to change thank you chair thank you mr carroll for sharing ms baisa yes thank you very much chair and thank you to all of the panelists for being here today this is definitely a problem that we all need to be very concerned about i have an old fisherman in my house and so i know how things have changed because i listened to his remarks about what he sees and what he saw before it is sad but i'm looking at your suggestions about how we can reverse this and i'm concerned it's funny because in another committee in fact in mr guzman's committee right now we're talking about coral permits and i didn't hear a whole lot of talk about how that affects this but yet my husband often talks about how he's worried about all the sunscreen in the water and all that activity and the impact that it has anybody want to comment whoever would like to say go ahead thank you everything has an impact as was mentioned i think the key thing is we can take action on things that we can and we particularly need to look at some of the major impacts and it's been stated over and over and over again when you boil it down to three major impacts on our reefs that are gonna threaten their existence so overfishing landbased pollution and climate change can't do much about climate change but we can start to address the other things sunscreen gets a lot of press from time to time there's been a recent study about it and i'm sure at a certain level it does add another layer of stress on our corals but it's not a lot of people will glom on to that because why i don't use sunscreen it's all the visitors that are the problem and it's very likely a minor minor contributor it wouldn't hurt if people would stop using sunscreen that has particularly the certain ingredients that are bad it wouldn't hurt if they wore rash guards and things and just put sunscreen on their face and some exposed areas rather than spray it all over their whole body but i hesitate to jump on things like that as major cures cause i don't think they will have that big of impact overuse in general can be a big factor as well and the coral permits are one way that the county is trying to come to grips with that and control it and hopefully the state will come along they now have a system where they can permit all ocean activities commercial activities and hopefully the permitting processes to start to better managing it and spreading it out and reducing the impacts not just for coral reefs but also to reduce the conflict with other users but again i hesitate to jump on that as the major cause i think we can certainly address certain things and we should when we can but we need to also keep in our mind these major factors and figuring out the best way to move forward on those thank you for that of course the other area that i'm very interested in and i put a communication in just about a week ago to talk about stormwater and in attending the hawaii water association meeting this year i heard a little bit about stormwater utilities and this is gaining popularity all over the place and we're going to talk about it hopefully the chair will schedule it to find out what is happening in other areas to control storm water because while some of this is obviously development based a lot of it just happens the water runs down the hill it's been running down long before i got here and it's still running and so i think we need to do something really we have to do something too when we see these pictures of all that brown water it's obviously a real serious issue so that's another thing that i'm very interested in is how do we try and deal with some of that too it's not anybody's causing it it just happens it's always happened so how can we get that water and put it someplace else where it's not causing problems but again thank you very very much for being here today information is important as we have to make some tough decisions thank you thank you ms baisa thank you mr sparks mr guzman did you have any comments questions yeah thank you chair for bringing forward this subject matter i'd also like to thank all the participants for the information and this is one step closer for at least sharing the knowledge to the constituents through akaku and at least getting the message out there one of my questions is basically there are three primary stressors climate landbased pollution and overfishing on the overfishing portion of it i'm gonna have three different questions but on the overfishing issue do you have any statistics on how many fish or aquatic fisheries that are basically being taken out by illegal activity versus hawaiian gathering rights is that an issue that comes up is overfishing due to more of the illegal activity or the legal activity that's going on probably there's a lot of legal activity there's not a whole lot of restrictions on fishing so unfortunately we don't have a fishing license requirement in this state so it was really hard for us to get a good grip on the amount of people who are fishing and the model take commercial fishermen are required to submit reports so we have some idea of what the commercial take is but those reports are not validated so we're basically taking what they tell us they caught and some indications suggest that those reports underreported by at least three times if not more and so we do some studies to get a feel for it my guess would be that noncommercial fishing is huge just because there's so many people doing it however commercial fishing has a few people but they're very effective at doing it so rather than sectioning out how people are doing or why they're doing it it's very important that we just look at how we can manage it for all uses and then like you said even if you do have the regulations in place if there's illegal fishing going on it's still a problem that needs to be addressed so part of that with marine managed areas part of that could be that the enforcement is a lot easier you have an area with a zone and let's say it's a notake area if somebody is in there taking fish enforcement's a lot easier than if there's just different types of fishing that's allowed other than that i think the real hope's gonna be just changing people's mindsets and awareness so that if somebody is out there illegally doing it it's really shunned on by their friends and family and peers do you foresee or at least have any idea how the county could help i guess not really enforced but i guess it could be enforcement but we don't have jurisdiction in that area in the ocean what other means that you can foresee the county helping out in enforcement limiting the fishing aside from we could probably send out rezos to encourage the state but like mr carroll says a lot of times it falls on deaf ears so is there anything that you can think of that in your expertise that the county could legislate to help prevent the overfishing i'm not sure i can answer that directly as a complete outsider let me offer a thought here though and it reflects back to council member carroll's comments about the concern that the county has and yet it's a state issue i've worked on all the coral reefs in the main hawaiian islands except niihau i've seen the problems and i'm very much aware of how things are looked at and i may be wrong in this but what i see is that the county of maui is such a political and economic force in the state that it just seems to me again as an outsider that the state should listen if the county asks for something that is very important to its future and its well being and its residents for the future it seems to me it can have that clout with the state you're not asking the state to do anything to hawaii or the big island but you're asking for yourselves and i would think the state would listen i don't know maybe i don't understand all the politics but i think the county has a very big stick in this to talk this day it's your backyard and i don't see why they won't help yeah i don't see why can i get a copy of that video and send it to the state i just wanted to add one more thing i'm sorry just to answer your question and also of carroll's was that we are gonna be having additional briefings so in december at some time we're in discussion with suzanne case from dlnr and bruce anderson with dar and there'll be coming over here for meetings anyway and we'll be sitting down and having the same discussion with them and absolutely asking as we are with you folks how we can best provide support and likewise vice versa so i'll pass that question on as well with them chair i would propose that if there could be at least one or two items that we could address in a foreign plan or some type of legislation if that could be put together before the state ledge opens their opening ceremony i know that all of us usually go there for the opening ceremony and speak to as many state legislators as possible and that's the time that we get to bend their ear on certain issues that are close to or at least mean a lot to each and every one of us so i think if you can get that going prior to the opening of the ledge each one of us would do our part to present to as many legislators as possible i think that's one way of starting it out the other one is chair the landbased pollutions was there any opportunity to bring in public works or environmental management mr gonoza and ask him a few questions and concerns in relation to some of this sentiments and other pollutants that are damaging our reefs because he didn't have them scheduled to be part of that panel no not at this point but they are definitely well aware and have brought that up to director goode and others but for sure we can hone in on just that specific on another time but no they're not here today to discuss solely on that one particular issue it's a huge one i know but no not at this time i did want to comment though that i like your take in regards to all of us working together with our experts bringing their knowledge and information into our policies we create and aligning it on the state level but let's not forget also that mr ricky okama had nominated myself too on a federal level in regards to addressing and bringing a voice of ours to that level of government and so if we can just align county to state to federal collectively i think that would be really a great strategy and i want to give kudos to this body here maui nui marine resource who basically did draft all the wording and the expertise that i took up to the federal level because they are our eyes on the reef so to speak and have the best knowledge and that's why they're here today obviously too i've got to meet leo asuncion who is our pacific islands region representative he's planning program manager for hawaii coastal zone management i feel good about having dual representation up at the federal level for collectively as not just maui voice but as a state too and i think we can make great headway that way and so i think yes locally but i can bring it up to the federal level too which i'm very very excited to do and very happy to do mr carroll did you thank you chair i would like if i could give our panel over here it's a copy of the bill for a restricting of spirit fish and also the poundage and the sale or spirit fish the total poundage if i could give it to the panel just for their information thank you chair yes mr coach thank you madam chair and thank you guys for being here we always learn from you when you guys come up and give us your presentations and one of the things i wanted to ask we got some of the information but on the overfishing are we getting pushback from people doing the fishing the fishermen and the fisher women are we getting pushback from and then trying if we decide to do the cmmas where they can't fish in certain areas i'm assuming that part of the cmma prohibits fishing or certain fishing i don't like pointing fingers at fishermen for overfishing understood there are different types of fishermen those that really malama and know how and there are others who use for economic gain so for us at polanui we've gotten good support for a fiveyear rest period because they see there's hardly any resources so they support it i think most fishermen are against protected areas but will be for it if they know there's a light at the end of the tunnel to help support because fishing is not just catching fish it's family time and without that family time you're taking away something from them that's very important so for us in our small area and allowing that to come back and reopening up with additional restrictions is important for our management system but yeah they can push back guarantee but it has to be done in a way that's inclusive so i would encourage all fishermen to become involved and be a part of the solution throughout the barriers and come up with solutions to each one of the barriers that can help them get to help us so we can help everybody so it's a very tricky part i don't like taking those things away but we do have a responsibility to maintain it so including them is more important than excluding so i welcome all fishermen to come and join us in our conversations in our management plans cause i want to hear the pushback and i want to hear them now before we move any further because they need to be a part of the solution i know mr field talked about i think it was him that talked about particular fish that are banned or was that but other fish that can be taken and like you said mr sparks that's very hard to enforce but i like the idea of maybe a rest period maybe a rolling rest period somebody showed us fifteen of the olowalu reef was really tiny portion so maybe you take twenty or whatever thirty of the olowalu reef and rest that for five or six years and then move would that help cause it will help with still allowing fishing in certain areas but not in the whole ecosystem that concept is a popular one that a lot of people gravitate towards and i'm not sure if it's historical or traditionally done however in traditional times they also had a lot of control over effort how many people were fishing fishing in their autopilot et cetera modern times the only example we have of something like that is the waikiki fma and the research has been done on that today it shows that it's actually worse than areas that are open to fishing all the time and the reason for that is there's a derby mentality so you close it for a year or two i forget what the timing is the fish come back you open it up and it's like opening day everybody is there so you increase fishing effort beyond what it would be if it was open all the time so that's the world we live in today which makes that concept difficult beyond that a lot of the fish that are very important live for a long time so they may take five years to mature and move in onto these reefs where they're important as grazers eating the algae but then from that point forward mortality is really low natural mortality and they may live up to thirty forty some kala or unicorn fish have been shown to live up to fifty years old so these large adults natural mortality is low and they play an important part in the reef so if you close an area off for let's say ten years and you get a mature population back up you open it up that could be lost all of that gain over the last ten years could be lost in one year or less and you're right back to the same point just like when i thought about the large parrotfish slowly coming up and then suddenly back down so i don't know i think in the case ekulu's talking about a rest area and then they would have other protections in place to help manage the resources once they get up to a point perhaps where they could be harvested but just rolling closures where you close an area and then open and close another area probably not gonna work just given the fishing effort and everything we have today okay yeah i can see how very complex the overfishing problem is because you don't want to take away their rights and we don't have a licensing system i don't think we have a size limit do we have the size limits i know usually when the size limits is you can keep the big ones but leave the small ones in there and it's my understanding that some of the science says now no you want to leave the big ones and take the small ones yeah we have minimum sizes on a lot of fish to protect them at the point where they become reproductively mature but we do not have maximum size limits on almost everything the only example even gets close to that as our new rules for parrotfish which protect the terminal phase males we can take a recess do you need to take a recess yes members we'll take a five minute recess will the infrastructure environmental management committee please reconvene and thank you for a quick break yes mr coach thank you i had one maybe two more questions to finish this i know we talked about the fishing now one thing i didn't hear anybody saying and maybe because of what's going on that this may not be effective at all but i've been seeing documentaries and doing some studies and seeing presentations about artificial reefs putting artificial reefs out front to protect the reefs using the reef balls and things like that are you guys looking into some of that would that help i know probably wouldn't help the whole bleaching situation but would it help in any way i guess i'll take that one too we do have an artificial reef program pretty much all of the islands have established artificial reef areas we've put different types of modules and even as far back as tires set in concrete and there are other things the program is centered around building habitat that is good for fish particularly fish that people might target so actually it's a fisheries enhancement program it's not a replacement of natural coral reef mindset there are efforts where you really carefully engineer the type of material and you potentially plant corals and things of that sort it's a possibility as a last resort to mitigate or to replace some lost reefs but my viewpoint is we would serve much better if we protected our natural reefs and try to improve the situation so that they recruited out and grew and were healthy and thrive on their own rather than relating back to putting concrete structures on we always could do that but it's not gonna really bring back the reefs the way they are naturally i just want to second russell's comments this is being done of course in the caribbean where they have a severe coral loss problem they're trying different things but we think about it in a matter of scale we're talking about fifteen thousand acres of really good coral at least it was until a couple of months ago but it's still pretty good and replacing it with little plots here and there it's the difference in scale that we're not gonna achieve and we should put our effort in protecting what we have i just want to emphasize we've gotten back naturally to the things we can control like landbased pollution and fishing climate is now the five hundred pound gorilla in the room there were thousands of acres bleached in the northwest hawaiian islands which have no runoff and no problems like that and so what everybody says or everybody sees happening is that this problem will it may not just incrementally get worse next year may be an off year but we'll be seeing more of these this is unprecedented and we'll be seeing more of those and we have taken into account that the entire reef track is really at risk and so we have to do what we can to put these other stressors thank you dr hugh thank you thank you any further comments questions i do like to announce the presence of council chair mike white aloha thank you thank you chair i'm sorry i missed the presentation i caught some of the latter part of it watching downstairs but one of the things that mr field mentioned was this is our backyard and i've always felt that there should be more cooperation between the state and the counties because we have this dividing line at the high water mark what's above the high water mark is our responsibility and what's below the high water mark is the states and i think that allows too high a level of copout and i would love to see us develop some protected areas that we could then help dlnr to police by putting our own resources into deputizing people that would work alongside with dlnr or become part of dlnr but i think that we've got a responsibility to protect this resource and having lived here all my life i've not ever seen us really take it terribly seriously dlnr is one of the most poorly funded parts of the state government and yet they're responsible for overseeing a huge stretch of not only our land but our oceans and i remember i was in the legislature once we passed the subsistence fishing zone for the island of molokai i don't remember the gentleman's name but he had been working in aquatics for many many years i called him and i said it looks like we're gonna be able to get a bill just for molokai should we just take the senate version or try again next year and he said it took me twenty years just to change the size of the opening in gillnets so take what you got and run like hell and that basically points out the fact that i don't think lawmakers have taken a full responsibility for protecting what's out there we don't have fishing licenses as even mr sparks said we don't have an idea what the take is except from commercial fishermen but we've all got a responsibility to protect the reefs and if over fishing or fishing is part of the problem then we should be dealing with it and from a county perspective i wouldn't mind putting some resources towards that we spend more than any other county with respect to watershed protection well that's just one end of it but i wouldn't have a problem i don't think anyone else in this room would have a problem providing resources to assist with the near shore waters because they're part of our home just like the land is so i really appreciate you guys coming i wish i didn't have another meeting that i had to deal with but i really appreciate your time and energy that you've put into this thank you chair white members any further discussion comments for our panelists here today seeing none i want to thank all of you for your time energy and effort and especially your expertise and again thank you for contributing to my position with the governance coordinating committee with the national ocean policy makers up on the federal level and i'll tell you members and maui county as a whole and to the state that the people that you see right in front of us are really helping to make some great policies to help address all the things that we discussed here today so it's gonna take all the efforts yes mr white i know local county federal level and collectively we can get things done and i feel a great tide or a groundswell of movement with everyone i think we're all forced into this corner right now with global warming and what have you that we need to take action swiftly quickly and so thank you all members and we shall now take a brief recess to reset the room and it looks like we have public works here to join us next so with that thanks everybody and we will be in a short recess will the infrastructure environmental management committee please reconvene and members we are onto our next item iem forty this is in regards to termination of license agreement affecting lots one hundred and forty three one hundred and forty four and one hundred and forty five of the pukalani lots at kehua pukalani and this is a count of communication fifteen thousand two hundred and forty one from director of public works transmitting a proposed resolution entitled termination of license affecting lots one hundred and forty three one hundred and forty four and one hundred and forty five of the pukalani lots at kehua kula island of maui hawaii the purpose of the proposed resolution is to terminate an unused license in favor of the county of maui for drain and sewer line purposes on three lots in pukalani maui hawaii and with that i will turn the floor over to director goode of public works for some opening comments so dr goode good afternoon chair members of the committee dave goode here from the department of public works and before you today is an interesting case for us and first i'm gonna ask if the members have the map showing where this is located it's actually on page two of our transmittal and i know that it was supposed to be in red my copy it was in black so it was hard to see so i'll make sure members all see where we're talking about director it's transmittal august 31st dated august 31st on the cover page is that correct okay so there's a map on the second page yes i see it it says shown in red and mine just happens to be black so it was really hard to see just want to make sure the members have it i have the red line here okay we got red yes i do you guys got red okay better than my copy goes okay this particular portion of the lower end of pukalani was developed in the early 50s and they had these long skinny lots around malcolm makai and cross a couple of our across i guess in some ways our roadway and they have they're private lots we do not own them they're last owned by it looks like frank munoz jesse munoz and emmmanuel sui and as far as we know they were never probated but they also included on these long skinny lots a license to the county of maui for future drainage or sewer lines improvements we never installed any drain line improvements we never installed any sewer line improvements we had no intention of installing either of them so we were interested in canceling that license because we do get an occasional call from someone that says you gotta come clean out your lots they're not our lots and the license just gave us the right to install either drain our sewer lines and yet we have no intention of doing so so we want to basically cancel license normally a license you can ask core council here but normally a license has a thirty day cancel clause by either party and usually with some kind of notice given the other party there's no notice in here the way the license is written it's written as it says acts as an easement so i thought it's best that we have a council action it would be a resolution and we can then record on the property to show that the county has no interest in executing this license if for some reason in the future it is desired by the county to use these parcels and by the way these parcels are ten feet wide it's really not enough room to even backhoe in there and work but if for some reason the county did want to acquire those parcels the parcels are basically sitting out there again last owned by three individuals who as far as we know never probated them out so i suppose we could go to court get control of the properties if indeed we needed to so anyway that's the purpose of this resolution today again is to formally sever our ties with the license agreement and carry on thank you director goode members any questions and before i get comments from the floor i do have a question for corporation counsel ms thompson it appears that the rezo doesn't reference any provisions of state or county law for terminating such licenses should we be concerned with that to figure out a legal process of our involvement in doing this type of action at all thank you chair the nature of this easement would be more in common law and related to abandonment of easements say if the owner wanted to come back to the county and say you've never used this property for sixty five years and so therefore you've effectively abandoned your right to use it but that is all related to common law usage and chapter three hundred and forty four of the maui county code discusses the county's disposition of county property in easements or in fee simple but that wouldn't apply to this case since we're really just relinquishing the right to use someone else's property which i believe is practice drafted okay very good thank you for that clarification ms thompson members the floor is now open for questions comments anything of director or corporation council here no everyone's all good we're all good mr goode okay so with that then i shall make my recommendation i would like to recommend adoption of the proposed resolution and of course incorporating any nonsubstantive revisions and filing of the county communication thank you it's been moved by chair white seconded by ms baisa and members any need for further discussion on the matter seeing none then all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say no seeing no oppose measure passes with let us see three at five eyes two excused and zero nos so okay that's all done director goode thank you for your presence here today and explanation so next on our agenda we have iem forty two and this is grant of sewer line easement to hospice maui incorporated in wailuku and this item is a county communication fifteen thousand two hundred and sixty two from director of housing and human concerns ms ryman would you like to come and join us and transmitting proposed resolution entitled authorizing the granting of easements for sewer line purposes to hospice maui inc pursuant to chapter three hundred and forty four maui county code and the purpose of the proposed resolution is to grant to hospice maui inc a sewer line easement for the limited purpose of installing underground sewer pipelines and related facilities within the leased premises and other real property owned by the county of maui to connect to public sewer system so at this point i shall welcome director of housing and human concerns ms carol ryman aloha aloha chair aloha and i'm opening up the floor to yourself and director goode whoever would like to speak to the item you may thank you chair members of the committee my name is carol ryman director of housing and human concerns so basically hospice maui the side of mahalani street that they are currently at does not have any sewage systems so this easement is to allow them to hook up to the county sewage facility that's on the other side of the street and it will go under mahalani road and mahalani road from what i understand is in the jurisdiction of public works and so they're good as here as well okay thank you ms ryman and director goode did you have some comments to add at all just briefly chair just as it relates to the roadway if the hospice is in charge of the line if they have to do anything to the line they always notify us and we'd work with them okay all right very good pretty straightforward there ms thompson yes thank you chair i just wanted to correct there was some testimony earlier that this was an easement from the county to the county and that's not correct it's actually an easement to benefit hospice maui as an easement for a term that coincides with the lease term of the hospice facility okay did i read that out of our agenda item it was just to correct what was said by mr logoi the public testifier oh okay got it thank you very much for that clarification and members any need for further discussion comments yes ms baisa thank you very much chair and i would like to comment i want to say that i'm very happy that we're at this juncture here hospice has been trying for a very long time to get this taken care of and it's a big need in our community i think we're all realizing more as we watch the news and what goes on that we really need this facility so i'm very happy that this is here today and that i can support it and i asked my colleagues to do so too thank you for your comments ms baisa any further discussion or comments seeing none then i shall make my recommendation recommendations thank you i want to entertain a motion to recommend adoption of the proposed resolution entitled authorizing the granting of easements for sewer line purposes to hospice maui inc pursuant to chapter three hundred and forty four maui county code incorporate any nonsubstantive revisions and filing of county communication fifteen thousand two hundred and sixty two thank you it's been moved by chair white seconded by ms baisa and at this time any discussion needed seeing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say no seeing no opposed motion passes with five ayes two excused and zero nos and members with that i believe we have completed our agenda today and thank you very much for all attending and this meeting is adjourned