the regular meeting of the water resources committee please come to order today it is wednesday nov eighteenth twenty fifteen and it is just about a minute or so after nine no interruptions during our meeting i'd like to thank everyone for being on time we are on a very tight schedule today we have a wonderful group of panelists today and we have a lot of business that will be talking about basically in regards to our watershed protection which we all know is very important however that has a meeting that i have to be had at noon so we are again like i said on a tight themselves out of my notes because they are very behind the scenes kind of people working really hard i have my legislative attorney and our committee secretary and in and i would especially like to think glad as i say for having the foresight to be concerned about the effects of the kochi on our watershed and subsequently on our drinking water the range of the kochi has been recorded to be as high as forty four hundred feet in elevation well within the range of the watershed unless the kochi is eradicated they most definitely will have an unfavorable impact on the capacity and quality of our watershed i am interested in knowing who the active partners in this fight to eradicate the kochi are and i have met somebody right now which is awesome my neighborhood has been relying heavily on the efforts of motorists it's apparent however that they will be unable to contain let alone eradicate the kochi and now i present my wish list i feel more partners must be identified and must step forward in a coordinated assault i feel that the more diverse sources of funding need to be identified and tapped this needs to happen now before we are irrevocably overrun by to the point of no return i believe more public awareness is in order this reminds me of a a epidemic in the early days if you thought you were going to be examined you didn't really come on t v or radar and check this will be on everyone's radar in the form of diminished water resources and diminished water quality i think that the state of hawaii department of agriculture needs to begin enforcing administratively rule for their six nine a dash five which gives them the right and the responsibility to enter private land to eliminate species classified as pests neighbors should not be enforcing these rules for the department of agriculture which is what's happening now is causing problems i also think that the entity charged with stewardship of public land site even illegal gulch need to be held responsible to deliver on that stewardship i would also like to see more suspect support for the individuals such as myself who are doing whatever we can to kill and to clear a kochi friendly habitat those of us who cannot afford a landscape service move piles of gree from one place to another i would like to see a green waste pick up service in place to help us out i did not bring the coke ease into maui and i didn't let them pass by my inspection undetected i have not looked the other way once i knew that they were here and that they were winning the war but now i am being asked to stumble around in the dark with a canister citric acid and the chop they are in my yard and the entities and individuals that think that they are exempt they don't know about this or care about this can no longer continue to ignore this problem and will eventually be a problem for all of us thank you thank you very much members need to clarify their testimony seeing men thank taken it on is my current activists because i live right on the leak of cults and i've watched as they've gotten worse and worse and worse over the last seven years and i realize from hilo how awful they can be and i see a lot of people just sleeping here about it and i've been trying to raise some alarm bells by contacting the mountaineers and i don't know the scientific issues with the watershed but i do know that they're a very unwonted pest and that they've gotten very bad i'm fighting with all my neighbors trying to get people to take some responsibility for their own properties which i'm dismally disappointed constantly  but i just wanted to be here and observe you know what's said here today if you have any questions from someone who lives right in the thick of it i'm here thank you very much for being here we appreciate it members any need with the neighbors a multitude of different issues a lot of people don't live here they own property right on the gulch and they live on the mainland and so it's not you know they don't really have a stake living on mali in the  past or the future some people one person things they're allergic to it one person thinks the frogs are wonderful and it's torturous to kill them with the citric acid some people just don't want to cut their yards down you know they have they've you know for twenty years i've tried to plant a beautiful yard now i'm cutting it all back you know some people and he'll level their properties from what i've heard just taken every tree every bush  rid of your stuff and you know they're single single moms that don't have any money you know that they can't pay people to come and help them with their properties there's i mean misc has been doing there's a guy in our neighborhood working for a mess that's just done amazing things clearing along the edge of the goal but we helped them coming up from the gulch but i've got two neighbors that they're just popping over from their sides and you know my neighbor across the street is great she's she's cutting back she's spraying she's going out every night we go out and spray can't miss a night because anyone will be outside your window so and anyway i just wanted to let you know that they're there they're bad big i understand i'm not sure about the water shit issue because i'm not be told that's a problem but everything else is a problem there and noise at night is horrendous really my question to you is your neighbors your question is saying that moving up the chain i believe is the department of ad that has the authority to go in people's properties and deal with in the invasive species but there they don't use it in this case and that's what i would like to see i would like to see more forceful behavior by the government to make these people comply you know miss tries they say they have to remain very politically correct with these people and you know there's one woman in our but thank you for your yeah and so i mean i my next door neighbor won't spray and he you know we've been added and then he took me to court it's become a real problem in my life and he's the one that's not complying and you know every night we listen to thousands of his frogs and they come over to my and i go out and spray the spillovers every night and i would love to see more you know the government take more control over what these people are doing but when they're still in the gold you know and  they're still on the open properties i don't know how much they can force homeowners to comply real quick yes so it's comforting to read ahead and so i heard in your testimony you said they've been around from the past seven years so you've had incidents well i live right on the gold chain and i believe they started progression of people coming on have you heard any coke is no it's a coke eat and now it's funny to watch that happen you know two streets out as people get their first pokies and they don't really know what's coming at it so funny how people just are be those two elements actions should exist because on the two onto the legislation they see talks about customary rights and traditional practices and being practices of the use of resources and especially when it comes to water our side we just did a study we took our time recently we did a study of the ancient flow at waverley we got  our website that we we want to know what our resources are and what the conditions are so we talk about the watershed we are working within of a home where we and we have laws that incorporate us and our usage so i would like to see as far as this to have that representation thank you thank you very much members is there any need to conservation in mali for about ten years and i these mountains for a big part of my life and i just want to let you know that my experience has shown me that we are in some of the worst times that our watershed me see huge threa that you never even heard of destroying thousands of acres we are in somewhat of a losing battle we have had our funding cut drastically over the last few years in i know it's just going to get worse so i'm asking for your support i know you guys have answers thank you very much for being here thank you mr way oh thank you very much for being here this morning it's nice to see our young people like yourself getting involved in taking care of our community thank you for your work and  representatives from eight recipients of watershed protection grants we have asked each of them to make a brief five minute presentation to give the committee and update on the status of the grants what problems they may have being countered and what they may need from us so we would ask you i would ask you members to kind of hold your questions you could go down the rule and listen to everybody and then we'll come back and we'll have questions and answers species in that it has significant ecological cultural and economic some economic importance in hawaii provides a habitat for native  insects and birds and other and it's a keystone keystone species in in the watershed it's the primary wood for many native hawaiian cultural forest industry our current objectives of coas to ensure the health of the remaining coa forests restore coa to its native range and ensure sustainable supply and  cause mortality at high rates in many coa plantings and also native native forests capable of killing trees of all ages the solution is is that is to identify co op families that have genetic resistance naturally occurring genetic resistance to wilt and we've been doing this will work since the late years ago it was about one hundred different individual trees and we've we've added to the ad with the with approximately another fifty additional families anyway this is this is what the collection effort looks like these are of the will the will fungus that we've collected across the state different families are evaluated for their frequency of resistance and the family represents all the seed from one mother  tree just real quickly as it works out after about ninety days the track is representative of one family there the racks that are full of seedlings have resistance  these these screening trials we've identified them in the we out planted them with our partners at a number of locations on both west maui and also seed the seed has been also distributed to interested groups when when we have see this available to the benefits just to increase the benefits of restoration we increase rates of cloud habitat diversity for threatened endangered native species and koala can also be a long term sea for sea carbon so essentially we're we're adding trees to landscape  we've talked about some of the specifics these are novel ways to deploy coa in a system and this is co planting where we're using it to control gore's restoration  including but not limited to the native forested watershed significantly reducing the targeted threats so we've got a management plan is valuated regularly national park ranch the county of maui department of water supply state of hawaii department of land natch resources so we definitely have representation of all of the  seeds we might have brought into the project site is an entirely you know one of the most important things we can do to be responsible stewards but also move into more more  different populations that we can control small outlying populations of we where management is possible i'm sorry i'm out of time but we do want to let me just hit on that first point that we we had additional funding we would definitely be able to expand our protection efforts to other projects sites that are close to surface water collection and high value for recharging air yes thank you to try to keep everything intact so that water keep coming down and so does a beautiful picture in the back of the valley what some of us don't see when the general public will look at a picture or was really beautiful what members here look at is all i dropped off at that waterfall to look at an endangered species to protect it so it continues to look at that it's a city really  select and coordinated effort supported by you folks dillon are as well as the rest of the partners to keep large scale landscape management looking good you know the bigger the yard the more effort you got to put into it evolve the with the shape of the flower so if you lose the pollinator plant and if we know anything about the watershed it is very similar to being a hot air balloon nice or having our bloom it doesn't matter where the one little that whole balloon is going to deflate so if you lose a species you lose call you lose something else it just starts to deflate that balloon and that habitat starts to alter and change and we heard some of the concern and frustration from mr wisdom into this morning that it is a changing time it really is because there's threats that we don't control coming our way so it really assists and encourages us forces to be at the best of our game to make sure that we're doing everything that we possibly those that are true heroes we get to sit up here and share with you folks but they're the ones hiking a ten miles a day rebellion off cliffs building faints you can see they're soaking wet you know mama would always say no play in the rain you' sick we send him out in the rain every day and to keep these guys healthy we've got to give them the supplies the tools the instruments whatever they need to get it done because it's challenging and  use a picture of what we dealt with this summer we're trying to build a fence on a very steep vertical slope we're appealing down building these fences and you've got three hurricanes coming thunderstorms  what's happening is you're getting higher pulses like we've seen more intense storms more rainfall and shorter duration and so if you lose this money going to get a lot more you're always in lot less recharge  and so we're always sharing information luckily we have a great relationship with the department of water supply and u s g s in illinois and everybody is just trying to make sure that we're prepared that we're doing as much as we can with that we wheat and so here's a picture of some of the crew it you can see there on a rope is vertical and after they hike in you know they still got to do their work here's a picture of us planting  not just wherever they go good on them so that when somebody walks into the forest this is what they see they don't see bear and they see nice healthy canopy on this story ferns and we can get maximum recharge to the opera for so that the department of water supply can take care but he's needs and so we really appreciate all the support that you folks have had a lot of our efforts are very similar opposite situation from we're trying to take some of the landscapes that have been degraded that have been subjected to years of overgra erosion damage this is a scene from after one of the floods a few years ago and we're basically watching our our forests at uplands washed into the  ocean we've seen these recent storm events that have demonstrated all our vulnerability as an island to the increase in fires floods droughts so what we're trying to do is restore those upland communities are calling for this they're calling for further support of this effort for their protection and increased proactiveness from our our governments and our communities to support this type of work so the county has been a tremendous supporter of this effort and i really appreciate that enable us to leverage lots of other funds and bring lots of resources to this battle but there is more to be done so the partnership was farm in two thousand and three the county was one of the original supporting partners we have forty three thousand acres eleven invested landowners that are very active and willing to fight for this effort today we have twenty seven point eight miles of fence constructed with another over ten to be completed by the end of two thousand and seventeen our management plan calls for protection of existing watershed for us first what remains so that's all we've been focusing on south you can see that's where most of the fences are centered at this time we are expanding our efforts to work with more landowners on the southwest slope that is in closer to proximity to u s water supply sources and reservoirs however like i said you know it's important to protect what remains the bits and pieces that are left before we can expand we'll have over seven thousand acres fenced by two thousand and seventeen and the only a small staff of seven is is taking this on so mahalo to my crew for coming today i have a new new team some new team members so i'm really thankful they came to support me and take some time out of the mountain to come and see what others are doing and  also to represent us today so these guys are on the front lines they're giving up time with their families their friends their home responsibilities they're risking their risking their lives we fly in helicopters repelling it's dangerous situations and their dedication and commitment is very honorable we also have a newly formalized executive committee i'm very thankful for the members  dell they're going to help provide leadership and oversight to organization it's been long awaited some highlights from the past year we have done some organizational restructuring new hiring we've partnered with a lot of other organizations go a lot of a and especially groups on hawaii island and i was trying to learn from their experiences there are others who have more experience and restoration and are dealing with similar challenges so we're trying to learn as much as we can from the other groups and we've made some important rare plant discoveries and also invasive species discoveries these guys like i said are our eyes on the ground and they're very knowledgeable and they're able to find things that could become a huge huge threat might otherwise go unnoticed we completed a priority invasive species control plants and help focus our efforts over the next five years like i mentioned initiating new some of our invasive species control efforts we focused on prevention in recent years so we're focusing on invasive tree species that threaten forested areas so that's why you see a lot of dots outside the fenced areas that's preventative measures so it's been great working with nick seed collection is one of our biggest efforts right now it's difficult to find seeds we don't have standard season so you have to constantly be vigilant you have to return to sites time and time again in order to collect seeds that are regionally appropriate over the past year we collected over four million seeds nearly five million so trying to get as many many seeds as we can establishing base camps at remote sites as you can see it's hard to in a flat spot to put a tent someplace like new america so we built a platform this was an opportunity for him to work with his father who volunteered and helped design that deck for us so that was a great opportunity protecting bats and seabirds strakes with the tape that we put on the fences to make them more visible we're also trying to do research as much as we can support research and also conduct independent research to monitor the effects of erosion rates of erosion and sedimentation that are happening and how hopefully that will change over time as we read vegetate this area we just completed see the tree climbing training for seed collection working with nick  and one of his partners at the u s forest service so that's a really valuable skill that we're able to utilize we have big plans for the next year we're going to update our management plan work on fire plans or some of our partners are going to work with the state to do bio control the developer outreach program increased our seed collection storage capacity important you mentioned continue conducting vegetation surveys and monitoring to also track and hope to expand our field crew because we have a lot of work to do so quickly challenges dedicated funding it's important to maintain the work needed in areas that are already fence before expanding and that's one of the toughest challenges is dedicated funding to keep keep up with the areas that are already protected helicopter time is now approaching twelve hundred dollars an hour seedlings are also expensive it's a very important part of our restoration if we want to stop things like you version from have we need to do more than twenty five thousand plant and continuing education and training it's important to maintain our staff so again to the county you guys have been outstanding  program manager west a watershed to follow but it moving along our partnership was a little bit of history we were formed in ninety eight thirteen partners fifty thousand acres fall within that landscape and that's actually ten percent of the island just to give you a little scale of perspective we all work together to protect this area in a unified manner we're all about source of water resource protection and protecting the ecological functions of the forests and i can't think of a better example or a picture that shows that connected nature intertwine view of water and the green bird forests on the back of a valley also in part by department of water supply this picture shows the recharge area of west you can see how dependent we are on this landscape this landscape provides water to all of west maui all of central east and south to mckenna seventy seven percent or so department of water supplies source water comes from this landscape either through wells that tap into the landscape that helps to collect this water one hundred seventy rare and endangered species that are found nowhere else on earth and fifty percent of this landscape is critical to the recovery of endangered plants a going on here a lot worthy of protection here's an example some of the native flora or excuse me fauna flora and here's another shot that you've seen just showing how everything is interconnected  landscape is in fact adapted to collecting filtering and slowly releasing water and acting like a giant living sponge we have ferns like in moss from head to toe in this forest at the summit here's wide they do this and monitor the area from helicopters we build fences we maintain databases and we put all of our information in geographic information systems so that we can develop maps and guide our  work we are guided by management plan that we update every five years and today i want to focus on the top two programs that we have but just a quick nod to human activities management that's we task force and help with their planning efforts monitoring is key to informing our efforts we again we protect rare species and we believe in education because we need that in order to sustain the support for the future and the present management coordination we do it all the time that's my job here is the first key sample program number one viral on you control these are the big  players we've been successful in removing most of these issues and i want to show you this map or maps that tell the story more fully when we began in one thousand nine hundred nine in the left hand map this is what the picture looked like and on the right hand map in two thousand and fifteen now now this is the current status and what you really need to focus on is green is good green means that there are no present and you can see a dramatic  difference we've been very successful our partners and our group eliminating this threat we now have twenty two miles of fence that help us accomplish that which protects twenty nine thousand acres of the forest watershed and that represents sixty one percent of this landscape we have this year alone thirteen ungulates removed and all all time low from this even greater sized landscape great success we want to keep it up the other program is invasive we control we are focusing on areas within the red line above twenty eight hundred feet elevation and we focus on the worst bad boys and i want to bring your attention to the lower right which is as a key example species this is what we're dealing with the reason why we are dealing with this because it's known to mongar water threat so again if we look at this landscape green areas are good those are believed to be without we have yellow areas which are under management that's a four thousand acre foot print and we have red areas in which we're trying to basically work for malka and push the species makhaya to keep them from invest in testing the core of the watershed and putting further burden on our water resources so this is one of our big projects an example of a key threat and we're doing this by a multi pronged approach where you were working with people like dr james leary i just saw in the gallery using  ballistic technology to control hard to reach plants on cliff faces from an aerial platform we're also working with dr tracy johnson in the second row trying to use natural enemies to control the species and just like our on the ground efforts can be exemplified by our public involvement we go into the classroom and we bring this issue to the students and they learn about it then we get them out in the field and get them of the land and actually control strawberry guava on the ground such as in areas like way rich and oftentimes people are so thankful for the experience to integrate into the resource and understand what they can do to help our watersheds and we're blessed sometimes even to have a nice in the end thank you very much these are just great examples i appreciate all know mark white he's still around in a part time capacity for now so thank you for having me and thank you for your support over the years the nature conservancy has been a recipient of department of water supply funding actually since  making it almost nine thousand acres so a very large proportion of the east my watershed and this map shows the relationship was like my preserve to the department of water supply infrastructure you can see first of all that the majority of water a day and all the way down to ilo a ditch and the treatment plant at three point six million gallons of water a day so we're really providing a large majority of the water that's going to the department of water supply customers and really really helping to realize the department of water supply mission providing clean water efficiently to customers actually about ten isn't services coming from  itself if you think about it being referred to as a sponge it's holding all this water that is then used when it's needed even in times of drought we don't think twice about putting millions of dollars in maintaining and refurbishing our actual reservoirs like th reservoirs here but some may take it for granted there are real forests reservoir that stores our water and we have to really work on maintaining and protecting the watershed that's directly above these  another infrastructure improvement that we greatly appreciate is the white flume that was just completed a beautiful and remarkable feat of engineering if i may say so and it's actually providing ten percent of the water to country water users and this is directly below my preserve as well so this is a nice graphic provided by the united states geological survey that we work with and that we're very excited that the department of water supply is in it engaging in a long term study to see the hydrological impacts of some of the invasive species to our watershed but this is a good depiction of what we think is happening and what we are going to quantify that is happening but the goal is that our watershed management is going to increase rainfall it's going to increase cloud water interception net precipitation infiltration and ultimately ground water recharge so the work that we do is providing clean water groundwater recharge and helping all of us now we're also going to be just decreasing muddy preserve and thanks to the department of water supply and your support throughout the county we were able to install a three mile fence so the whole yellow area that you see which is directly above the white of my reservoirs and the flume there that's a three mile fence that was not there and for us and for all of the east my watershed partnership area as well this was an open door to pigs and that's coming in and destroying otherwise pristine forests so it was absolutely critical and you guys played a key role in helping to protect this part pristine ecosystem we completed that in march of this year luckily we had some great weather and it's a it's a beautiful fence and then just pointing out another little area a fence that little purple section where using other funding to retrofit and upgrade some fences you hear us talk about fences being up forty eight inches but a lot of these fences now need to become deer proof so we need to increase them make them six feet make them eight feet so we're going to be looking for ways to do that in the future especially here this area so why couldn't i preserve the original is owned by holly allow a ranch so just to the west that is all grazed so lots and lots of deer and cattle and goats this is what that new fence looks like three mile fence it's a really great looking fence and we appreciate your helping that one important point that we all like to make fences are not want require a lot of work a lot of maintenance storms these increasing very intense storms that we have they wreak havoc on our fences we all check our fences regularly say quarterly or so but then we have to do additional fence checks for things like storms this is actually a pretty minor little tree on our new fence it didn't push it down to the ground in which case we would call that a breach where a pig could enter this system likely that didn't happen here but it does happen and then all of us said and you're losing millions of dollars of investments in protecting your ecosystem of course we're protecting them from these bad boys that's a little one but we just captured him on a game camera so we're removing the final pegs from that area that i showed you that use my irrigation parcel down to just a few and the official like my preserve is zero pig zero tolerance is our goal i just want to mention this water hog just because chris didn't get a chance to mention it this is really our priority weed on a lot of you have experienced himalayan gender try not to call it because that makes it sound kind of exotic and something appropriate you know something that people do want to have pat riley our colleague actually  call this toilet brush changer because it looks like a toilet brush and it's very derogatory i have trouble with that anyway so this is what our watershed could look like and this is actually just below  above the way of my pipeline so if we don't take action that's what happens it becomes a monitor understory and so this is what we do we do systematic gender control this is along the leading edge show we can keep the rest of the watershed pristine  ginger we have a systematic treatment we use geographic information systems to analyze it and we go back every four or five years i just want to point out as well we do resource monitoring we work with the plant extinction prevention project and we do some research this man here is actually a hydrological researcher from the university of hawaii who is working with tom so regardless of what happens with the u s g s department of our supply project which we're very excited about we also want to continue to undertake our own research on the impacts of himalayan ginger on the cycle we also conduct community outreach is an excellent venue for us our partners and i do monthly volunteer service trips and just to end on a final note that's very important the department of water supply the county council support you guys have been absolutely instrumental we are able to leverage the funds that you provide almost a one to four ratio with federal state and private monies so it's just key and we really appreciate it and i just want to give a shout out to make a airports here on the west side of which we just started getting funding for it and it's also very key there's headwaters for  is harvested for important agricultural uses so that's a very important watershed area as well the benefits for all of these projects not just take one minute because this really speaks for all of us we're all protecting major str my head waters we're improving groundwater recharge ability we're helping the recovery of endangered species healthy forests means we're adapting to climate change we're engaging the community in increasing awareness where we're leveraging funds and we're hoping to quantify the return on investment of our watershed management so with that please come join us on a hike and if i can whine as your colleague robert there is a department of water supply did we love to take you out my h water resource committee and of course thank you councilman for real i want to think all the water should partnership for sharing the great work we do we all do similar work but really what i'm here to do is to do three things and the first thing is the first thing is i i want to thank the county council i want to really thank you for your leadership you already you don't just talk the walk you fund the walk and this is such important work for all of us that live in my we county i mean we all talk about water and how important it is you fun to walk and i want to thank you for that and i speak on behalf of all the water should partnerships this is the east  can you sorry without i mean more to receive significant funding from the council and it you are you are are your leadership enable you i consider you are unable to that's a key word for me because without your support without your funding there's a lot of things we wouldn't be able to do i wanted to and the last thing i wanted to point out is i want to show you some results we do try to measure what we and in twenty thirteen they came out with their summary and you can see two thousand and nine those less than one percent vegetation cover in this area that they're doing this study in two thousand and thirteen over seventy five percent beds cover  sedimentation from six tons over six tons per year from this one two acre plot to to less than two tons per year and i wanted to show you this is how their site looked like in two thousand and seven this is how the site looks like today now the thing i used to have this argument with the u s g s guy his name is jim jacoby a well known with all the partnership and he did the vegetation study and he would argue with me and i he said after week after you guys reduced the goats you guys got to do native plantings i told him you know this place is so bad any vegetation is better than no vegetation to begin but to our surprise seventy five percent of the vegetation coming back is native vegetation and we're so thrilled we laugh at each other now because of that so i wanted to say that last year you guys increase funding specifically to re install the u s g s stream gauging system and that is key to really that is the missing link to the data that show the river system increasing full decreasing sedimentation increasing water quality and it's a key station because it's it's really the right next to your artesian well and so i'm encourage you and i get from all the partnerships i want to really encourage you to come touch and feel and see what we do and then you know you will you really realize ha much you have become leaders and neighbors to protect this watershed i mean you can come there and tap yourself on the back and you'll be able to see the details of what we do but come see it be more than happy to take any of you points actually the blue is the pampas grass and the purple is the my county oh so you can see we were both within the watershed boundaries and then outside as well we also work on a host of other species because we do work island wide so we're very focused on keeping start at the upper right residential was a great decline over the years but i have to be honest with you we just recently had a resident call us up and say i think i have pampas grass and so you see that going down to like two or three difference in our forested watershed getting pampas out of their west now it goes up and down because it is so chala that two thousand and thirteen that went up because we had whether we were able to get into some of those places that the clouds squares or management units or what we used to try to cover with our aerial control we no longer have the funding to do that so we had to get much more strategic the blue on the westernmost stretch is spot is on a ranch properties crosshatch area is what we call the core and the bad orange blob kind of circling around the left of it is what we have is our containment strategy for keeping the plants out of the core keeping them from spreading out of the core because we just can't do the core right now we don't have the funding to do that dr james leary using the technology and if you want an invitation to showing those he's called that my cornea patch network those areas that are what we call outlier infestations that we've been focusing efforts on using that h p t approach and this is also from that same publication that shows a very nice dk function over time that we're making the difference we have seen dramatic decreases in the plants in those areas this shows the purple lines or aerial control around again that blue areas the core area and it's a little hard to see but basically you don't see dots close to you see the dots close to the core but not more malka and that shows that our strategy is being effective at maui and especially hats off to the department of water supply i really appreciate their leadership especially in pushing all of us to be a little more science based we are science based but working with u s g s to really demonstrate the efficacy   no longer than ten minutes so if you get back soon or thank you meeting is now in recess the meeting will please come back i'd like to think the presenters for a wonderful amount of you showed me all the things that i used to think are fire and police have dangerous jobs another group that has pretty much what i would consider an extremely dangerous job to do not to again she was to deal i know your job is dangerous also department of water the money we put into this programs that make sure and ensures that water flows from that tap and all the county workers that work because they were out there last night i was coming back from mom was at eleven o'clock and they were out there doing repairs on the system a lot on the highway and as eleven o'clock at night that's not a great time to be working on the highway so all you know is a number of things that you see but thank you very very much for what you've done what you continue to do and what you will do in the future and it's our charge to find monies to continue to help you and maybe one of those tell the public also that maybe in the near future we might look at some kind of assessment to continue to fund this i think that's something we need to have we want to shift assessment on our water bills so these these folks can continue to do the job in a larger and higher profile than they are able to do right now so i want to thank you i guess the question of cos  water partnerships and recently we've budgeted monies to provide for travel so staff from partnerships throughout hawaii can go to other partnerships to experience different something some kind of effort in that respect when it comes to purchasing products that all of you basically use the same in the same manner i think that all of us spend a lot of time trying to get more if you could please when you answer a question and see on the ground and learn from other people's experiences and a lot of innovation comes out of the challenges we face the guys on the ground who are always thinking about how to maximize our efficiency how to do the job better because we're all struggling to make  so i think a lot of creativity comes from within each group and we don't often get to see each other you know we don't often get to go to the conservation conference travels expensive in that type of thing so taking the time to meet on the ground and on the field sites i think is really important and then also you know we've been able to work with partnership a lot it to take on bigger bigger challenges like some of the some of those problems and also to piggyback on things like helicopter time i think just increasing the communication between everybody has been really effective and helps with more efficient yeah i'm dan eisenberg and  leveraging larger work forces for specific projects and i know that we're always when we do have the rare opportunity to work together we give a lot of thought into where it can we  you know just increasing from six staff members to twelve staff members so you really really can leverage leverage that effort and at the same time you do just find the innovative little a lot of times they're subtle you know like a different tool somebody uses for a job that we've never thought of or something somebody had fabricated that was really simple you know there's just a lot of  a lot of benefit sometimes unexpected comes from that kind of effort it to answer your question on how can we be more efficient and so forth we gathered some core seeds for example for dudley this morning when he came over my crew and his crew went down and grass if i walk over there i'm using staff time i'm going to tramp i'm going to get more weeds we're going to identify it call miss adam and his crew they'll fly in they'll get that you know and so there's always this continuous network that we not necessarily always demonstrating to the public but is always happening between the partners you know and that's whether it be to staff i had a staff member who's now an east molly so we train them and the just just a quick comment i rely on networking to be able to function efficiently and the you know network of co as sites you know relies on access to native forests and plantations era wise on partners to to to install sites and also you know there has to be this cooperated effort  particularly with you know pull my car and rio we've gotten a lot of traction and we you know look forward to you know building relationships with other members of the partnership as you know needs and i have an example that you can visualize actual saving them money and efficiency you have to add at least one hour of helicopter time to everything we do because from the time the helicopter because we don't when one of us is bringing the helicopter over two or three other conservation and schedules work the same time so instead of one entity paying for the shuttle time you know three or four entities are paying are divvying up that shuttle time important because i've heard it and it's been in my career doubletime mode does have an exceptional ability to work together and really it's been our secret weapon you know instead of competition and ugliness we all try to find come in things to work on and it works it helps us to stretch the dollars we have and get things done and again we're hearing that today and it's really wonderful goodness that was still week for us to take care of all the generations we are working for so my question i guess would be to what i heard i think was from the saying it can be costly regeneration of our native i guess the heart would so how do we cut costs and yet still be able to reforest you talked about like you would have and also previous work by other folks on the west side and i have a pretty good population there the windward collection i spoke of in my presentation and that we have three sites on when we're on this side on the windward side of the rift zone at the forest reserve and cool with division of forestry and then also at holly ocular ranch so those are three seed seed farms specific to those those those regions are building another farm that  we we try to be fairly specific by by eco regions then i screen them for will the susceptible families we don't use the tolerant families go into our plantings the oldest planting now is a little over two years old so we anticipate being able to distribute seed from those plantings in maybe another two or three years however there are mother trees that we know are resistant that we can go back to and collect from and we have done that and that's where the seed the seedlings that he has are we are planted on the west side so we track these fairly closely we're using as a model because we think we can get koa right then the other species will you know so we do have a suite of other native trees species we're interested in however we don't have enough money or time right now to that's also leveraged by a division of forestry money state of wide division of forestry money which is also leveraged by federal dollars from the u s for service in two programs one is forest health protection to deal with the will to issue and also state private forestry so that sort of funding the funding mechanism for the well and again thank you for you know your support over the years and it's gotten to the point where we really think we're maybe you know be able to do this set up starting to do it at a landscape level we need it biodiversity you know a lot of times when we look at our family unit which is the most important family member we never asked that question every family members in point that when you lose any family member the whole o it's you know and that's same thing with the forests you know and still to answer your question is how can we help everybody here in the part is all try to do site specific seed and we've which we call the plant extinction prevention program open a who is the molly new recording nater what you go on is very different from what's going on and we can all know that and so we've done it in with lions  arboretum and the bishop museum and so forth what we do with any of those species that have fifty or less they got them in tissue culture in a freezer refrigeration we know how much exactly  store them along we can store them and the data is all there what we don't have is quantity of large uncommon unthreatened if you have fifty you're not on the list we need a warehouse of seat west molly state specific seat sure no problem that doesn't exist and so on the ember forth we had we've been all seen this and everybody's got their own little bottles and things in  storage the department of interior put together a plan believe it or not twenty years ago the state and nobody in hawaii funded the program the closest we got to it was the plant material federally funded for call of a restoration of fire happened they lost several thousand acres the state went there and said he can i get some people there are told no you need act of congress this is only fo planting all the plants for restoration projects the state also a natural reserve program and what not but the problem and the challenge here is who is going to fund it and everybody wants it to happen for us the bigger bigger threat now is this thing like wrap it all here die back they lost six thousand acres overnight and when i say overnight like in just a couple years you know that means if i do everything right that we're seeing we're doing and this comes over and it wipes out the entire preserve in a couple years so we've already started to collect seeds started put in because we're looking over there like whole man department of agriculture and thanks to his skin everybody in this is of course the big island to not ship do we prepare for this among our current funding projects and i think that's something that we really need to consider to get all of these different in a place that is accessible but one thing that i brought up at that meeting was that there needs to be an m o you when you after you've collected the people start to have ownership like i collected all their opportunity to take the lead because we've made up a good portion of the efforts partners have been doing it on smaller individual scales thank you very much members i think we've got  he was mentioning was the watershed partnerships program from the state we received thirty thousand last year than we did last year despite the fact that our operations have grown tremendously the acres that were managing the fences that were funded water catch systems to back up the ability to water plantings and sites of the storage that we need for seeds for our base charge for our tools our equipment you know where we're constantly piecing together things and working together and collaborating as much as we can meanwhile were given a lot a lot of responsibility and we're kind of doing it right with like little backpacks in ziploc bags and we need  sanitary equipment and storage facilities and places to base our operations from that these crews and so we're just seeing the scale and costs of our growing and the funding being cut the legislative level it's been cut and it's just it's tight there are a lot of good operations going on and that's competitive which that's a good thing but i think i think our government is in investing enough and then i'm also going to have to seek more private sources of funding and i think we need more things like endowments dedicated funding to these this type of work because it can't be dependent on a bad year are some legislators are not not agreeing that this is important right now so it's just a constant battle i'm constantly looking for grants like we are so funding source in the state in the state of hawaii government that was dedicated to water should conservation and the large fund was created in one thousand nine hundred two i believe and what it did was it created this fund where part of convinced tax a portion of the come in was put into this fund and various you know conservation programs could draw from this fund so the fund was there it didn't have to be budget by the legislature it was there is a dedicated fund that got taken away from us last year and that hit all of us big time because not we got a fight with everybody else for the budget whereas before it to either get that back or get something similar because i think we you know if if we were agreeable to that we might be able to push for i mean we know we are providing a majority of the funds for compared to everybody and i think all of us know how important it is to get funding so i can speak for my colleagues everybody that would help you know we talked about on several slides that you're having some issues with private property owners especially the group in your efforts especially for invasive species are you having issues with or how big are the issues with getting into private property and  people who say it's a beautiful plant i love it in my landscape it's not against the law you can't kill it and so we have different strategies that we employ we sometimes we wait for them to get  agriculture to send them a letter and we may we haven't done this but if you're willing we may ask you if it's in your district to contact we could provide you with a draft letter to say won't you help we are here because we're spending taxpayer dollars in this one plant or this infested site with drugs is continuing to spread elsewhere so it is a problem from a a from the statute that you mentioned it gives the department of agriculture in theory the theory gives them the authority to go in and control in order to do that they have to they have to get a warrant they can't just randomly knock on the door they have to go through a process it falls pampas grass falls very low on their priority for doing something like that the few times they've done it have been something like a snake or a dangerous and some other dangerous reptile so it's one that they're loath to employ from a political perspective i would say as well as a resource perspective the there are existing examples elsewhere in the country where a jurisdiction adopts a list of invasive species which should be short and clearly justifiable and if it's discovered on a property owner's site they can be notified by the county or the state you have this you need to take care of it something like akin to a nuisance situation where you have a fire hazard or abandoned vehicles that might be leaking unhealthy chemicals so the landowners notified they have the opportunity to address it or they may also have the opportunity to work with an organisation like  misc to let us come to it if they don't then the jurisdiction says we're going to control it and you are going to pay for it and it will be added to your property tax bill so there are there are examples of that that exist against the law why wouldn't we do something like that saying if this is an invasive species possession and we already have that with snakes right looks nice but probably i suspect i would certainly support that but i suspect he would bump into the jurisdiction authority since that is clearly regulated by the department of agriculture said the  all of your efforts is is a huge inspiration to others and they all were looking to me because i was the a representing how do we do it how does that happen how you know and i basically i think  so they're like wow how can we do that and i'll tell you i like i said so extremely honored and proud to have gone there but basically you we are broken into different committees in order to point idea is that too urgent you know put forward some great policies for me and i think towards it i think across the board because mark fox was there he was our chairman in our committee which is a natural resources committee and we came up with some ideas but it was about the funding you know it's about diversifying it was about dedication finding and if it dies and it doesn't get through fourteen percent of funding can be cut out of the state but you know deal in are and all those people that you try to leverage from and try to get work in collaboration with will no longer be there of the upper watersheds in this these are case studies i think there is also another project area on the big island in hawaii but and it's aimed toward protecting greeks but we are starting to draw attention with them and a lot of them really are we don't control different things they are positive they want to help and yet it seems to be the lead in somebody always has to be the lead everybody wants to follow but somebody is always going to be the lead and so we appreciate it it seemed to go off really well you know suzanne help right with with the department  for them to make financial contributions it's also something we haven't asked for a lot honestly because where you know we feel like were there to provide them the incentive and and take on this type of land management that they don't necessarily have the capacity for so we're bringing their they're allowing us access they're giving us based space that type of assistance occasionally  of a bulldozer something like that but it is difficult for them to make financial contributions department and homelands is one of our landowners they don't have a natural resources management division so they don't really have an in house ability there they're giving us limited funding but it has been difficult for us to to get or seek or ask those types of landowners for contributions other than resources conservancy this is just kind of moving off of that just because the nature conservancy is not the watershed partnership doesn't have the private ownership private landowners situation i just want to touch on what you're talking about going to aloha plus challenge and thank you for representing maui am our county and that and i want to go back to vice chair victory knows point about collaboration in relation to that and i think some of you folks know and i've heard of the maori conservation alliance but i want to bring it up what the conservation alliance is is a group of watershed and conservation leaders throughout maori county that get together and we get together to talk about moving a large priorities forward together leveraging each other's work and knowledge and innovation so really getting at the heart of what we're talking about earlier and we just recently had a strategic planning retreat that was three days and we've outlined our steps and our priorities in going forward for the next three to five years one of those is bio security so getting at the invasive species that are coming in to both the state and into maui in particular and then another one is just maui island planning so we're looking at what each of us is doing and where we're working and what our priorities are and identifying the gaps and how we can leverage or forces together to tackle hot spot areas that need help and need assistance assistance and also to work on funding as well so we're constantly thinking about this funding issue and how we can  get more funding together our cross our organizations and i really like ed's idea of challenging the state and saying you need it's time for you to step up to the plate here and follow my county's leadership so the other thing that my conservation diversity festival that's coming to maui the week before the congress in september two thousand and sixteen and all of us up here as part of the maui conservation alliance we've who eat up and we're going to be teaching or having a forum biosecurity half day we're going to be having international leaders here in maui county it's an amazing opportunity for all of us so we hope to be really highlighting maui county as a leader talking about bio security learning from those folks and also taking a lot of those folks out into the field our various areas and having them see a county special resources so that's one great example of collaboration that we've started and are following up on and twenty sixteen so i just want to point that out start to get off  work on private land and they don't just allow us access but many of them especially in the area have made huge contributions in terms of either doing work themselves as other folks has pointed out those using their bulldozers in a store gear etc so so we do have a lot of very supportive partners and some of them also make private donations and that is something that we will be expanding on in the next year trying to really develop that as a source of funding yeah i think you and never wanted to give the idea that we want to let the state off the hook in any  point this workshop was to their question is how do we get and their own board of water supply and what have you how do we get them to kick in and help like you folks do here and deal in our i mean they get one percent of collective lead and thank you for bringing up the point that there is an ongoing group and alliance happening collaborative efforts but again i mean we are the the role models and it's very inspiring to be and thank you because remember now five years ago i started bringing you in and we've this is one of the i mean if you've been in front of this council this doesn't happen in the other counties maybe there's got to be some work done in that respect too so you know i'm not trying to bring them in we added note i think you're absolutely right i just like to add my thanks to all of you for the work that you do i got a question for mr dudley and that is it seems that the ohia wilt is much more of a gracious than the ok i guess i have to say my name again just for the record so a couple things one is nick dudley why eg research center the answer it well i don't so my observation is is that  t we have with the oio will although there is the mechanism is similar they're both vascular wilting diseases where the bass bascule or system of the plant is compromised so range of geneticists and other experts for over over a decade and we now understand it quite well and we have a strategy which seems to be pretty effective so when i first started planting co op our success rate was about thirty percent on sites high hazard sites  we can go back to those same high hazard sites with screen material that we know is is tolerant or resistant and switch the quit switch the the equation around and have seventy percent or more survival and so now with that said we have  found i don't want to turn this into a lecture but there's a there's a disease triangle where you have the pathogen the host and the correct environmental conditions so where that disease triangle exists the hazard level will be high and quite possibly you know how serato syste got to the big island and why it was in fact being you know the trees and is you know that that is forensic pathology it'll take a wild to you know ferret all that out and i'm a we may never know i mean potentially owing to you know perhaps several you know the higher frequency of of hurricane events and it's  or maybe it blew in as a spore from somewhere i mean there's a related acacia disease in southeast asia but you know with that said they're they're not they're not related so i am not all that close to the fire in terms of the oh he'll wilt disease but what i do know about it is that there is likely resistance that exists among native ohia populations but i quite a low frequency and i do know the path follett is that is working on it in hilo and at this point because it's kind of early days the infection you know was first or the outbreak was identified maybe a year year and a half ago they had these screening programs and  oh developing will resist no he is something that will probably have you know be lagging but is on the books and so again it'll it'll be a function right now it's more of a work you know over a decade into managing coa willed and we're only you know we're early we're early in this stage is we've identified it we know it's a problem we put some quarantine regulations in place and my guess is that my guess is that eventually there will be a a selection program or a breeding program that will  wasn't resistance somewhere among the populations in hawaii but it's still you know it's still something i'm monitoring it but we're woods kind of a wait and see and as far as i know there is no program in place currently speak directly to the situations that are existing not here anymore he called people throughout the state and again we're very fortunate we have a direct connection unfortunately the rest of the state doesn't and so we've got to figure out how to put it together and work so what i'll do is we've got about twenty minutes all shal i will let each culture member ask one question and if you have it for a specific person you know or want to should i would you know go with that that way we give everybody one more chance  to me in my opinion looking at the streams and how much water we have it seems like it's more about an infrastructure problem you know getting the water to the users rather than the lack of water but i'm not a water engineer and so i'm not really a share because having had conversations with dave it seems to be kind of my perception at least at this point so i'm not sure you know what the water meter issue how to go about  had much time to talk you know when we when we drive to hana for community meetings and or for wherever we notice you know you've got my company and everything up there that we can't really see but what we really can see what appears to be very invasive is the bamboo is that something that you're going to think about doing is it is it that detrimental not invasive but is that tremendous i just happened to notice it's just getting worse and worse where his feeling was trying to say because i'm looking at all documented opening day of ledges coming up in january so i guess there's going to this is going to be put back onto the table to discuss and perhaps there could be a risk of having things you know taken out  no match so hopefully that doesn't happen but again we can have alliances and i seniors out there in ourselves as mr carroll mentioned i'm very happy to hear we can go up and do our advocacy work too on behalf of ourselves and  you put our heads together make sure that we have that we're all in the same page with that unified voice going up to that state legend and saying this is what we need and we all collectively you know are seeing the same thing in not being so spread i don't have a question is why i say again thanks to everyone here and of course to our as you mentioned we have great dialogue with our water department and that's how we're you know educated understand the importance of the funding going to our partnerships here tax goes into the fund so when when real estate sales are really good you know it provides more funds and i would see in a really good year you know could be up as high as four amounts and if the nars fund collected a lot of revenues you pretty much get what you propose but like this year because it's not part of the fund and it's in the budget a lot of us to give you an example in the past we got as high as you know hundred fifty thousand dollars a year but now we're down two hundred thousand dollars a year just to give you an example so that's that's like one third less than in the past  and i also add about federal funding because that was that was raised i know you don't have control over that but the amount of funding we get from federal agencies range from about six hundred twenty five million and then it's now at about one hundred seventy thousand state this year the state watershed partnership program had two point one million dollars available to be dispersed throughout watershed program statewide i think is probably one of the most disproportionately because we are successful more than that and i think everyone here has benefited greatly because we do have the leveraging dollars from the county to other environmental issues is one zero point one seven i mean it stands up pretty good to the states and we've always stood out i mean from the time i entered this call so we were always doing much more than the state and we've continued to stay there and so i'm proud to say that but again i would like to and maybe this is something you can put down as a question for letter to the other boards of water supply and maybe mr taylor can help me with this one what do they put in for all i want to thank each one of you individuals and your staff that came and sat through much of the meeting thank you very very much thank you for what you do each and every day putting your life on the line getting out there and doing what i call the getting the boots on the ground and getting the job done and we need to thank you all of you as the leaders you inspire them your dare you know like us following the pavement looking for the monies to make sure that