well the water resources committee please come to order good morning today is wednesday october fifth twenty sixteen and it's approximately nine o'clock be pending on which clock you're looking at i'd like to make some introductions this morning but before i start i'd like to remind everyone if you would please put your cell phones or anything you have that makes noise on the silent mode we would appreciate that because we would like not to have interruptions during our meeting and cheer is ticking to i'm ok i'd like to introduce the voting members of this committee this morning i have my vice chair michael vick to reno good morning we ha mister mr white i'm sure who will be doing us at some point from the administration this morning we have with us our director of water supply dave participating in a tech tennis championship and so we're hoping for the best for her so we're watching facebook carefully to see how she does in wishing her the all the best in our district offices we have  thank you very much ladies we'll be back to you shortly members we have two items on our agenda today our first i don't relate to the recent storm activity our second item relates to the contested case hearings pending before the state commission on water resource management we will begin this morning by taking public testimony testimony will be limited to the i don't is on our agenda today if you wish to testify please sign up at the desk located in the eighth floor lobby or at one of the district offices listed on the agenda testimony will be limited to three minutes and upon request another minute  at three minutes the light will turn yellow and at four minutes the light grid if you are still talking at the four minute mark i will kindly ask you to stop when testifying state your name and who you are representing if it's anyone besides yourself or group we have established a connection to the district offices to be fair we will rotate through each of the sites will first check with the district offices on our office don do you have anyone wishing to testify what we think you've done in the a office denise do you have many one wishing to testify thank you denise in them ok office do you have anyone wishing to testify you so at this point we will take the testimony of the folks that are registered here in the us in the chamber this will in bring give you would take care of calling the testifiers yes thank you madam chair our first person to sign up in the chamber to testify is stacy sills last council members i'm coming to you today it's not something i would normally do but for the past five years i've documented the weather geoengineering that happens on maui and i don't know if you know what happened on that day i realize that it is something you can't really talk about in the but it is happening globally there is no dispute so i've documented it and i documented what happened on this day and we were bombed by air assault downburst i have the have the proof the documentation i videoed it you can see that we had downbursts that day they were they were exploding bombs first they did a first round over maui and then they did the second one there are no clouds in the sky and now you see these explosions now i've posted this on facebook i've sent it to you gladys in your facebook and you just need to use your own eyes you don't need anyone to tell you scientifically that there were no clouds and then all of a sudden this exploded they cause the damage that is up in our each valley today and i'm not sure what the private agenda is or if somebody has a governmental wish to reach change or river or i don't know these things all i know is what i saw what i've documented are islands were attacked and you should not be aware that we are being attacked i've written a sixteen page letter to our mayor with no response from him and he just won't even acknowledge that this is going on but the fact is go outside and look in our skies today and you're going to see other aerosols being sprayed in our skies aluminum barium strontium coal ash and you guys need to know what your leaders in expect you to tell me what i need to do to make a change in our community of the air around us this is ridiculous let's just talk about it don't just stick your head in the sand for goodness sakes get out there make a difference it's polluting our skies it's causing alzheimers dementia and it's poisoning our air water soil and our food please take a look at the video go to my facebook i have over five hundred videos documenting this global engineering around the world it's there right now they just post michel this morning the hurricane that's going on there they're increasing they're causing damage insurance companies pay for these things i don't know what the what the whole you know weird thing is that it's being done i just can see what's happening with my own eyes you can use use you need to use your own eyes discern for yourself what's going on don't listen to the scientists because it's l b s and we're being attacked and our white people have been attacked many times before this they just never reported it when they were protesting on monica they bombed that  protest with two huge you notice that they closed down in july the hottest week they closed down mana care for a blizzard hello look at it ask yourself is that is that normal a blizzard in the middle of july while our people are protesting come online help me out please tell me what to do where to go and look at the information for yourself just look at doesn't hurt anything for goodness sakes that's that's my message and i don't know where you can guide me but you need to know this is happening and they are attacking our islands they're attacking globally it's a serious issue thank you very much members thank you this will the big thank you chair the final person signed up in the chamber to have supplied is rosemary robbins she will be testifying on both items introduce your white who is with us thank you one inch or go ahead rosemary ok president robin's concerned citizen this is relative to both of the items on the agenda today and i did go through the materials on both of those that are up on the seventh floor just some notes about that it seems like it's in the contested case hearings a lot of time extensions canceled meetings postponed meetings one parties withdrawal then reinstatement as a party in the contested case hearing proceedings briefs re if we do it right the first time we don't have to go to court forever spend a fortune and months years wasted on not stepping up to the facts that are available to us in our in process with other sciences coming along so i have with me this morning i hope it's going to be a reminder from the she see snow come to life the land written by a former county council member from key hay and a gifted photographer so when we're feeling very despondent about what we're going to be handling in she has taken the opportunity i'm talking about michelle anderson has taken the opportunity to in the state legislature back when and so they have come together and have put out this wonderful wonderful serene there's hope out there folks variety don't let this just sit in the library treat yourself to being able to go through these are pictures that michelle took and then worked with other people in putting book together they're real they weren't from an artist's description so please keep that goal in mind the mission statement of having h appreciate it for what they're doing and let's stop what's happening that's contrary to all the goodness that we've been gifted with second book his  out a book twenty fifteen put out by the county it's got all sorts of statistics in here and inspirational perhaps  oh my gosh look out perhaps for some of these statistics that them they would be able to read and we all know with statistics you can get them to say pretty much whatever you want when they start going beyond the phase of experienced we lived through it we know that it comes up about you can't fool all of the people all of the time so when people are reading this be appreciative of the good stuff that's in there  because of the stuff that's in there when you know it's contrary to what you're reading but we just had presented to us here so these are both from the library so they are available if you have a card if not get a card there and just feel better about the fact that better days are coming on a quick personal note i was in on the thirteenth of september and when i put the window down from the air conditioning to be able to experience the real life that was there i was nearly deafened by the sound of the river coming down and i looked out and saw all these people that were pulling up into that parking lot that had  license plates that were rental cars and so i have to say when i got out of my own car i was holding on to it and wave hello to the folks and they said what's all that noise right so i said well it's not like this all the time but i have to tell you i'm here as a concerned citizen having a salad and watching this and i'm leaving and we've got a river that's going beyond what people thought it was going to be you're here and there's only one way out of this valley feel free to follow this car and get back in my car were similar and they were so the grace of god i got out of there just in time because that was land absorbing what was coming up over the banks and subsequently dropped off so no matter how good a swimmer you are you're not going to be able to go against that sort of force of nature it's they are we need to recognize it we need to prevent anything further from that and we need to do a good job at it knowledge and what it really is so i thank you very much thank you very much members they need to clarify th seeing no thank you very much up this well and the next person signed up to testify w r six five sorry parentheses five the condition of ground water sources as we know the department of water is still asking for water conservation in many parts of maui because of  the impact of the storm on the river and i would hope that whatever action happens from this point on comes with the input of the oh a that have been directly and adversely impacted by this and not just from the businesses that are involved and have interest in the water i believe that many of these one hundred they have knowledge of how the river used to flow and i think they did the diversions that are there currently have been a part of the problem that has not just not the storm but all of these things that have brought this perfect storm addition to what the army corps of engineers has basically signed off on on this plan to rehabilitate the stream and as for the other issue you are douched six parentheses six the updated on the contested case hearings these extended timelines on both of these cases i hope that the council will impress that they should produce actual water use and a needs of the entities a lot of people say that each cns and what they might do with the land afterwards is a big consideration and yes it is but let's not look at restricting where the water goes and how it flows based supposition of what they might do and what might happen with those lands let's see a concrete plan before we start making concrete plans with the water for the rest of us and i'd also like to mention that t worm's attempt at finding the do it one hundred based on certain criteria i think of criteria are going to be applied to one hundred it should be applied across the board even to those bigger entities that perhaps have have skirted regulations or requirements are keeping up to date with the data that we need to make sure that the water is used efficiently we do have enough water on the island but we do need to make sure that not one or to testify is lucy in the name kim you can be really yes she will be followed by summer star situation in our community which on your agenda is a discussion of the contested cases our community is part of the contested case for the simple reason that we have no public water supply and so if we don't have something flowing in the streams where or something coming out of the sky then we don't have too many choices there's no county pipes and of course so we understand why the county is concerned that it has adequate access to water resources to serve its citizens because we have exactly the same concerns in our community our community has a traditional lots of archaeological sites date back to the fourteenth hundred to before we know that cultivation was very extensive from all the descriptions in the mahalia land claims and we know that's the case because water was once plentiful there so we know these streams did flow at one time and that  they were really designed you know to carry water as i said because we have no public water supply we've been very concerned about water for many years and in two thousand one community was part of a contested case that continues to this day now a little bit about our area the state has a license that permits an unlimited amount of water to be taken from the eight streams that serve our community this is just our whole willow community this is not on a pole this is not the next to this is not one of the next communities surrounding us it's just our community we have eight streams there we politely ask that who might have some restoration and so that's what the contested case is about so i think a lot of times folks don't realize no one in these communities is saying like every single stream is is going to be restored there is a lot of water being left for the county for a and b to be shared the the three streams that are subject to restoration it was decided that there was going to be complete restoration in in two of those streams in april of this year now no studies have ever been done of exactly how much water in our stream so we're kind of like shooting in the dark to see you know what what would or could be there and all of them are diverted multiple times for different elevations have diversions our stream is a mile and a half long and it is diverted nine times in its tributaries and its main branches  that one and a half miles so our streams were the first to be diverted from back in the eight hundred seventy s that's when the for the first ditch that a and b did ran to hole it ran the little bit past the area so we've been  kind of diverted for a long time there are no watershed management plans that cover our area no access is provided to community residents through locked gates to go up and maintain the stream channels or the watersheds ourselves for you know about thirty or forty years and b s contracts up to the one nine hundred eighty s allowed them to take about the entire pretty much the majority of the stream flow for three dollars and ninety five cents for each million gallons now it's the price has gone up it's now about fifteen dollars a day for each million allums that it's taken from our stream so this two streams that will be restored that's great the other streams are still going to your system so what we're asking is you know there was this recommendation that the flows will be restored  permanently to our stream on a hoyo you can read may i have a minute to conclude it q but that was in april it is october so far what has happened is one gate on one diversion b and we believe this kind of been dumped in one a pole which doesn't really serve any purpose but we believe that's kind of what's happening so we would like to see the county sort of step up and be part of the management of this system we would like to see the county advocate for the communities to have a keyed up access to the gates so that they could help care for the watershed because the county is benefiting from the whole system it needs to step up and help the whole system actually testifying on the second item that's ok yes ok and particularly because there's a no that says that there are executive meetings anticipated to discuss issues pertaining to the powers duties and privileges of the county with regards this and my for not being totally organized i heard about this last minute but i'm wondering if the county has jurisdiction in this might be a question that you could just ask or counsel that i may not get answered at this moment but does the county have jurisdiction to suspend or revoke permits from army corps i'm not sure if this layout is applicable for me to get an answer right now but it might be worth asking core counsel because it seems as though the permit for the local water that was granted by army corps actually runs contrary to the findings by sea worm and that seems very problematic and i understand it's an emergency situation and that mr chumley actually went through the permitting process whereas a lot of the other residents weren't able to do that so they may be differences there as well  and additionally what is the role of the county of sea worm and of army corps to recognize that this is taking place with parties that are still in an open lawsuit an open legal case all of these kind of open ended questions seem to have been irresponsible ignored by the army corps and because this is in our backyard i'm wondering what the county council is able to do to either inform the army corps so that they can change their opinion to revoke their permit or circumvent the army corps and suspend their revoke the permit themselves thank you thank you very much members and you need to clarify the prayers my tomorrow foundation i think there's been some excellent testimony this morning i thought that summer starr had some really good points i would just like to encourage you folks as you deliberate today to consider that what is going on in the state in the our stream right now in my opinion is uncoordinated  everybody's looking out for their property which is understandable and they need to do that but the thing about streams is that they move on their own and it takes a stream expert i've been trying to find someone who has experience in what's called flu feel more from geomorphology because if people are doing work upstream it can affect things downstream the streams don't want to be straight  from the pictures i've seen they're being straight and right now and they will start to meander again with unpredictable consequences so there are people who have expertise in this area and just i think it would just be wise for the county to at least reach out to like the corps of engineers or the u s g s and see if they have someone who can be an expert and prescribe solutions for this kind of work th going on in the stream my fear is that a lot of the work that's being done is going to be undone with the next big storm and we'll have continued  geomorphologist thank you thank you very much members clarify the testimony saying no thank you is there anyone else that wants to testify would you please come down sorry about that i just walked in last minute and i didn't wasn't sure if you had as my name is lynn scott i come from one a poem a color farmer there i'm also a plaintiff in the east my want case it says on your paperwork that you're receiving an update and i just wasn't sure if you had received the call worms plan on what they're planning to do i was given this in june and we took a tour up in to the mountains to see their steps of what they're doing and when they're going to do it and going about doing it and i was just wondering if you had a copy i'm sure they we could receive a copy and somebody may have a copy but i do not have one and you're going to live with it will make copies for the members thank you lynn thank you for being here proceed please thank you that's all oh thank you bank is there anyone else in the gallery who would like to testify please turn in your paperwork appears to be so come on down mr star the things that we were doing on the water commission that i really thought was important and necessary statewide was we had become begun on a process of creating a non water plant which was for central central awhile the original pilot and worked with worked with a consultant who had to do a lot of community outreach and a lot of scientific work in central la who area and the idea was to take a clean sheet of paper and draw non particle water systems which make up an maoi say somewhere between eighty eighty five percent of the of the water that's been developed and to find the highest and most reasonable and beneficial use for the different sources types and transmission systems for water and storage and to try to create a plan looking down the road toward the future on how the surface water and also some of ground water could best be utilized if it wasn't separated up into different parts of water that were controlled by different entities and they results which were starting to come back or were really informative it turned out that they were in many ways much more efficient ways of using the water so that the needs of nature the needs of traditional and customary users parian users as well as the domestic system which as a priority and protected use as well can best be taken care of and i was hoping that that process would extend to maui and co  island and it never kind of moved in that direction but if the maui county council on our water department were to want to help look down the road it might  try to help create a framework of working with the water commission and working with other entities to move forward this type of non part of our water planning since we do seem to be at a turning point as far as the use of water on maui i think this would be a very good time to at least try discussing and possibly moving forward because things are going to change over the next decades and if we are able to have that be a beneficial change or to the greatest possible example to the best we can thank you thank you members any need for the testimony many of the points that i would bring up but i did want to do a couple things and one was was just speak from the perspective of a resident of valley our our family i know being on both sides the river and also being you know somewhat in at least part of everything that's gone on since the since the september thirteenth floods there and we've had great help by by the council and by the county so i thank you for thank you for that from water supply to public works and the council in the mayor's office and what i what i hear and i think i do share a lot of the concerns of the previous testifiers and one thing that we know we are running on is concurrent tracks of emergency work and then also thinking about what must be done in the future and the army corps allowed you know certain exempt activities to go on removal of debris and shoring up of properties to save significant property loss is i believe their their terminology and we've had help with that  from from the county so thank you for that one thing we've not yet begun discussing which is is revealing itself in this meeting and through the testimony is what we really do moving forward and valley is a community like like any other it's kind of like a family we don't all agree we don't all get along necessarily but we all are neighbors and i think that there is an op to unity for the council or for the county to spearhead the efforts to create and we can give it a really long confusing government acronym some kind of integrated watershed management program that involves the my local water co at the top of the watershed the state park keep money by the county parks all of the landowners along the stream and then and then the county itself public works water department as that's all affected by the county flood control feeds a lot of the island and so it would be nice to figure out a way to have a greater discussion also about what we do moving forward involving the brightest minds in the business of perma culture of hydro geo morphology or whatever the the thing is those those smart people that can really help us design the way to not only design what should be done but really prevent any future damage as much as possible mitigate damage from occurring with with the correct information and that can only be done sort of on a large scale in my opinion and involving bringing all parties to the table in a calm cooperative manner so that's just something i haven't heard has been discussed yet that i think could add great value to how as a community deals with what is going on now and also moving into the future thank you chair thank you council thank you very much please come back to order this one being do we have any other the next person signed up to testify i dash six six and everything that's happening right now water i think we can agree that these cases are going to set precedents for other issues that may come up you know throughout our county and perhaps throughout the state so i just kind of wanted to take this time council that i think now more than ever it's really critical that the county perhaps pressure the state to once and for all put the public trust in the hands of the public and that that could mediate a lot of the issues going on with this i can say that in law you know we are we're dealing with some water issues now and this practice of allowing private water companies to of control this resource so in pursuant to what's happening on maui and what's been going on this past ten years with water it just kind of wanted to take this opportunity or perhaps encourage the county to pressure the state and you know put our foot down once and for all and that's but the water back into the hands of the public thank you i think you members in a need to clarify that saying no thank you  and the time it's like and so basically you know i wanted to talk a little bit about you know just the fact that what i'm seeing in the valley of know and the work that's being done first and foremost respect and ultimate sense is you know sensitivity to the residents and what they're going through is of the utmost importance but the work that's being done by well local water company on the stream the realignment of the stream to bring water back into the diversion with the appropriate measures is  is a major issue that we have i'm concerned about the native stream life and the habitat i'm concerned about the fact that we've gone through thirteen years of what you know without any type of regulatory oversight by either the colony this state army corps of engineers our hope is that we would work closely with all of these regulatory agencies including yourself as well as one of the cool water company to create a system that would benefit both the stream and off stream users what is happening now and what we're seeing is that we're going back to priests september thirteenth which is capture all water to release one thousand yards later or thousand feet later scuse me and i'm concerned that you know the hope was that there would be an approach and i called a collaborative approach by all parties whereby we could recreate a system again that would benefit all including the stream including off stream users as well as  you know cooling on our users and aquatic habitat and muck with the makai connectivity the work has already commenced on monday from what i've seen personally this work is almost near finished most of the diversion has already been cleared out and you know i'd i'd like to see some support and some greater leadership and oversight by the county even though this is not necessary their jurisdiction but what is going on up in the valley it just all i can see is just it just breaks my heart i understand the stream is never going to be the same and i think the natural state and what it's in again this is just my personal  natural state of the stream and i feel for everybody that needs to to to take care of and protect their i know and that's one thing but in terms of a private corporation and duty to just have a rubber stamp and just go up into the valley and do as they please just baffles me in two thousand and sixteen i don't know if you folks have had opportunity go up there and see what's going on i would encourage you to reach out into the community reach out to camille members reach out to either cool water company to ask some hard questions about what's going on because i understand the counties are water and i don't think anybody has an issue with that but the way in which this is going on is just it's on acceptable it's unacceptable and i would i would expect more from all regulatory agencies to have greater oversight over the you thank you any further questions saying none thank you very much miss mohun brink anyone else who doesn't appear to be anyone else anyone else members seeing no one coming forward and nobody in the district offices without objection chair would like to close public testimony for today so ordered members unless you ask i'm going to keep going ok today our first item is and this apparently has been broadened considerably from what i had intended when i put this on the agenda today is the condition of a grown water source at that yellow tunnel surface water treatment plant and other facilities are six parenthesis per and this is five as you are aware the recent storm activity caused damage county wide i have asked mr taylor to provide us with an update on repair work as it relates to his department his department before you is a copy of a recent press release relating to water conservation in certain areas as a result of the recent storm with that i'd like to turn the floor over to him to provide us with an update but i do want to assure those that have come today that you know this serendipitous we had planned to get an update on the court cases today and as most of you know our last meeting was right after the event had occurred and mr taylor was gracious enough to give us a quick report on the floor of what he had seen and what we were kind of kind of dealing with well it's been a while now and we have a better assessment you know at that point they couldn't even get there to look because the water was too high and there was debris everywhere and whatever so i had asked him if he would please do this for us today to reassure the public that we are doing everything we can to make sure that everything is ok with the water that we need so that we can continue to use water for the details i'm going to use rough numbers in my discussion today so just to be in the ballpark so the department of water supply supplies about thirty five million gallons a day to maui county residents about twenty five million of that is to central and south maui our budget this year is just under one hundred million dollars c a p n operations when we look back at the impacts of this storm we're going to see that probably for a couple of months we were impacted by about three million gallons a day so three million gallons a day short and we're going to look back and say cost is probably just under a million dollars to fix it so you know the kind of bookends on this this event is going to cause a call it a ten percent water shortage for a couple of months and cost about a million dollars i think you all know in our budget even our electricity budget fluctuates a few million dollars just based on demand so this is a manageable event for us it's not a we don't anticipate any long term problems it's a short duration event within our ability to manage from both staff and financing i say that just to put it in perspective i know on friday you're going to hear a budget amendment for the rest of the county valley state park millions of dollars of damage to pani why park millions of dollars of damage public works and environmental management millions of dollars of debris cleanup again ours is relatively small compared to theirs i'm sure you've heard a lot of the residents have had major damage the department of water supply again relatively minor manageable we expect to be fully back in operation hopefully by the end of this month possibly a little bit longer see to go back and then you know fill in some of the details that leads to that there are three water sources we use from valley a well and keep on the y a tunnel in keep on the y that goes through tank where the new treatment plant is being built in addition while luke water company has a diversion in why the river that through there or distribution system we end up taking a million and a half gallons of that for the treatment plant so let me talk first about the tunnel and the well so what happened that night i think it was the night of the twelfth or morning of the thirteenth i think that's tuesday monitoring system went dark when it got washed away the last reading was about three billion gallons a day so it's roughly thirty times its normal flow and that was the event that happened the riverbed itself is about three times two to three times as wide as it was it's washed out wagon embankments trees etc so the tunnel let me first talk about the tunnel tunnels owned by well luca water company but we own the pipe that comes from the tunnel in there was in the embankment pani why park into our ultraviolet isn't factions estimate that's all owned by us so that was buried in an embankment that embankment washed away washed away our pipe about two hundred fifty feet of our pipe washed away that washed away river water flowed into that system damaged our ultraviolet disinfection system and entered into the rest of our water system so this cause us to immediately shut that off to keep dirty water from getting into our system because we knew that water got into our system we issued and because the whole water systems interconnected in pressurized we didn't know the expense of it so we immediately ordered a boil water notice for everyone all the way down to macand everyone who was on that system in hindsight it turns out that based on our testing that dirty water didn't go very far most of our testing came out negative and within a couple of days we had lifted  line down the valley road did get a lot of dirt and muck in it that remained completely shut down for another couple of days want to be so the well was never damaged so the water valley residents didn't have any water service for about two days then their water service got turned on i think i was probably thursday and then their boil water notice lasted till the following monday until we finally got that system cleaned out so the current status is everyone on the elderly road is being served only by this well there's no secondary source i think that well as tripped out twice and it's because there's no tank every time that well trips out everybody on that system immediately loses pressure building the pressure in the in the pipeline so there is only one water source everyone on the out of the road has been told to just be prepared that water service can go any time until we get the tunnel back on line ok so the tunnel generates about a million and a half gallons of water a day two hundred fifty or so feet of pipe got washed out we have crews in right now replacing that piece of pipe so they are literally there as we speak we hope to have that system back on line by the end of this month we need to replace two hundred fifty feet of pipe in casing concrete and the ultra violet is infection system was damaged so between these two this is going to be probably five six hundred thousand dollars by the time we're finished with that replacement so we hope to have that back on line i said by the end of the month the other system the weather cool water company diversion the herbs on the testifiers talked about that is the diversion in the river that through a distribution system ends up the water ends up on really this side of the mountain just below old by the quites that's where we take some of the water there about another million and a half gallons a day so a million now from the tunnel million after the plant we take a million and a half from this diversion and from this distribution system e l surface water treatment the l surface water treatment plant that system is also down right now because we don't have enough water to operate it so why do cool water company at the same time that we went in from our army corps of engineers permit to replace our pipe in the stream bed in the riverbed while the water company also applied for a permit with the army corps of engineers to do very mediation work to get the diversion functional both those their was granted we were told our work was exempt and while the cool water companies work is proceeding as is ours as of this week we're kind of right on top of each other so we're coordinating that work to not be in each other's way once the diversion  functional we will then have water back to our equal treatment plant will turn that back on it's ready to run and we will then be back to our full production mode where that three million gallons were short will be  restored we have no costs relative to the weather cool water company work that's something they're doing so that's what's going on in in eco on the other side this is about storm damage we also had some issues on the west side so there was a we don't know diversion just below the line a little high school in the valley that provides water for our treatment plant that also was filled with rubble we had heavy equipment in for a little over a week and that is now fully functional so these are the reasons why residents in those two areas were asked to conserve water because our production ability was short because of these events the cost on the west side is probably going to be between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars due to the heavy equipment cost removing all of that so we also had some overtime with flushing out our lab techs and all this kind of stuff to get the boil water notice thing taken care of so all of that together am hoping to be back to full production by the end of october could take a little longer based on weather and logistics if these things are off to the side of the road this would have been about a week's worth of work but all of the work is happening in a riverbed is very inaccessible we have helicopters flying in and out of cetera so it's not very difficult work is just difficult to access so we anticipate being out of this hopefully the end of the month maybe a little longer for a little less than a million dollars  some lessons learned one of these messaging we're in my twenty five or so years here we really struggled lately with messaging because you just go back twenty years everyone listen to the radio and there was the m news and that's and if you could hit those two things and ninety percent of the people were informed so now we're putting out press releases we're good trying to get on the radio the maui news we're on social media and still a lot of people say oh i never knew and so we're sort of in this in this place in history where everyone is getting their news from different sources and we're really struggling to reach people so you know we're on the way we have our website we're answering phones we're trying to tell  people you know no matter what number they ring people know how to answer it still our phone lines are jammed we are really struggling with messaging because it's very hard to find any one place to contact everyone and we're we're doing messaging in a dozen different places and still a lot of people saying hey no one told me so that is one lesson learned we have some ideas to try to make that a little better that will keep working towards working with civil defense the other big the other big takeaway that i was going to bring up and i really appreciate by says scheduling us so i can share this message and we are in the middle of hurricane season and you've all heard the messaging one hundred times have five days of food five days of water be prepared for five days without electricity so we had a couple of days where water was on you just had to boil it power was on the stores were open the number of people who called my office and called me personally about this crisis that they couldn't handle and some of these were some pretty large entities the it seems that our messaging of being ready for an instantaneous outage of electricity  water food is not being heard by the public because a two day boil water notice should really of not of been a crisis in the middle of hurricane season i live on the elderly road i didn't have any water for two days and it wasn't really a had you know five more days of boil water and it wasn't a problem the fact that so many people are so unprepared shows me that the public needs to take a little more action to be ready during hurricane season this can happen anytime so again back to my overall conclusion a relatively manageable financial hit it relatively manageable operational hit we expect no long term damage we expect to be back online fully within the next month or so there are some things some projects we're working on that got bumped because we're in the beginning of the fiscal year will hopefully catch up same time we're at the end of the f y sixteen c i p eighteen month period which means there's a couple of projects that we had to pull engineers off work to do this and we're probably lapsed some c a p money and either ask for an f y seventeen budget amendment or back in f y eighteen because we just couldn't get to it in time so again no global problems but we have these local issues that took all of our attention and there are some carryover impacts to other work that had to get pumped so madam chair that's my  status report to be more than happy to answer any questions i think thank you very much mr taylor members any questions mr taylor yes mr victory no thank you first of all i'd like to compliment the department i was a bit of a first couple of days of the disaster and the want to be part i mean personnel were up there working very diligently trying to curb and correct the problems and some of it was unmanageable at that point but they really worked hard the side of the road it's only in some very dangerous areas that they have to access and this makes it very difficult for them and who put them puts themselves in harm's way and i seen specifically some of these areas and so i want to thank them second and the people that have spoken today i think they all agree that we need to continue to work together and try to find good solutions for the future so that this doesn't happen but let me remind everybody  something it's a one in one hundred year storm you know it was a perfect storm everything went wrong that could have gone wrong and i could see where the debris was exciting down the mountain and having a landslide divert the water into torrents that we had never seen in in our lifetime and people like mr the warden of those who have lived up there for seventy eighty has they had never seen such a disastrous water flow so i think we're at a point right now we can as a group understand and thank mr taylor and the and his department for what they've done we need to continue to work together we need to continue to cooperate you need to continue to fear the public as they speak to taylor and  the rest but i think right now i leave it in their hands because they're the experts all i can say is we can monitor and i have been used to date of the like see my phone number on its own but i have tried to keep in touch and even with many of the residents trying my best to make sure everybody's working together to find good solutions that we all can live with and not of this diversion and making changes in the river itself although the river itself has been changed there's no question about that and like one testifies that maybe that's the natural flow for and from in the past i don't know i was i haven't been around that long to know that so the other there's one question i have for you mr taylor you're mentioning about the in and especially the local water companies intake and i'm very curious have you and why local water company been working together and monitoring what you wanted to what their progression and what they've been able to accomplish and if any major change like some testify and mention that there's been major changes in how they're doing their diversion that was three questions by the way i was going to look go ahead mr green let me say in the we in the week that that happened in the week the week after the original event the rest of that week i was up there a number of times with mr chumbley from my local water company with the deputy director of deal on our first day water commission  are staffing up there with the army corps of engineers there were other ships with the governor we have been working with my local water company with the army corps of engineers with the state water commission all from day one so our are working right next to their crews because our pipeline is a stone's it's a stone's throw but literally almost the same stone right next to their work so we are courting with them on a daily basis we coordinated our army corps of engineer permit applications to make sure that what we were saying we're going to do was coordinated with each other and i think our staff and their staff are coordinating on a daily basis because we're right on top of each other and there's the public being made aware of these these this work together as far as the end result is to get the intake repaired so that we get our three million or whatever amount of one point five you know whatever get gallons of water but is the public being informed on what's going on up there i think this is one of the ways the public is being informed i think there's been newspaper articles because as one of the testifier said there's there's any time there's a disaster there is immediate response and there is long term improvement we are in that immediate response mode and i think on friday when you talk about the road we see this budget amendment for the rest of the work you're going to hear that again and again we are still in just trying to get out of the emergency  the idea of what the long term looks like there have been discussions about that but we're still really focused on just trying to get through this so our goals department water supply is to get the tunnel pipe and u v system working that is ours we need to get that working local water companies get their system working we are probably one of their big customers and we are pushing them when you're going to get this working but that's that's their responsibility as far as messaging  are somebody to coordinate with all the different agencies and i'm assuming that if we do something like that it would be for all the long term solutions you know as anybody coordinating for the emergency right now that is definitely being discussed and just because the a lot of people are going to find this surprising it's going to sound obvious once i said if you look on the tax map you don't see a line where the river is just private property and essentially this is just water running through private property there is no delineation that your property ends here this is the river and there's your property so this river is running through many many people's properties  so it is kind of like the coastline of the ocean right it isn't there isn't one entity that it owns it so the public works is really taking the lead they are most knowledgeable in working with the army corps of engineers because they do so all the time you've got these different entities involved but as far as what was being discussed this idea of having management of the whole stream you know from malcolm mci that is something that have been talking to the army corps of engineers about i am not the leader of that i think i'm not sure who's going to be here on friday to talk about what's going on on the bigger picture but i can assure you that those discussions are happening and there is recognition that this needs to be coordinated that you can't just have one hundred individuals taking care of their little piece of the stream and hope it works so that is certainly recognized and exactly how that comes to fruition i don't know that there's an answer to that yet but that issue is certainly recognized thank you madam chair one really quick question in the mail can of worms i'm not sure you said that this water runs through private property what what's the responsibility of the people who own the private property and whomever has control of the water i am not qualified to answer that i think that's something that is really beyond my knowledge any other burning questions seeing none here would like to thank mr taylor for doing this today you know he was not all that anxious to do this today but i thought it was really important you know he says well everybody watches the news and everybody sees t v and facebook and whatever but i am aware that a lot of people who do not are now are not plugged into their system and they don't know and so this stuff in the store and what's going to happen can i drink my water know how much is it going to cost i'm going to have to pay my money and so i said we need to report and for those that came to testify i want you to understand that what we were here to talk about today was the effect on our drinking water and water that mr taylor has to deal with i understand we have much bigger problems and they're more intense and we're going to be talking about getting to where the river goes and who gets water eventually in all of these things but today i wanted people to understand what had happened to our water system what is being done to fix it and how long it would take and just bare information and i really want to thank mr taylor for bringing us up to date on friday co considering legislation to help pay for all of the repairs and you going to hear a lot more there about exactly what is happening along with the other departments and i think you've made it very clear that other departments are impacted financially much much more in the water department so you'll be hearing some more but i want to thank him very very much for corporate doing this for us today and i want to thank all the testifiers and because we are going to be talking about this some more i have a feeling that it would be best to defer this item with no objections ok so deferred members we're going to take a five minute recess nothing more we have a lot to cover and i know that i'm going to be losing a quorum early today so the let's take five minutes and please come right back the meeting is now in  recess please come back to order thank you very much for that recess i think some of us needed a little bit of a break our second item today is an update on contested case hearings pending before the commission on water resource management and again i want to be very clear that we are here and what has been and agenda is today is just an update on the longstanding cases we are not going to get into discussions of the merits of the cases but we are here to receive an update on the status mr rowley if you would please go ahead we need your mike thank you chair so yeah we the department of water supply is currently involved in four separate contested case hearings before the commission on water resources irrigation company and a portion of which is then delivered to the county of maui department of water supply as far is the cases in front of you i put together a little kind of summary for you guys just so you can follow along in the department of water supply takes takes water from the while loop the river that's delivered to the department by way luke a water company and that system serves approximately one hundred and one thousand different people for the purposes of the foreign of hofstra teams things are a little bit complicated more complicated there than they are in he smelly because in two thousand and eight see warm designated those rivers to be a surface water management area as a result of this designation it basically means that everybody who diverts water from those streams needs to actually go out and get a permit and the rules are a little bit different when it's not a special management area so the amount of water that each person can take is strictly limited is limited by the amount of water that they are granted in their permit and the total amount that can be permuted out is subject to the determination of the in term in stream flow standards that's  and there is quite a bit of discussion about whether the permian should be first and then you know exactly how much will the demand of water need is or if the i fish should be done so you know how much you can get out it became a little bit of a chicken and egg thing ultimately the commission decided that the right course of action was to look at the industry in term in stream flow standards i'm going to refer to that of ifas in case they keep saying then you guys don't know what i'm talking about it's of ecosystems recreation and aesthetic values preserving water quality maintenance of downstream diversions and protection of traditional and customary hawaiian rights that includes fishing gathering and color cultivation amongst other things so in determining that ifas the state determines how much water needs to be left in the stream in order to protect these in stream values and how much water can be taken out without compromising those instrument industry values in the i face case there was a contested case hearing that finished in two thousand and ten but then went up to the hawaii supreme court and the supreme court determined that the worm had not adequately considered several of the values that i just mentioned so it was remanded back to to see worm and a settlement was reached in two thousand and  as part of this settlement the parties agree that the department of water supplies use of up to three point two million gallons a day was reasonable since this two thousand and fourteen settlement  agreement obviously each cns has announced that they are going to be closing their sugar plantation and that's going to have a fairly significant change in the amount of water that's needed and thus the demands on those streams so the commission decided that they were going to reopen the contested case hearing to redetermine the ifas to figure out if there's more water that can be kept in the streams and what the actual demand of taking water out of them is and that contested case hearing that reconvening is set to begin at the towards the end of this year into the beginning of next year so the first component was the i insurance flow standards the second component were the surface water use permit applications and in two thousand and fifteen the commission began to take up consideration of those when determining whether or not a permit should be granted c werman places permits into three categories one is permits based on a permit rights and in a permit right is right that you can show that you that your property had a right to water existing at the time of the great melee there is also existing use permits and that's for people who can show that they were using water at the time of the management area designation which as i said was back in two thousand and eight and new use permits which are for uses of water after two thousand and eight subsequent to the designation under the code a permit rights are afforded the higher priority followed by existing uses and the new use is so currently the department has to permits under consideration one is for existing uses requesting one point seven eight four million gallons a day and the other is for new uses and no one is requesting one point four one six million gallons a day so in determining how they were going to figure out the surface water use permit bifurcated the proceedings and first took up the issue of a permanent rights initial hearings were set and at these hearings they basically asked applicants who were claiming that they had in a permanent right to give documents that there was a right to let the water on their land at the time time of the great mahalla these included land court documents and native and foreign testimonies the partment itself was not claiming an important right so our involvement in that first part of the proceeding was very limited once the provisional recognition of a permanent rights took place the actual issue of permitting came up and that kind of what i've been doing all year there were nearly two hundred applicants that submitted surface water use permit applications and these kind of ran the gambit this included the department of water system and or way local water company as well as well new country estates irrigation system and even included you know small small farms owned by families just just on their on their own lands that evidentiary portion of that concluded i think i believe it was just last week and parties are going to be asked to submit proposed findings of fact in conclusions of law the hearings officer then will then take those under environment in the issued a proposed decision that decision will then go to the commission and the commission will decide whether or not to accept a hearing officers recommendation as far as the timing of that that's that's a bit of anybody's i'll get to in a little bit always a much less complicated procedure we wrapped up in april of last year and we still haven't haven't gotten to that stage yet so that should give you a bit of an idea from e m i and used for distribution of the country's service area and it's also used for non potable water delivery to the cool ag park communities which receive water from this system include  palais who the population that served by this service area is approximately thirty five thousand two hundred fifty one people so as i as i mentioned earlier no via how was designated a special management area the east maui streams have not had that that designation yet so water permit the whole issue of water per mean is unnecessary really the only limitation on the use of water from there were twenty seven streams that had petitions filed for them and at first see where i'm kind of did it as a piecemeal basis however after multiple trips to the supreme court in the intermediate court of appeals and decided to consolidate all twenty seven streams into a single contested case hearing hearings for the ifas for the twenty seven streams concluded on in april of two thousand and fifteen april submitted parties submitted proposed findings of fact in conclusions of law and the hearings officer then issued a proposed decision and after that proposed decision was was given it's supposed to go t he full commission and they make a consideration of it however put out it in term order that basically mandated that eight hundred eighteen million gallons a day that was returned to stream under the hearings officers propose decision however i will say that is part is the hearing officers propose decision the department's use of approximately eight point two million gallons a day was deemed reasonable and it was provided for in the determination of the ifas like in of i see one has decided that they're going to reopen these proceedings to consider the impacts of the closure of each cns on the bands of water in the twenty seven streams that were the subject of the hearing in those hearings the county is going to be pursuing additional water above its eight point two million gallons a day to try and accommodate not only for future growth but to see if we can kind of put it dent in the country water meter priority list by our estimation and by documents that have been submitted not only in this proceeding but in other proceedings the de decrease in demand as a result of each cns stopping sugar operations will easily accommodate those needs and will still allow for a  considerable considerable amount of additional water over the eighteen point two million gallons to be returned to the subject streams and this discussion is scheduled to resume on january ninth of two thousand and seventeen these these should not the the the one that we're dealing with as far as water use permit applications that just that deals with an entitlement to water that doesn't necessarily deal with you know whether or not your diversion is actually connected that you'd actually need to get a separate man to either establish one or redevelop one or that sort of thing it's really at this point just about how much water can be taken out of the stream who's saying that they need it and who ultimately ends up getting that water so it shouldn't it shouldn't have an impact on the amount of water that people are claiming that they need ok thank you very much it was on i turned it off first of all men i'm sure like to think the rule for such a comprehensive overview thank you and i think the public there at least now has on a better understanding of how this has progressed t source we still for the upcountry area manager you know all the water you folks get is from smalley and the rest of the island pretty much outside of west mali is served by the central system so it's very important that we understand  my question to you with all of this you know back and forth beaches closes down and really from what the deputy director of the commission on water  resources has told me and told others where i was going back to square one because that really developed that so is that your understanding right now that with the closing of each cns it really don't care we say east or west really puts us back to square one because now even though they have determined what the usage was to that point it all changes because one of the the biggest user is being taken out of the equation and until they come up with a hopefully be for example we've already submitted all of our information on how much water we use how much water we expect to need in the future and what would be required to fulfill the country water meter list so really when this really opens it's only about what each cns can show that they're going to need going forward and so i wouldn't necessarily say it's starting from square one we are going to have to do a lot of work to get it is going to add some time to it but starting from square one i think is is is  a makes it sound a little worse than it is when there's been a lot of work done that i think is still good and that also includes in the no via ha system we're really we're just at the point of getting permits and at the point of permits you have to be able to prove what your actual need is so as far as us we've proven our actual need you know we show how much water we give out every day how much the customers we have so it shouldn't have a big effect on that it will have a and effect on really how much water goes back into the stream and how much water is available for people to get but that determination again there's already been a lot of work and i don't think it's completely undermined by a by the close it does definitely complicate things but i also think it's important to note that these are in term decisions so they're not permanent and my understanding is if information changes they can always be changed ok thank you for the verification and find me i've noticed that there are many petitioners both in the nearly two hundred and then also  i i didn't see that here in east mali because it's not a special management area they don't they don't need to permit so there's there's no nobody's applied to get off the game and really for the purposes of the park and really there are limitation on how much water they can take out is what ifas is so that's what it is but as that was of much smaller proceeding it really only had four parties it had us it had  new story or from reports from report to report but anyhow those doles decisions still have precedent in the total picture of what we're trying to accomplish here the earlier court  that was partially based on them agreeing to do so but it was also based on order by the commission which all parties agreed with including each cns to return eighteen million gallons a day and i believe part of the reason they did that was because they knew that they were going to have a decrease need ifas that does return that is still is still hasn't been adopted by the full commission and it will probably change are coming right up and i think the public has to understand that this is a very complex but yet it a matter that we take very seriously not only a council in the county but all around because water is the breath of life i mean it is what we live  with no water you can live without electricity you can almost live without food without water you're not going to survive very long so i want to thank mr all for this and the department for this comprehensive overview and i'll let others ask questions thank you as you know there are many cases many numbers many kinds of things thrown at us and every now and then it helps to have someone who is intimately involved with it to come in kind of keep us back as to what's happening where and with the reasons which the recent storm activity of course everyone wants to know well how does this affect the cases and so i want to thank him very very much for presenting for us today and i'd like to again thank the people who came to testify today stay with us as mr victory tuned things changed very quickly you know few weeks ago we were and were going to vote and all of a sudden it's on the front of our desks and so we never know from day to day care would like to thank my members for coming today it's a very busy day there's a lot going on i will have the opportunity finally to tour the damage myself this afternoon and i'm really looking forward to it because i've been reading about it but i understand it's really different when you get to see it i didn't want to run up there because i thought what they really didn't need at that point was people getting in there will be equipment and you know going where they didn't belong so i waited until it was a good time and that they said it would be ok to go so i'll be looking at that this afternoon so i'd like to thank mr taylor