regular meeting of the water resources committee please come to order today is wednesday march second twenty sixteen and it's approximately eight minutes after nine o'clock in the morning first before we begin i'd like to ask everyone to please put your cell phone on a silent mode if you've got one so that we won't be interrupted during our meeting and that's a good memory for me to think we've got it ok and here comes mr cup we said you probably would be joining us welcome thank you all so members we have a we have one minute i don't want our agenda today and that is the water a view of delayed policy water nineteen it's commonly known and as everybody knows as the show me the water bill the committee is in receipt of the following county communication sixteen fifteen from the chair of the committee relating to chapter fourteen put in twelve more we can code in title water availability we also have to second correspondence dated february twenty second tw sixteen from the director of water supply transmitting concerns and suggestions relating to replacing or modifying the water availability policy number three we have correspondents dated february twenty third twenty sixteen from the director of water supply transmitting additional information relating to replace it or modifying the water availability number for we have correspondents dated february twenty four twenty sixteen from presiding officer pro tempore michael vick to reno transmitting a proposed bill and titled a bill for an ordinance rebating to the water availability policy the purpose of this proposed bill is to amend the water availability policy to exempt subdivisions within the century where small we water systems that have entered into a residential workforce housing agreement with the county pursuant to chapter two point nine six i would like to sincerely thank all of the members of the community who have come out to testify or submitted written testimony on this matter you will remember that we had a very large meeting recently in regards to this policy at that time to build it we were considering would have reviewed it but that of course was was didn't make it and so during the prosess we also heard that people would like to have the current policy amended and at that time to cheer said i would be bringing up bringing it up as soon as we could and this is your opportunity our opportunity to take a look at that policy and because we decided to keep it do we want to keep it as it is or do we want to amend it and so that is what we'll be looking at today i also want you today to know that we are not planning and it is on our agenda that we would not take any action today this is a day to look at the policy and to look at the suggestions that are being made listen to your testimony and give everybody time to come back and i plan that will of god willing that we will resume the discussion on this bill right after we get through wit and i think you all know that we are getting very ready to go into a budget session at the end of the month and that during april in the first part of me we will be involved in budget generally during budget we do not have committe meetings unless there is something really urgent because we focus on the budget and so with those remarks public testimony would like to take it now it will be limited to the item on our agenda today if you want to testify please sign up at the desk on the floor lobby or in one of the district offices that are listed on the agenda testimony is limited to three minutes two and a half minutes like will turn yellow in a three  eye please ask you to try and stop as quickly as you can after that or else i would ask you to stop in fairness to everyone we have established a connection to the district officers and to be offices and to be fair we rotate members chair would like to remind you that we're being asked by the folks who handle the technology here that people are having a hard time hearing us so when you ask questions that we talk we only try to testify good morning sherry this is almost there is no one here waiting to testify thank you and the chamber chair our first testifier as alice lee and she will be followed by howard amendments which would allow market rate units tied to a residential workforce housing project an agreement to be exempt from the water availability ordinance as you know the market rate units subsidize the affordable units the water director in his communications is suggested suggesting the county allocate water if a project meets certain strict parameters this is not the answer to creating new water sources and delivery systems this is like trying to solve a serious social problem by adding more layers of red tape to an already over regulated situation the directors says show me the water and we see show us the affordable housing units these do not use the water use and development plan as a basis to revise the water availability or show me the water ordinance that plan is twenty four years old and justifiably so our people are weary and frustrated from waiting so long for workforce housing furthermore that plan will direct developers to create new source near planned or existing county systems theoretically that's fine except developers are going to create a new source where their projects are where they own land this helped or skelter approach to developing new water is not efficient logical or useful in the long run our people want answers and solutions and results not more studies plans and power points we urge  please vote for the proposed amendments on today's agenda thank you very much for your time and attention to this matter a lot thank you very much members any questions for the test any good morning church or committee members my name is our times or i mean a retiree i have not been asked to talk on this issue by any company so i may just representing myself i'm here because of my interest in the affordable housing i talked to a lot of senior see since that's probably because i am a senior citizen but many of them tell me they love their grandchildren they love their children but they wish that they didn't have to always be there in their house within an hour because they can't afford their own house and it's become more and more of a problem and we need to really do something about it in my opinion you know having the individual departments almost said that the housing policy is not right in this case here again there is reference to affordable housing there has to be a comprehensive policy set by this body here and the full commission and the bull by the horns and do it  approach because the state commission of a water resources and management deals with accuracy and that's good the director and the department recognizes that it's not their to look at the source but then on the next page he says any project using more than one hundred twenty thousand gallons per day must provide source adequate to the project but so they can get away from that you know there has to be a clear direction on that they should not be looking at the source because we have too many regulations that intermingle  situation another statement that i have a problem with personally is this is the government projects are exempt from all requirements that sounds very paternalistic to me and it borders urgency that government projects can be exempt from all requirements but then a house for my neighbor's kids and grandkids cannot be exempt from all requirements why is  government structure so much more important then but the taxpayer it also says that hundred percent affordable housing projects are exempt from all requirements you may as well say that no housing projects can be built because that's what happened in the last ten years we had the workforce housing ordinance forty percent had to be affordable housing how many houses were built liston when we need affordable housing this body should the bull by the horns and do something about it not li resource in need to be protected by people because water cannot speak for itself there were many purposes in the case for restoring water to our major streams one of them was to grow food for our ohana particularly kahlo specifically for us there was just a trickle of water in the like a stream so simply we were prevented from growing sustainable crops for col of of calo for our family and computer community for ten years so this background information about water's also important when we consider housing development on maui i oppose this proposal on the floor today and ask you to vote no why resurrect show me the water today which if approved will only allow for uncontrolled development and the freedom to exploit public trust water water is a precious resource proof of long term water availability and sustainability must continue to be the responsibility of any developer before pursuing housing projects and permits for development also the current agreement also already allows for an exemption for development projects with one hundred percent of horrible housing units so that the construction of fordable housing would not be slowed down thus the current show me the water bill and purposes work well the amendment being proposed today conveniently removes the one hundred percent clause as well as provides an exemption to in any residential development that ha a residential workforce housing agreement with the county of maui pursuant to the residential workforce housing policy transcribed this means that all residential developments would be exempt from show me the water therefore if one reads between the lines this tricky word amendment is clearly a devious governmental way to repeal show me the water after cogent another cogent reason to defeat this amendment thus should you vote to approve this amendment show me the water would no longer have any effect on developers as a result the door will be wide open for the their uncontrolled development and freedom to exploit public trust water resources in a few words you will be opening a pandora's box why change what already works for development but this bill stand as it is and for what it was intended vote no members my name is joseph i'm here today representing the west my taxpayers association who for the thirty seven years as has affordable housing on their priority list of the top three and this policy today this nineteen is a really nice thing to see for us we're really happy to see there's some attention be made that will to allow some way to allow an exemption to the  current obstacles for affordable housing a workforce housing if it is exempted from this requirement when it has a reasonable mix of fordable workforce housing with market price housing  so we are very strongly in support of this proposal by a council member a victory no we'd like to see it actually elaborated to include even the h two a one projects that contain a reasonable mix of affordable housing with the market price units seems that there's a lot of people under the idea that one hundred percent affordable housing should be example that i would be with that but it's completely unfeasible for them to be able to make one hundred percent affordable housing with all the costs or requirements associated with infrastructure development and the whole idea what is affordable i think everybody uses the term workforce housing now because las vegas right now with her husband trying to find a house that they can afford they've grew up here all their lives but are tired of living with mom you know grandma grampa and they they can't afford a house here they've been waiting for the goma village project for the resources and i am also born and raised in line so i'm very familiar with what's going on in line and i'm here again for the third time to urge you to not repeal or amend the show me the water if any amendments be made i ask that you make it stronger as you know we have mentioned time and time again about this bill is it's so important for us to protect our water resources it's very valuable and you know i i just can't reiterate how important it is to protect our water resources and you know i'm hearing a lot from developers about oh you know or they can build their projects or you know w me it's like then you're not a developer from we need to develop ors for molly that think about the future of our resources for kiki because we depend on that we're in a critical time big changes need to be made and i think that right now is an important time for us to take a progressive approach truly being good stewards is and that is making the show me the water bill if anything stronger not repealing and i'm completely against  amending what council member victor you know wants to do his amendment i'm completely against that i think you know i think it's the language in there is strong it supports affordable housing let me say that again it supports affordable housing it exempts afford well housing so therefore let's keep it the way it is and let's get developers to come in who will be mindful about the true stewardship o natural resources the protection of our water supply and so again i urge you to please not repeal or amend the show me the water bill mahalo thank you members any questions  considering this morning as i understand it there is a requirement that new subdivisions have at least twenty five percent of the housing reserved for workforce housing who in the proposed bill therefore exempt all new subdivisions in central and west mowing isn't that tantamount to a completely gutting the water availability law for those areas the waters are protected public trust resource guarding this law hardly sounds like an approach designed to protect water in the public interest in fact the only conceivable motivation would be for the benefit of private developers doors and i sat through your hearing on this matter on january sixth we testified and we listened to the other testimony and discussion and we heard builders surge as they're doing today that the water availability law was an impediment to them but what we didn't hear was why this is such an insurmountable obstacle after all we're talking about water not just a public trust resource but probably the single most important public trust resource no water no life isn't it reasonable to ask the great care be taken with it does it make sense to give approval for his subdivision only to determine after it is built that there isn't enough water to support it so please leave this law alone it's fine just the way it is thank you thank you members any need to clarify just any questions saying th yourself and to the committee for continuing your work in this difficult area which we can always see from the testimony it's difficult and for not giving up on finding solutions we are grateful for your constant efforts and i think we should all be grateful to the water availability policy the purpose of the proposed bill is to amend the water availability policy to exempt subdivisions within the central or west my water systems that have entered into a residential workforce housing agreement with the county chapter two point one six million county code there has been testimony that we should wait for the final version of the water used in development plan before taking any action that plan for my understanding has not been formally updated since  hundred two since that date nearly a quarter of a century ago how many more families have become trapped barely able to afford the housing they have working two and three jobs and spending fifty percent or more of their monthly income well they are being pushed toward homelessness families need water they need housing in order to drink the water in madam chair workforce housing and market price housing are linked by county policy in which the sale of market priced homes subsidizes the affordable home prices it is inconsistent with existing county policy to give the affordable housing in a project access to water and then to deny it to a larger project of which the affordable housing is a part if the market priced homes cannot get water then they cannot be built and sold and there is no subsidy for the  affordable housing which would also not get built previous testifiers in this meeting on this issue have vision a long list of questions they want answered before any action to open this window for affordable housing takes place what they really want are more regulations more reports and more hearings and that means no action as this committee knows we are in a crisis and real people are feeling the pain they cannot wait another twenty four years before action action like justice has been too long denied is action that does not occur it is really an issue of justice for working families for mowing residents for the thousands of hardworking taxpaying mowing residents who are suffering every day without decent affordable housing thank you again for your work and for allowing me to testify before you on this story thank you members any need for  good morning good morning chair members of the council on the water committee my name is cologne robinson i am a project manager speaking on behalf of stanford car development testifying in support of this proposed bill w r nineteen affordable housing is most efficiently achieved through the mix of affordable and market units by implementing reasonable ratios of affordable and market housing as a condition of exemption from the water availability policy the council would affect more affordable housing not less as it stands the difficulty in developing one hundred percent affordable housing projects makes most element unfeasible furthermore when you create a market unit someone on the lower rung of the housing ladder has the ability to climb into that market unit creating more affordable housing the urgency to solve the affordable housing issue is pressing as you know there's a fourteen hundred unit per year deficit for amending the policy as council member victory no proposed with the exception of one suggestion would help meet the housing crisis we face today developers have two avenues for creating affordable housing projects we county code two point vice statute two zero one age two one h allows governing agencies to grant exemptions to developers from certain codes on a case by case basis making affordable housing more feasible for the developer both of these laws require agreements with the county since there are a number of near shovel ready projects intitled under two a one h that could deliver affordable and market units in one to two years including our own home a village in the hina i suggest and urge you to consider including an exemption in the proposed bill to include two zero one eight projects and in and in addition as a solution in your budget hearings i also urge that you provide funding for the water department to hire more engineers so we can continue to build out source transmission storage style of life there and another point we want to make is the lived members i represent land use research foundation i'm the executive director we are watershed partners were responsible for saving the watersh creating water we've done that for hundreds of years but name a schools is one of our members so water is very important to us and for those of you may not know the public trust doctrine one of the hate to see it but the water some people use to wash the car in their driveway that's public trust doctrine domestic use i don't like it i don't like when people you know shoot down their cars but hey it's domestic use so that's  we talking about the other thing is you see this map all of you have this map maui's sustainable yield four hundred twenty seven million gallons of the forty four hundred twenty seven how much do we use david taylor can tell you that there are to compel you our current project to water use thirty to forty million gallons of the thirty to forty million gallons of the i didn't make up this map the commission for water resource management  main points housing crisis there's a housing crisis there's a housing crisis and this bill would allow more housing to be built not only affordable housing but market housing let me explain it this way ok if twenty five percent affordable why you need this seventy five percent market ok so the government's going to force you to build crawlers at below cost in some below cost you don't have to make up the money either way so that's the first point this will have  passing and if people think the this policy help posing i saw or heard some testimony three three affordable housing units both three housing units built since this went into effect does that make sense know second very simple this bill does not change the current basic water service application process all it does is it allows housing projects to stand in line like everybody else level playing field help us solve the water director said shoot no they wouldn't give you forty one beaches of regulations right so the bottom line take eight years to do it this law went into effect eight years ago as a stopgap measure so th their plans going it's been eight years it's been eight years under this plan eight years is too long thank you very much if my daughter was going i would own boy i would suppose already it's many years ok thank you  any deviation from that and their housing problem where they're affordable or not it is somewhat a different issue i do understand that affordable housing it is necessary in maui however to allow developers and subdivisions to be propping up everywhere on the condition that they donate or they subsidize the affordable housing and it is a big macs and you know it's a  mixed bag of issues therefore is a real problem in maui as it is all over hawaii not my way alone yesterday i just happened to be in honolulu and it is horrible and if we don't do something here we are go end up being like in honolulu believe me nobody wants to live in honolulu especially if you go to the downtown area around king street pensacola avenue is horrible so is that what we head into here in ma we especially in west  we create in ourselves and i think this time with that we must stop and really look at all the conditions where the conditions are water change where the conditions are different structural change then is the time that we should visit this we're still waiting for the other two sections of the line a bypass well as you all know it took twenty seven years to build one and a half miles so how long is going to take for the other two or three miles to all the how many more hundreds of hours of delay are we going to software in the highway can you imagine adding more so the visions to the west my area to the line area it's insanity i was a paul to be honest with you i i guess they got approved a years ago and when the conditions the economic conditions were right then they went forward and i think we're looking at the same situation right now we have not had this conversation for the last few years because nobody was building now that everybody perceives the values are back now and there's a rush of shovel ready developments shovel ready for what the conditions have no change the roads are not in the hospital is not in where we're going our next test fire in the chamber is albert pereira's followed by finished before we came back to this little surprise that we're here but i looked at the proposed amendment and it would exempt virtually all projects addressed by the water availability ordinance so therefore i think it would be almost equivalent to repealing the ordinance and i think it would be really bad idea i'd like to talk a little bit about the public trust  resources it seems from looking at director taylor's proposed amendments that we think that the commission on water resource management can handle things on their own and the department of health can handle things on the and that we we don't really you need to worry but actually the why supreme court talked about the public trust doctrine and said that yes the county does have a role to play specifically  protecting domestic uses protecting ecological functions the needs of the whole and homelands and protecting native hawaiian traditional and customary practices these are all things that are addressed in section fourteen twelve zero five zero and that the director asked to review for engineering reports so those are all good reasons to keep the ordinance and if you're going to think of just throwing the whole thing out i would recommend that you look at that section and ask yourself if those are not important things that we need to protect here in mentally county  tomorrow foundation is working on several community working with several community groups to come up with ideas and ways to work on what we're calling it seems like everybody has this tagline it's called show me the housing so but that's what's important we don't think that amending the show me the water bill is the solution because it puts our water resources at risk and there's no sense in building housing if then everybody is going to have to go on drought restrictions so this keeps developers accountable and it also keeps the county from having to come in and pay for subdivisions that don't have any offspring i think it's pretty sad to come in here today my first time to raise chambers and hear everybody laugh about this subject somebody making jokes about their daughter and not being married and stuff i think this is a very serious subject actually excluded the twenty five percent of fordable housing from their project so obviously this is not something that's set in stone for these people and not enforced enough  look at our ocean look at the ecosystem that we we destroyed by disconnecting our rivers from authenticity and yet we want to put it into houses our reefs are dying our fish disappear in everything oceans it's very sad to see that we want to amend this bill to give these people to come over here with the money to get these houses built for them so that they can stay here for one generation and disappear on the next you know as people that are fighting for these rights to be protected are not ones that would leave the next generations were the ones that will stay here for the next seven the next fourteen for the next thirty generations so i stand testimony you mentioned a part in regards to a meeting you that attended and that whoever was there is meeting claim that they are found a loophole of some sort to be exempted from the twenty five percent for the housing can you elaborate on that is a project that's happening in the last remaining open area in a way that i am also against their archaeological sites there this thirty are archaeological some something thirty over thirty archaeological sites there and they're looking to destroy over half in only keep seven of the archaeological sites apart and we can visit these archaeological sites only under the time they needed to put affordable housing in their project but come to find out there is no affordable housing in the project the project has not been anywhere close to anything that anybody any locals can afford and to me good morning good morning good morning chaired by a good morning members of the committee my name is lee c n d nay i'm testifying as a private individual you know we've heard a lot of stuff today we've heard that we have  four hundred twenty six million gallons of water you know we hear a lot of broad statements that we absolutely have to have the market price or we can never build any affordable housing i just think that we should drill down and get the facts about this you know three hundred million gallons of this four hundred twenty six million is in east maui it's in very inaccessible areas we don't even know if it's there because it may be that the streams the streams are connected to the the underground aquifers may be that the diversions of the stream are pretty taking what would be in the awkward for we don't really know so ok let's put that in the we don't know and we should find out more column affordable housing how do we used to get affordable housing well we had mayors who went and talked to people who had land very inexpensive land and be a land behind sea brewer and they said look you want to do some development we need you to put aside land that we can find people who will build houses affordable and hundreds and hundreds of affordable houses were built many of which are still occupied by our local families the only problem was they only had to remain affordable for ten years so we did this one time subsidy we got a lot of people into housing and then they got to make a profit on them and i guess that's good but then we have to start all over and repeat that cycle again so you know to have some other people come here who represented you know entities that have the land that could offer land reasonably for affordable housing but still have to do this well we have to sell seventy five percent at this market rate which you know let's just be honest the market rate here now that's been this inflated rate the rate that was here in the one nine hundred seventy s it's not even the rate it was here in the one nine hundred eighty s when i bought my place i mean you could buy something for a couple hundred thousand dollars then and you know you could afford to get in debt but it's like now it's don't live here let's just be honest so we're saying let's make sure that we just give the green light to housing for people who don't live here in order that maybe our people will get some little crumbs here because we can't figure out any other way to do it we can't figure out any people who might be willing to build houses that people can actually afford without huge amounts of subsidies we just can't figure that out i don't know i don't think we should give up on that on that train of thought i think we should work harder to figure it out just amending this bill i mean basically every you have every every development has a an agreement i believe the mckenna resort was referred to if i might elucidate they have bought a house in credit through mr darling who was the previous owner mr darling paid for housing credits there for and because he paid at the fifty percent level god forbid that was so terrible  they now have plenty of credits to take care of their twenty five percent requirements for a long time to come so we'll have thirty two million dollars condos and you know they've already paid their you know what it was twelve thousand dollars each or or twenty thousand dollars each for their affordable unit thank you thank you i don't think we're ready to amend this bill thank you you need to you know that money was paid with the anticipation of another project happening it didn't happen so when the the land of mckenna went bankrupt those affordable housing credits were an asset and they went along with it and so that meant that you know a tremendous number of units were already covered because the percentage dropped by half so that meant the money went a lot further so it was a good deal somebody thank you and also chair for that good head and also in relation to i think m r sustainable yield map of our island you pointed out that majority of that four hundred twenty seven m g d unknown perhaps in the east side where do you feel there is good potential i guess for tapping into some of that so that's a good point that you mean i appreciate that well you know we really need to understand our awkward first better these numbers that are on that map are guesstimates and the water commission that that made the map is very clear about that they say the level of certainty and most of those awkward first is three which means that not much is known about them so for instance the south maui awkward for has a sustainable yield of eleven million gallons a day is this possible water i think there is one potable well in that awkward for and most of the wells have been drilled with the hope of being potable or not so should we really say yeah that eleven million goes in our in our column probably our best  future water supply is just what we paid a consultant you know half a million dollars to come up with we use aggressive conservation we use some stream water resources as they come on line we space out wells in we have some wells in in haiku area for to beef up the upcountry system you know a well or two although there's always expensive to pump because they're higher elevation wells and west maui we find a few locations in west mallee but you know what one allude did is learn to live within their means they've got very aggressive about their water conservation and their their water demand has stayed flat while their population has grown think i think that we just have a lot of social engineering and good planning to do and we can live within our water means maybe we want to send pipes all the way to in the heat but there is a well and that he us trying to find out what yes i think it's good to you know u s g s they did do a study on the area in ninety eight ninety nine and they they proposed to study for the for but i read the design it's not going to tell us what we need to know so you know i advised them that they should just do a different design because the places they were looking were not going to tell us much about the whole block over they won't tell us about one little segment of good morning chaired by certain members of the water resources committee my name is diane shimizu and i'm testifying on behalf of all moly a nonprofit entity that advocates for workforce housing for our residents i'm testifying on w thousand specifically the proposed bill for an ordinance relating to the water availability policy the proposed bill exams all residential subdivisions in central and west maui from show me the water if the subdivided is entered into a residential workforce housing agreement with the county this bill leaves all of the require a mentor of can she bring the microphone close to share of regular hard come hard to figure this bill leaves all of the requirements of the water availability policy in place except instead of only exempting residential projects with one hundred percent affordable units it would exempt the market rate units as well why would we want to do this because affordable housing is most efficiently achieved through a mix of affordable and market units and if the financial obstacles of show me the water are placed on the market units then the affordable units cannot be built it's just not financially feasible for developers to build affordable workforce housing if the market units are not there to subsidize the cost of the affordable homes even if the bill would exempt a residential subdivision from show me the water only to get twenty five percent and workforce housing units isn't it better to get twenty five percent the nor affordable homes that all but where will this water come from shouldn't why are the and stanford cars go home of the alleged one h project in the hina be forced to pay for and show a long term reliable source of water for the market priced units not if there is water available according to the state commission on water resource management management molly island sustainable yield is more than adequate to serve molly's current and future water needs and according to information from the department of water supply within the next five years subdivision applies for its building permit the water determines that there is an insufficient amount of water for the project the water director has the authority to deny the permit it's understandable that the council board to file the repeal of the water availability policy until the water use and development plan is updated it's also understandable that the water director would want to consider other ways to allocate and ration water yes chair the final person signed up to testify in the chamber is pros mary robbins the morning everybody good morning i didn't get a chance to read the materials that were cited from last month at the end of the month february twenty second twenty third coming from the department of water  but i have a long history of dealing with the problems that we've had and i also used to live there and i'm sympathetic to what people are saying has happened there i was delayed an extra day coming back from there last month because water infrastructure that hadn't been kept up and getting to the airport was a zoo there's everything was closed off  only had to do something about the water situation heard testimony this morning and prior to that about water being a public trust and we know those of us who received water bill that it says on every one of them water by which all things find life tell that to the people in flint michigan tell that to the people up country mali who became part of a required very first required element in getting money from the united states general level and to be able to address the contaminants lead and other contaminants is exactly the way that the e p a wrote that up alexa stroh's as being the director who wrote that up that was written here on maui they went after and put all the money supposedly into the lead situation and was doing precious little about the other contaminants by contrast to what needed to have been done and that where hearing a lot of history i would like who writes the history would like to be able to join in the chorus of people out here on maui who are saying what is the ratio of affordable and market value of houses that were built before and since the show me the water bill was enacted is the difference between opinions and information we're talking about  which meant means complete and accurate could and should be available to all talking about a fraction before this  action on this according to the agenda that is out here today we need to make sure we need to make sure that we don't do anything to put another foot in the mouth about i'm sure would like to ask if there is anyone in the gallery who would like to testify that hasn't already testified i see somebody else in the podium people work with you thank you you for being here always appreciate your testimony and regards to on a probably twenty twenty and you mentioned there's some i guess areas designated for affordable and is that you so members without objection i'd like to close public testimony no objections so ordered members were going to take a quick break and then a regular morning break and certainly will be taking a close look at it as you know we will not be making decisions today and it is the tears intend that this meeting will be concluded to eleven thirty because there are several appointments that some of us have that we have to make share their shared their views again today i submitted a rough proposal of what really what the department is recommending about a new approach the reason comes down i think to the key words in the water availability ordinance which are verification of long term reliable capacity and i give you two definitions that you could interpret that either way the long term reliable capacity for long term reliable supply of water i think are the exact  you realize that every drop of stream water or every groundwater source needs some sort of technology to use you realize that raw water needs technology so long as there's enough raw water there is a long term reliable supply of water so you can take the position that if you look at desalination for example of course there's a long term reliable supply of water for everything so you could interpret the same of course there's the answer is always yes if you looked at it and said can we guarantee that at your property line when you get a subdivision we will guarantee when ever you build even if it's fifty years later we will guarantee that we have capacity for you well the answer to that question is always going to be no  can we guarantee something so long in advance so the root of i think the difficulty we have with the show me the water bill starts with this term long term reliable supply of water that doesn't have a clear definition so what i did in my letter is i tried to come up with really some mathematical definitions of what that means and that's the root of what i tried to write saying we recognize that we only have a limited supply of them for sure after we saw in our meeting i think a month ago when we showed you a pipe chart of all the water used on maui versus how much the department of water supply generates we're just a small user so we can't possibly be the only water supplier to all people we are we also know that  far far outweighs the look at the local infrastructure so there's some of the aspect of first come first served so what we try to do with this bill is really look at an infrastructure of ail ability concept to say is we have plenty of infrastructure capability you know take all you want as that gets a little tighter looking ten years ahead we've got to scale it back and as it gets really tight you know only the little guys should get service it isn't meant what i wrote is not meant to be a  social really just a utility management policy recognizing that we are a small utility on the big island we cannot be all things to all people so let's try to come up with a concept that says we 're going to serve these people we're not going to serve these people here's how we're going to make decisions in a rational way so that's what we tried to do is really take this term long term reliable supply of water and really define it that's what i wrote i intentionally didn't it in any legislative format because i don't think it's ready for that i think we need a sort of philosophical discussion and also i want to point out that the numbers are all placeholders you can make every number in here anywhere between zero and infinity and that would change your policy what template that we can all agree with and then we can argue about the numbers you know a little bit later so again it's trying to be utility management bill it's not trying to be an affordable housing bill or a land use still or any of these other kind of things so that is its intentions and i i hope we can come together and see this is a good template and again start looking at numbers and saying which direction meets our philosophical needs our policy needs and while you're in budget we could go back put th use them and get as much information as we can so that we can be prepared for really in depth discussion after budget mystica thank you madam chair you know one thing that mr turner didn't say and i'm just curious what are your thoughts on this amendment here on this just go right ahead i'm not going to be calling mr taylor let's have a thing here i am concerned as i just noted about the term long term reliable supply of water and i think until we somehow define what that means i think we're going to constantly be in these this dilemma that it's not really even clear what that means and then so what the policy means it's still going to be unclear so i still think that somehow we could combine the two you know something like that could be exempted i think it's my real focus is to define somehow what long term reliable supply means and until we do that i think everything is going to lead us just sort of that seem to lemme ok so you're pretty much pushing the ideas in your february twenty second letter and yes and the ideas in my february twenty second letter could be incorporated into the bill to define long term reliable capacity mean they're not mutually exclusive ok then then on your suggestions here where you say  population projections will you be a stone the general plan that that section there how often are those projections made are you talking about when it's in the general plan and then only you know because i know during the implementation phase which the department is is coming it has an implementation team now so you'd work i'm assuming work closely with them and the population estimates can change i mean they're written in stone right now in the general plan but part of the general plan says keep the estimates you know keep working on the estimate so you were you suggesting that we you know deal with the population projections we have previously shown this committee what i call the supply demand projections these twenty years supply versus demand projections which puts on the same charge the general plan population projections with our projections of how  much capacity will be able to provide i'm just talking about updating those on a regular basis if things have changed will change them if they don't change will even the same but basically using that gap between projected supply and projected demand to make these decisions and i would wait until that is done to do anything with the bill with the very with the water availability bill what's your reaction to that i would go back to this idea of infrastructure rather than water source availability the water use development plant is really a water source big picture allocation plan it is not a department of water supply department of water supply infrastructure capacity plan doesn't talk about our pipes and our ponds and our tanks it's about general sources for general uses what i'm suggesting is that we focus this bill on department of water supply infrastructure about a city for the different areas rather than long term you know big picture source allocation at the big picture level so i don't think we need to wait for the water use develop to document a methodology to let people tie into our infrastructure and if after the water's development plan is passed or after state water commission changes our locations our annual allocations of supply  demand projections would just change and so this is a process that would be ongoing all the time as water used to go in plan or different stream or awkward designations change our supply demand protection changes so all of the people concerned that we don't over allocate from a specific source that would all be wrapped up in there i had something in there about supply demand projections i think a little higher than what's being shown that supply projection would wrap all of that into that number so everything everyone's concerned about about not harming the arc refers or all of the issues about  customer rights that's all wrapped up into how much we can supply the developer or two to say i've got water here and now i need to bill all my infrastructure to you know transmit that resource to said development and that say they're going to develop about let's give it a small number twenty twenty homes what that's a difficult question to answer because it could be very very different for different developers the show me the water ordinance basically says that the sickest subdivision is doing a solid twenty lots of division as per your example when they're coming in for a final subdivision they somehow have to show the county that they have some way to provide water if for example they're on a existing zoned piece of land that has a bunch of water meters that's enough for that capacity all they do is there's their letter says we've got county maui water meters and that's plenty cost and the cost of their consultant writing a one page letter if that same twenty lot subdivision has no source of water and they're going to develop their own well they're going to pay somebody to develop to show a plan to develop a well it's going to be you know in the tens of thousands of dollars range doing engineering report but they're going to have to look at their subdivision of that point then they have to develop that that well so the cost to do the engineering report is just you know paying an engineer to do or port  but those costs to actually implement the infrastructure could be substantial or could be could be nothing why would it be nothing it would be nothing if that land for example already has county water meters but you know if that's that said that's not the difficulty for the developer if the county has the water so you're put in positions to develop oil and fining resource if you want to put it that way to develop a well so i ran these numbers once before looking at a million gallon well how many houses we could serve what it cost to drill building a tank chlorination tying it in electricity etc etc the amount we pay with  debt and our interest rates etc etc and i came up with his number of around every house has is about twenty thousand dollars and interestingly when i talk to some private developers developing your own wells that's about the number they were throwing into the cost of each house so whether we develop it or whether a private entity develops it somewhere around twenty thousand dollars a home is a good ballpark estimate now if they're in a really dry area where there is no water underneath their property it could be much much much more because the well is very far away and they have to build transmission lines but in general somewhere around twenty thousand dollars a house is about the number we've calculated to provide water  good thank you chair and thank you director for being here so i guess i think i asked this question last time when you're like now i don't want to talk about that and it's basically the simple question about  bill that says the department of water supply cannot possibly provide water to everyone who may not whomever you may ask and to have some rules about saying who is eligible for water and under what conditions i think that's a very good idea ok and so this was just some run through administration may or managing director the mare is aware there read it in america where that i pass this on to you and he was at least supportive that it came down for discussion i'm not saying that you agree with every word but he was certainly supportive of me eye on this is the purpose of a water utility is to always say yes that is our goal our goal is not to be the planning department it's not to have the water department through either it's decisions or lack of actions tell anyone no that's the job of the planning department in the council through zoning and things like that we are decades behind on our ability to do so and there's no question about that there's also a reality for example when you look at the isthmus with one hundred fifty million gallons a day being used for agriculture our total county system really does thirty to thirty five million gallons a day just imagine of h c n as starts selling off land or leasing land and those guys start coming in for large meters we cannot possibly meet their demand so although i would love to be a utility so big that whoever comes in i can say yes yes yes the reality is there is no possible way that the county department of water supply can say yes to everyone who asks us so we need some legislation that defines who gets our service and who doesn't when we know that we can't possibly keep up with with possible demand  thank you and i guess what's on the table today is victory in amendment two i guess is a minute and was that run through administration and it was that discuss or just what you  were going to bring to us from your department was a victory as i guess addition top of the bow and looked at i think come in the take member victory no transmitted out directly to the chair here i mean we don't approve his requests but we certainly are certainly reviewed it before today not just yourself though that i did not discuss with anyone outside the department i don't think i've actually or spoken with the mayor since i saw that bill ok all right thank you and i just i guess i see here in a lot of testifiers in regards to where is county in the big picture in creating source and helping to assist developers and people of this community such as staff or cars project in a high enough for one have even issues with water i mean if you look at that project you would never think it had the same issues as in a country person would as and we got no source because it's in the middle of line now which no one thinks of the line of being you know lacking water but here we are so and i think another testified testimony i think from p r p states that this bill itself was and put into action back in the day in order for county to get up to speed and to start building the infrastructure where have you and this is going to be i don't know if it was considered a placeholder i mean i like it be in there are no i just for a time being thing but so any comments it was that the intent i know you folks are looking for answers because we act like a millions of dollars everybody and i'm sure we're going to look at that again in a few weeks but you know i think people are saying where is that infrastructure and also kind of in your department churches so it has been our goal from the beginning in every area to develop more source there are projects in either construction or pre construction or even some more that you'll see in in two weeks when we do our pre budget presentation this committee you'll see what will construction that we're working on at the bureaucratic and on that so we are and we have been with the council support financially moving forward with source and reliable capacity in every area the fact remains that no matter how much even if we do twice as much as we've done twice as much more we're still be in the position that we can't supply everyone who may ask if you look at the community plans you look at the general plan you look at zoning if everybody came in to morrow we're going to be the land and said i'm going to develop to the extent of my zoning there is not enough inverse structure you know water sewer power road schools for any of that so there's always this possibility that th zoned much much greater than the infrastructure that we can't keep up so regardless of what we're doing from the capital improvement and the reality is still that we cannot possibly support everybody who may ask so again that's why i go back to this definition of what does long term reliable supply mean and if we change that definition with my proposal we can tweak the numbers you can tweak the numbers such that mr karr's project wouldn't qualify tweak the numbers such that it would if we were live if we were more conservative and just say look a must we have an extra fifty percent water supply only single family homes in which case you know we'll probably never have that or you could tweak them the other way and say look as long as we've got you know an extra two percent just allow everything until one person then will cut back so depending on how and that's what my proposal really looks at is having this sort of rationing template that depending on how the council chooses to be aggressive or conservative would either allow or not allow projects the difficulty i have with the existing show me the water bill is that it's just yes no based on this sort of a definition of long term reliable supply and still go back to believing that is the root of the problem is we have to does yes no and we're not really quite sure what long term reliable supply means and i  i still believe that that is sort of the root of the problem i think we need to flush out the phrase long term reliable supply better and then perhaps just that itself will perhaps a lot of some things that we want to but you want to and so the amendment on the screen then you're in agreement in your binders with with my proposal that is something that could be easily added to any of the categories so  that's a policy choice of the counsel if you want to exam to that i would just suggest that simply exempting that and leaving the definition long term reliable supply of water which is vague and then just adding exemptions isn't really solving our root problem that we haven't really defined a long term reliable supply means so my primary goal is to get a better definition of long term reliable supply then if you want to exempt things under certain categories that's fine but just simply saying let's just exempt things so that we don't have to define a long term reliable supply means i think that's why we're in this sort of conundrum we've been in with this bill so i guess unless we redefine long term reliability then no you're not know again i brought forth what was presented to me by different groups not my amendment it's a people's amendment let me see it first and foremost secondly i agree with the department and they have their take on it mr taylor with one myself and we've gone over it and i think that is a very possible area to work on i say that first and foremost as many of the testifiers have said tweaking it to help build housing especially in a market or for the housing is the ultimate goal and that's the ultimate goal i'm looking for i'm not looking for anything else i have no other sta in this this whole plan i agree with you know water use and development plan and all these other things need to be done but that's a moving target as m taylor has mentioned it's going to be constantly evolving depending on how what we're what those eighteen and so again we do with the properties of thirty six thousand acres have already what do they do with it last night with at the dinner you were there ma yes they're committed to diversify that but there are specific and how much water is going to be needed in the meantime we have a critical shortage you know i grant you i am also mr white is brought forth the letter to the various developers to come forward so that these housing entitlements that many have been holding you know because of water and other issues if that's water is the main issue come forward and tell us come forward and tell us what the big challenge is ok what the problem is so we can solve it ok you know to join you know anybody else says this the problem is an island white not white it's to whole county way so don't leave anybody out because my area is just as critical as any place else and i'm sick and tired of hearing my area my career my area is the county of maui and that's what i work for and that's what i continue to work for minimum sorry getting a little coffee i got to make my function again but i get very frustrated when we canna see the trees from the forest and that is what i see not seen anybody is wrong i'm seen everybody has their right to the opening but we've got to get off the opinions and let's get something done is this correct well this is the basic chart that we have and you're right she is right most of the world is you need more we have all known that i've known that since i was a little boy long before she came to the asylum my grandparents told me that east and that's where the plantations could try in central mali is because of the smiley so i understood that as a young man so what are we right now we're trying proposals we're looking for out what can we do collaboratively there's got to be ways we're going to keep working man but in the meantime we've got to move on something soon and when we come back from budget we can look at something you know i'm not saying my answer remember yeah and it was a godsend old this is the well that's going to take it off country well it turns out because of some whatever issues it has been so bottom line is this is we need to continue to work at it it's not my plan it's not your plan manager it's our plan it's what a people issue are working people it's for the people that want to live here and reach their families here and that's my whole take on america one of my colleagues agree  within ninety five to ninety percent of maximum reliable capacity the following limitations will be placed on new uses so you saying that if the the level gets up to ninety five percent then we've got to start putting on the two questions one says no new ag users over two acres and again that two acres could be twenty acres and get two hundred acres to be anything but the other says no new i gues yours on the particle systems remember also what this says is this wouldn't apply country up country usage is i wrote that in earlier part your up country usages is governed by the upcountry meter issuance ordinance so this would not apply to that we have just a announced that they are not going to be farming sugar anymore there are thirty six thousand acres currently using somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe one hundred fifty million gallons a day or something like that maybe more there is a case leases or sells some large chunk of their land in the us this to you and you want to farm you know five thousand acres and you come in tomorrow for a county water meter for you know a bunch of four inch county water meters and say i'm going to use four million gallons a day and that's just a fraction of what that land is using now will the department of water supply cannot possibly support that million the tens of millions of gallons that are being used on current shirking fields with diversify that we do not have enough water our total production countywide is only thirty to thirty five million gallons a day so we need something that says the potable water system is not for large ag you know without a definition of large ag this was really my definition of large ag to try to keep to try to make it clear that the possible water system is very expensive to make this water it's it's very it's the highest use potable water and two and we also know that we we transmit it and receive much less than the operating cost for ag waterways just a fraction of the cost so i think we have to make a policy statement in legislation that the part of the water system cannot replace add water and that's really what this is about it's a reality nobody you know i wish we could but  we really need to draw a line somewhere and say we cannot become the new source for ag water that cannot be the hot water system and that's what the senses are really trying to say ok so in your in your answer you talked about a contested case that cetera you heard some testimony saying that we're not sure what's going on in east maui how much water's available because these numbers are our best guess kind of thing so where are we on testing the you know to find out what these numbers  really start answering if my attorney wants to stop me shall still know when to stop me when now a county tried more than a decade ago to develop wells in east maui  the environmental impact statement was challenged and the county entered into a consent decree with the challenging party that had a number of criteria the big issue of why  was whether or not these wells in east valley would affect stream flow ok the is now a contested case hearing is all about stream flow so this is peaks an obvious logical point that if any wells we do in east maui might affect stream flow probably we wouldn't be allowed to do them at all because they'd have to be wrapped up in that contested case which they're not so we have been trying to move forward with hydrogen logic test through u s g s to determine whether or not wells in east now he would or would not affect stream flow and the council has provided funding in previous budgets to move forward on that we have a proposal from the u s g s and we have run into legal challenges in court stopping us from proceeding on that so we are still at that stage in that but we really want to know is would any wells in now affect streams or not or would it be pure awkward for water without affecting the streams we don't know the answer to that and we have not been able to move forward finding that out because of the legal challenges and i think i think that's probably all that my attorney is going to want me to say you know in open session unless he wants to add so so we're trying to test but we're being stopped by some organization i don't know who's knowledgeable about all of these things and i realize how difficult it is for him to give give answers that are yes because all of these matters have so many facets to them and you've got to understand how complicated yes or no is and so he has to have time here to explain and educate us and you know i think his i like his proposal because in it he's trying to set some standards which would make it clearer about how we decide who gets water and who doesn't so it may be that you know the things we have before us which we will continue to study and get ready so that when we come back after budget we have some more debt definitive totals for you but in doing that you know we have to look at many things and of course what we've seen today obviously are a couple of the list and i'm sure that you know others will be coming in the interim and even when we get started people will come up with their own ideas and new amendments which will continue to study i think this is a decision that we need to take the time and do it carefully because we don't want to make a mistake not where it concerns water water is to bite on to all of us so if there are more questions misc out not not question but i would be very supportive of what he's trying to do here  think the next step you know he says he didn't put it in late you know bill format i would like to see that in bill form and i'd like the idea here as far as the numbers are concerned yes we can put in the numbers and we can we can discuss that when the bill comes up correct obviously you have an idea of where numbers are that are comfortable for you so when the bill comes up can we have your range of numbers where you're going to be comfortable with and then we can decide turman where we're going to be comfortable with because we're not the experts you're the expert so we would like to get i personally would like to get some numbers jeff where he's comfortable that any of these are the numbers and that's fine but i'm sure do you know one of the reasons i'm so uncomfortable giving you numbers is that you know back to your statement that that i have a better idea of the numbers it's actually not true the failure i mean we talk about how this would fail if we don't do a good job if we over allocate water and a lot of people be concerned that the opera firs are going to go bad or we're going to use too much from the streams we are limited by the state water commission about how much we can use from those sources so the bottom line is if we over allocate and people over build for lack of better better terms what will happen is when we reach those limits on a daily or you know three hundred sixty five day moving average we shut our pumps off and we declare water shortage and we activate the water shortage bill stage one stage to stage three what failure would look like in the case of overthinking would not be the system exploding it would not be what happened in flint michigan where people get poisoned the failure would be using the water shortage bill more than your comfortable with so the question is because we don't know how much it's going to rain we don't know how much of these actual projects are going to be built it really comes down to gut policy call of saying is not having to use the water shortage bill more important than letting people build or vice versa so what i can do is i can tell guide you into the implications of the risk of your decisions but again the risk is that if the risk isn't the system's failing and so it's really why i'm trying to put it in this format so that the public understands and the council understands this is really a policy decisions not an engineering decision it's how risky if you want to take it do you want to build now and say look if we have to let everybody build what they want and you know for shorten drought you know which is you stage two water shortage two or three months if that's ok with you we can be very aggressive with the numbers if you're going to say no no no existing users shouldn't have to cut back so we want to be very very careful about that the numbers are going to shift the other way so we really need feedback from the council and based on that i can help you choose numbers ok and matt i'm sure that's what i'm looking for is ok give us what that number would be on one end and what the number would be on the other end and we can do that ok i think it's very limited to do that so limbers i think then we have kind of beat please ok thank you chair and with the subject about this trying to get numbers from director also in you know conservation too of course we don't want existing users and i think that's the issue of cards project in the middle of what kind of town is that we don't want to disrupt cut out existing users that are online which totally understand and but you know moving forward also incorporating conservation along with the exit you know by existing users in order to to maybe bring up supply or add online way people and whatever that that takes but my main questions here is the existing ditch system has there any has there been any discussion with e m i or whoever with the closure of the ag in this county talked to them in regards to that and if they're not who is or how is that going to pan out if there's any you know current discussions going about that i hope will be acceptable for me to ask you to hold that question for two weeks in this committee two weeks from today when we have our pre budget our current status and you know where we're heading i think that's probably a better time to talk about that i mean more than happy to answer it then because i think it directly relates to you know question john already forgot that i was thing it's hard to budget we're about to break for budget so the last thing i just because we're talking about show me the water i just wanna make this one last connection with show me the water and budget if we put a lot of money in and just build lots and lots and lots of source and reliable capacity much much more than we ever need you don't need show me the water if we decide that we can't afford to do that and we have to run a little closer to the edge we need a stronger show me the water so the decisions we make in budget about how aggressive we're going to be have direct impacts on this bill i try to talk about showing the water with rates and fees because again if you have really high rates  fees so we can build out and get in front of everything you don't need to open the lock but if we're not going to do that then the chances of having more people come in that we can handle is just greater and even as we effect  as we talk about what the tears of water use are as we increase those upper two tiers to have more of a conservation management type of approach people tend to use less water and that drops are drops the demand and without building anything we can solve you know we can address we can address more need so the supply demand curves take into account even conservation efforts and that's why this concept we've tried to push of supply versus demand projections wrap everything in iraq is conservation iraq's cost in europe say water commission decisions in all of that reflects itself in the supply demand projections so the supply demand projections with our choices you know really wrap everything together and that's where budget links to show me the water wow you see victory and he's trained me well i can't tell too much togetherness members we're going to cut this off i'm sorry but i want to let the public know and i will let you know that we have another meeting before budget and that is on march sixteenth and at that meeting mr taylor will be presenting the pre budget information that will be really important for us to get before we go into budget and we'll try to explain what that would be deployed when it's going to be asking for in the new budget so i hope that all of you will come and i certainly hope the public will come and also th thing so maybe you can help us as we go into the budget process it's very helpful for you to show up and testify in either in support or not into part of what we're asking for the word becoming is asking for in the budget so i ask you to please come back and you know help us with that well then bring anything else we need to do just to clarify are there any follow up letters you would like me to send well i'm wondering if you would if i think i would very much like for you to send these materials to the water board and see if they would be willing to comment on what is before they have time because they will have to do it before we start again thank you madam chair budgeting and they'll still be meeting so that's it members thank you very much yes thank you chair and real quick so if we have anything suggestions amendments you would like to at your next meeting absolutely like to thank the members i'd like to thank the public for showing up today and take my staff for working so hard and this matter without objection will be deferred action and the meeting is adjour