a meeting of the infrastructure environmental management committee please come to order today is august twenty third and the time is about one thirty three in the afternoon and noon and also ms gladys bice good afternoon thank you members for being here and from the administration that will be discussing i am sixty nine and seventy three director of public thank you ladies for being there and so members today we have two items on our agenda i am sixty nine amending section ten point four eight point zero four zero molly county code relating to stopping standing and parking and also i am seventy three department of health clean water branch proposed rule changes to water pollution control at this time members i will open up the floor for testimonies and real think you ladies well members seem no one here or out there wanting to testify without objections i shall now close public testimony thank you very much so ordered point four eight point zero for maori county code relating to stopping standing and parking and the purpose of this proposed bill is to delete from the list of streets where parking is prohibited in well look at district street between market street and church street since pili street has been consolidated into the way look you municipal parking lot parcel and  t this this particular item members is pretty much like a house keeping tight matter and as you will see street is included as part of the municipal parking lot and i believe ms gave you copies some nice colored copies of an aerial view and the more detailed view of the area and the department and the dept this is given by the department and that will help so this this rehab to revise for it was bill incorporating non substantiative revisions which was distributed to you also and this is the version of the bill that will be working off works as you mentioned this is a housekeeping matter we have been looking at other changes to this particular code for other roads and in going through the list we know those pili street was still mentioned we came your committee about i think within the matter it is still signed for no parking in those areas because we can accommodate parking in there and still get folks in and out safely so again it is a primarily i housekeeping type measure and  we look for the committee's recommendations ok thank you very much director and mr khushi do you have any comments you need to present to the  committee manager except for the other two news i just housekeeping issues ok thank you mr khushi members the floor is now open for you folks if you have any questions comments for the for information what i was going to refer to this in the future since it's no longer going to be purely street we're just going to call it entry p when the arrow pointing to a parking lot so become like an entrance to any parking lot so if i just prefer to as the missile parking lot entrance off market or its entrance exit off  area there is a whole slew of businesses counties municipal parking lot project i think might would be great to have some of that history documented and may be part of some kind of fordable mural for a public facility thank you ok my one of my questions in regards to street signage for these two areas were moving the pili street and what would be in place of it and i guess foresee any i don't know disruption ingress egress or anything of that sort of man chair no we don't see any change at all though we are quite happy that it's been paved so it's a much more enjoyable even walk area we're putting in that public after beach access yet no parking but there is a shoulder which we prohibit but hopefully we can look into lifting that so people can you know illegally park in the shoulder way which is occurring but it will make sure that we have it legal so yeah we can bring those extra items up which is currently on the list here but it will bring on it bring that topic up on another meeting and other than that i think um are we always bringing the historical background to our decision making process and so members without any further discussion all those in favor say aye any oppose that's our first item completed we will now go to i am seventy three in this is the department of health clean water branch proposed rule changes to the water pollution control and this is county communication sixteen dash one seven one from director of public works relating to the state department of health health proposed changes to hawaii administrative rules title eleven chapter fifty five in tired old water pollution control correspondence dated july thirteenth two thousand and sixteen from director of public works transmitting a request to the state department of health of the public comment deadline on the propose administrative rule changes and with that the department requested that the committee hear this item quickly in order to discuss with the council the impacts of the department of health proposed changes to the administrative rules and the public comment deadline was july first two thousand and sixteen the department requested an extension to respond ages proposed changes by letters dated june twenty ninth two thousand and sixteen and july eighth twenty sixteen copies of which we have on file and the department binder first a response from the director of do you each dated july eighth two thousand and sixteen responding to department of public works july first twenty six thousand requests for extension to the public comment period for propose revisions to administrative rules chapter eleven dash fifty five sec and there's an e mail dated july eighteenth two thousand and sixteen from department of health clean water branch regarding extension of the public comment period and second public hearing for hawaii administrative rules chapter eleven by five docket number c w b dash one dash sixteen and then there's a a letter dated august sixteenth two thousand and sixteen from director public works to the director of d u h submitting the department's objections to docket numbers c w b one sixteen and related documents the members there's no legislation before us today the committee will discuss how the proposed changes may impact existing impact existing conditions to the count national pollutant discharge elimination system or n p d e s general permit and significantly significantly increased the complexity and obligations for permit programs and this item may require going into executive session pursuant to section nine to dash five a four for what your advice statutes to consult with legal counsel questions and issues pertaining to the powers duties privileges immunities liabilities of this county the council and the committee and confidential information from corporation counsel pursuant to section nine to five a b and if there is  then we will do will discuss the matter well discuss what we can open session but if there's a need we can go into executive session need be so with that i will turn the floor over to the department to bit of time to go through it i think it's very important to kind of set the stage for the implications of these rule changes bring to the potentially bring in the county and i don't think it's often that the county council looks ordered to your committee chairs that we could talk about today because i think as our policy makers it seemed very important to you folks be aware of what's being proposed and how the department's at this time handling it a real quick before you our current emmas for permit which we've talked about quite a few times your committee falls the state department tells rules under chapter eleven fifty five appendix k which also follows federal law then related rules relating the small and s force which is what we are considered and that compliance to these rules can be achieved by having our six emmys for program elements term minimum control measures which are public education and outreach public participation and involvement illicit discharge detection elimination construction site control structures a run off control scuse me post construction run off control and pollution prevention slash good housekeeping knowledge as an analogy think of education in six key areas say reading writing arithmetic science history and social science instead of giving the schools of the districts the leeway to develop methods and programs to build students reda move in into society and out state agency was start to dictate specific methods and programs to the schools and districts and compound that by adding new responsibilities that are outside the educational environment and expect to pay for all that is not unlike what we'll be discussing today so in complying with these six measures but the idea being you know if you if you work on these six measures and you results that's the basic intent behind the rules and the department of health and existing rules so that to do that we submit a stormwater management plan we've talked about that in your community here that are aligned our goals deliver all six program areas as you mentioned share new rules were published her draft rules are published by the department of health on a variety of tendencies to chapter eleven fifty in particular appendix k in late may of this year as their general permit is set to expire in december they did not notify us or any of the eighteen other small in his fours in hawaii  they consult with us about those changes in the any impacts we may have nor do they explain how the changes may improve water quality or what other alternatives could be evaluated so fortunately a stroke of luck i would call it we actually found out about it i guess we did not read that back page of the maui news those two days that was published anyway we we found out about a week in advance we did get an extension to it you finally through all that we did get another extension along with all the other committees to august thirty one which is sixty days we originally requested it took about thirty days of requests to get sold to comply with the need to comment on the proposed rules and risk not having our future rights to challenge the rule implementation we submit a thirty page plus comment letter dated august sixteenth a copy of which is before you today is really to make the council where the proposed changes the fiscal operational impact will changes will have a potential liabilities the counties may be exposed to so that will be implemented and to start off with we're asking to extend their core rule for two more years as we understand have the authority to do that during this two year period we would expect that they would consult vigorously with their permit ease such as us and so as to educate us what they're trying to achieve there what may be required by the e p a and us i'll let you know that while we haven't done a cost analysis of the proposed changes because some of it's really hard to pinpoint the state department transportation which it also has a small and as for permit here from our way they've done an analysis of that and they estimate the estimate is in the eight figures eight eleven million dollars per year our current effort is around five hundred thousand dollars per year the rules hit counties or municipalities much higher than they would an agency such as d o t and so we have an extreme concern with the proposed rules so i'd like to do is hit some of the highlights or lowlights of the proposed rule changes beyond the lack of notice or working for program for discharges that are unlikely to have significant discharges of pollutants from their small of us for system the proposal to dramatically increase the requirements for all general permit holders making them subject to do not discharge the sensitive waters three we have jack to deal is disregard for the economic considerations of the proposed general permit revisions through a for your request we found that the facts the ministry of directive that they basically used to justify rule changes to the governor of the department head and their small business impact statement which accompany the proposed which provides no analysis of the actual cost of the changes to the perfidies to the smallest force to contractors small businesses and the general public without identifying the relationship between the cost this whatever costs and maybe something will happen but we don't we're not sure what the number for the county objects the d u h is in position of an unfunded mandate the constitution of the state of hawaii article eight section five in title transfer of mandated program states that quote if any new program or increase in the level service under existing program shall be mandated to any of the political subdivisions by the legislature it shall provide the state's share of the cost so the county we contend that the deal is proposed changes to the general permit cost to pull both a new program and a higher level service that are mandated by the state to the callee and therefore requires state funding no funding as proposed by the existing permit set to expire in december as i mentioned is sixteen pages long and tracks precisely those six measures a e p a determined is what you need to  do to reduce the discharge of pollutants to the maximum extent practicable in contrast to proposed permit is fifty three pages long and includes multiple programs require as they are not addressed in e p at all or greatly increase the requirement of the six minimum measures in a manner that goes far beyond the intention of u p a five we have jacked the prescriptive demand set forth in the new rule rules including but not limited to the following new requirements i'm going to kind of breeze through these but for a construction site run off control they want us to provide the best vacations for  tracking variety of sites very comprehensive program in eighteen months to do that required for the county to confirm the construction project is compliant with the state and p d s construction permits  and their pollution prevention good housekeeping requirement to develop a debris control program and putting five separate onerous separate sub grounds within eighteen months to develop a months in the industrial and commercial activities discharge program and develop a comp answer program that is that's actually completely outside the general program requirements require of the county to on one of several factors and assuming this rule to pass but i do magically key a line based on population factors of ten thousand people and greater than a thousand people per square mile remember the original as for it was here in central met fifty thousand people and that urban area even though a lot of programs were doing are county wide but some of the specific work will sadly certainly be just in the central area so now they want to add key in line however the kapok i'm quite he meets the same designation but they would not require car to get numbers for permit don't know why and they would ignore hilo altogether even though some of the drainage systems in hilo actually go to a class supply operations as well as contractors doing work on public and private projects greatly increasing costs without any documented cost beneficial improvements from water quality once is take over and force into some state permits legal authority to do any of these state requirements so in summary under do a deal which is current general permit we have the latitude to customize a program in these six areas that work best for my county and it citizenry we've only just begun we're probably graduating from kindergarten on our way to first grade in our quest to be as good as we can be but out of the proposed new general term will have to discard some of our current activities such a l summarizes my comments i wish i had better news to share afternoon but i think it's really important that the council to your committee is made aware of these changes in our response today thank you and yeah i think you are director for bringing this to us so we are aware and kept in the loop about you know what's coming down the pipeline that's going to affect all of us and budgetary concerns or why have you but before we jump into it i want to acknowledge that mr bob carroll came to join us thank you and we have a full full crowd here today so thank you members at this time i open the floor to all of you for some discussion and questions comments to director and if there is in need for any type of concerns we need to discuss in executive then that is agenda is for us to go into c s is a hybrid of being a regulator an time to time on the clean water act and oftentimes federal agencies have to react to those court cases the e p a does have a proposed rule amendment that was published back in  january did receive a lot of comments and we've had some indication that they're pointing towards his rule change but in reviewing the rule change we don't see the nexus that drives some of the polls rule changes so we've also looked at california which is part of region nine certainly the largest player in region nine we saw that there were changes to some of their general permits after ninety percent of it doesn't look like our rules i would add that in one of the justifications the department of health noted that they wanted to move some individual or maybe into the general permit because it would be easier for them so we can surmise that you know some of the changes have to do with he's a processing for them i think they're just training to run away from their responsibility myself i mean i look at their current track record in recent past record record state health department i think is just i understand what you're saying and maybe for me this is just another because the e p a is being taken to court by counties across the country by states on the waters of the u s rule or pool so i would say what little i know this may be wrong oh boy of dealing with the court telling the agencies that they are not able to enforce and operate the new rule so i says maybe that will meet the locals that operate and make do the rules operational which again still doesn't make sense to me since i was going to regulate ourselves the county of my we can do the job who have to create positions with the job description with requirements to perform state jobs i find it more bizarre can you tell us  as far as the existing permit goes we're compliance under these proposed rules unless we are given the resources and zs me the state's trying to force us force you folks to give us the resources we being on top of this especially with us learning in less than a week or i guess about a week before the deadline for comment i'm just astounded at the the department of health has and and how they're dealing with this and you know we all know that they've somewhat left us out to dry on the injection well issue not allowing us to get perm under the old system or the new supposedly new system and appears as mr hope comma said that we are now the permit t and the regulator all in one and i'm just wondering if there are significant fines that are built into the rules as well that we would be subject to if we don't meet every letter of the of these new rules i don't know if the director has has an answer for that at this point but you know director would you know that's built into this program and i think your mike's off there thank you here but i think in general they'd take a look straight to the consent decree it for and non once again if they don't give us the t t or if they do give us what t t they do give us are going to try to get back through the through the fines and and consent decrees but this is just an outrageous overreach by the state and i think mr okama has it exactly right that the state is asking us to do their work rather than them rolling up their sleeves and and do it themselves so i just want to thank you again for being a great watchdog and and catching this before it's all solidified and irreversible so and as mr okama said he would be more than willing to consider  court options that believe i heard missed by so whisper yes i think we all were all getting a little fed up with this and i think it's maybe time we do go to court that's amusing i'm trying to find nice which is really upsetting that we can't seem to figure out how to work with our big brother you know it shows little respect when people do this very little respect and this idea of giving us little notice and expecting so much in return and setting all these deadlines and threats and whatever is really annoying you know winter this a few years ago when we got into the cesspool thing where they decided they were going to ask us to get rid of all the cesspools and didn't tell us anything about it and by the tour the grapevine fortunately somebody alerted us and we were able to get a large consortium of people together and we raised hell and we got them to back off and kind of change what they were trying to do of course in the in the end we agreed you know we didn't want any  more but they wanted us to go do go on everyone we had which was totally crazy and paid no attention to where they were or whether they were a problem and so we came up with a compromise but it took a lot of work and when you don't have time you know to organize imprison testimony and meet with the right people and whatever this is not fair it's really not fair and i totally agree with mr okama that if this requires some kind of  legal action then that's what it's going to take but i think we've got to make a stand this is not fair and the department of health is famous for doing this thank you thank you ms bass or members  mr couch thank you madam chair a couple of questions one is what did you do to piss off the department of health if this works i know as you said it's directed the maori county excuses why there's even talk about the big island so it's just amazing that they that they've done this and i agree with my colleagues that i'm fine with you know taking this as far as we can go with that one of the things here you know reading all the stuff that they're proposing and all your your  suggested changes since we're the regulator and the permit t what happens if we don't pay our own fine or paraphrase do we pay to ourselves or does that go to the state or what if we don't you tell you tell yourself to do whatever and you say yeah right ok it doesn't make sense i mean just legal sense it doesn't make any legal sense so i'm just curious that if councils take a look at this and find out if there's any legal way that this can really those for our own projects so if we do it by cancer we had to get n p t s berman so we went to the state we got the permit and to this proposed thing the state would issue permit and then we would become the enforcer initiation of this whole process is that a federal e p a agency itself or your understand this is something from the state health department correct sorry all school here not a terrorist obama the one we were actually notified by the department of health because we met an automatic trigger on or i guess federal law that that urban area here in central maui had reached over fifty thousand population so we were notified by the department of health i guess upon receipt of the census information from census bureau county except for transportation if i could i think there's numerous places where federal codes reference the census data and so in  was adamant to get that in writing because look at the circle we're going to go to in the off their verbal comment to this column again we and i asked a question mentioned because i think if need be we should use our membership i spot on nico as a part of the western region together sister states and our sister counties in our region at least to see if it makes sense to rally around and fight this rule as a region you know i can see this impact in more sister counties in just this county so i don't have a problem to say well and see if we think it might have a consortium of our regions including adelaide county that perspective to the table as an option for us to to move forward with members in the other members have questions or comments you know we have concerns and  there's anyone feel the need that we want to go in and talk about any closer aspect of this at this time it was mainly just to bring forward to share you know what the partner in has currently not for permit these but the way these rules are reaching down to smaller population areas it's conceivable that they could be next so it wouldn't surprise me but right now we're the only small amounts for county and so having said that have those other counties been kept in the loop on this situation we're in together as a team to say hey this is affecting us all and you know something needs to be done so to speak and mr okama than mr couch muchos scream to ask you in dirty good is this something maybe the has no objection i would ask that maybe you consider writing a letter on our behalf to the healthy parliamentary copy that go on to state that we do not support this reports of at this time that we would support the department recommendation over extension of two years and allow the appropriate communication discussion with all parties interested parties to come to a table and have that talks ok very good thing for a good director  i think that was partly the intent to to bring this forward is today comments from this body for you to push forward to the department there you know the region the origination of this to us to say listen county unfortunately i wanted to ask the director if he had any concerns of liabilities that he wanted to discuss with us in executive session and i know i think we're pretty much satisfied here but if he had some concerns that he needed to take us into executive session if not i agree with the rest of the members it's we're already sufficiently aware of what we need to do thank you yes ok thank you if you want to comment on that don't i don't see any at this point i think i got a really good flavor for your intent should we go forward in that matter ok thank you session as we possibly can because i think this is like this morning's issue that we had a fairly lengthy discussion on these are issues that our public needs to be aware of and our legislators in particular need to be aware of because we're being put under a significant amount of stress to perform on things that are not necessarily our responsibility and then to be to have their the assets that we generate for the state to be withheld from us is just further for the lack of fairness and further outrage from from my perspective as far  as writing a letter is concerned i'm assuming that the administration would be sending a letter as well as i think it should come from both both branches of government since it's bauer that's being attacked so they've received that so they've and i think that should help them come to the conclusion of having a significant extension and entering in a dialogue a subsequent letter from you folks having them briefed on it you know  sided brief but it still has enough cause for concern that you know if you go this idea of the latter i think it'll go and we get in by the thirty first to be part of the record th chair i would suggest that we reference the administration's letter and focus on the request to be given the two year extension because i think it's appropriate to ask for that and rather that all us get into all the details of they already have i think to simply piggyback on the administration's letter and request the extension  d do as much as we can we can been seen really good thank you yes i agree and i believe staff is taking notes and we shall move forward on those recommendations and i think there's a question into about d m being involved would or why are they not this should be if they are purview to have oversight on or at least the activities have to take place in county property so it's not all public works properly it's parks for instance in the police station fire stations so the park public works doesn't have authority over those so we looked at possibly the part of management so for d m or us we had that issue but that's overcome through doing a memorandum of agreement between the various departments which is in the works but in the end because public works is mentioned in the charter as being responsible for stormwater is that charter provision and given that eighty percent it we feel like eighty percent of the activities are related to specially construction be for some of us to testify as well or i don't know why you deal with those folks more often so i would say that if if you would like for some of us to testify that might be something that we can do i don't know how that would work sunshine law you know why is there anything but i think that's something that we at least i would consider absolutely going to directly yes manager so the deadline of august thirty first includes a written comments and then they're having a opportunity so i would be pleased if anybody attended we haven't decided if we're going to attend or not at this point whether we just stick to our testimony if we had something additional to add but what we found in that very good letter that you written in response you know it least in this chamber it always helps to to have somebody physically come in and show or go on video just to reinforce it's coming from a side that listens to testimony and sees written testimony what we give it always the fact that somebody could take the time and come and discuss it and be available for questions adds a lot of weight at managing john's time because john has other projects and so on like this one is really taken on you know it's like a fire like we have to deal with this but i did what they did want to and they wanted the course here the community you know was leaning if you will but also brought them because if you have questions about our existing program like in our six year is you know any particular and some of the activities are going on they're better suited to and i also saw you had some of your highways division here earlier i think they came in just to see what was going on and if they needed to participate too but i think them for attending division chief or tiny  hava were here earlier and he was members with that if we don't have any further need for discussion or i'll entertain a motion to just recommend fi aleem of this county communication ok if you don't mind your to consider that thank you ok that's fine is that mr couch you had your hand up your so your same recommendation ok that's fine either way we can do that sure so without objections we defer this item and thank you very much so ordered and looking forward to further dialogue with this and for some favorable outcomes to us and at that time at that with that we have completed our agenda for today and this meeting