like the meeting to come to order and ask all of you if you have your cell phones like i do would you please put it on the side in mode so we don't have any interruption i'd like to introduce the members that are here this morning in the folks that will be actually it's a little different thank you i really appreciate your service and now that i'm sitting in the hot seat thank you very much also like to introduce our member from handling some administrative matters i hope you will join us in a little while also we have non voting members on this committee i'll just mention it so you know why they're not here we have a vice chair done men from coast and ricky w come they are not voting members that means they are not required to attend the meeting so you know the difference and from the administration we have with us dave taylor our director of water supply is very good morning and secretary thank you ladies out in our district offices we have done lono in our honner office denise fernandes in our lynn i office in the office so that's the folks that will be here we have some other folks that will be joining us a little later and i'll introduce them when they get here but we have heard chang from the department of water supply who is the chief engineer and you'll be coming we have scott english from the fire department and we also had to excuse sandy buzz the budget director he was going to be with us this morning but unfortunately got called to honolulu to do some very important testimony there so he has met with mr taylor and i understand that dave is ready to answer the budget questions that sandy was going to help us with members we have two items on our agenda today the first item is the proposed resolution transmitting a proposed bill relating to wellhead protection to the planning commission for review and comment the tears intent is that we will take testimony and discuss this briefly but i am hoping that the members will agree to forward it to the pending commissions so that they will have time to work on it with the community while we are engaged in budget i think all of you know we'll be going into the budget session towards the end of this month probably on the twenty fifth or so will mean that there will be a hiatus there in our meetings so that will give the planning commission's time to have their meetings and hopefully we can meet again and our committee will have a chance to see what comes back from that so that is  intend with that bill the second item is a continuation of our discussion on the twelve point six million dollars the council set aside in the fiscal year twenty fifteen budget to assist water consumers with water infrastructure improvements in order to continue to construct their homes and those are the two items that we'll be talking about today i again on the second bill we do not intend to take  chair is trying to find out how the public feels about this and to understand the ramifications of something like this so that when we do produce a bill hopefully we can work on it and move it and not have it  ve got to go back and think about this so we want to think before we get there this morning we're ready for public testimony and it will be limited to the items on our agenda today if you wish to testify peace sign up at the desk at the back of the room here and or you can sign up at one of the district offices that are listed on the agenda testimony is limited to three minutes and upon request another minute will be given at three on item number one good morning and thank you for coming morning chair good morning committee members i am happy to prop to provide testimony on behalf of the department of health from deputy director for environmental health we have provided copies to you and i'll just read it to you one of the many functions of the partment of health is to ensure that public drinking water sources are free from contamination the state will have protection program as one of the approaches used by the department to ensure that contaminant free drinking water is a lever to the public as will be discussed below well had protection ordinances drafted by county and municipal governments are an important component of the state will have protection program the department supports the county council process to move this forward to the planning commissions for continued public comment and subsequent decision making the molly will have protection ordinance seeks to manage potential sources of contamination to minimize their threat to drinking water sources this ordinance represents the combined efforts of the environmental protection agency department of health department of water supply and the university of hawaii the e p a established broad guidelines for the source water assessment program and provided funding to the state for its implementation the department developed the swap procedures and contracted with the university of hawaii to delineate the time of travel overlay delineations and to estimate the relative susceptibility of contamination to each of the state public drinking water sources department also provides funding to water systems through its well ead protection financial assistance program to develop and implement protection activities department of water supply in addition to being entered really involved in the swap process and corporate it the swap into there will have protection program by use of the overlay delineations this is how the swap will hit section program process was envisioned to work this wop is not intended to be and of program but rather provide the foundation for the protection of drinking water sources the molly will have protection ordinance has been drafted as the means of controlling or preventing contamination of their drinking water wells by placing controls on the activities that occur with the overly delineation and so on yes the county government is the proper level for implementing the well head protection regulations the development of these regulations commonly falls to the local government and the water system operator with the local governments or mean to municipalities being responsible for implementing the unused tools in hawaii delegating well had protection implementation to the county government is even more logical since unlike other states prefers to not cross county injuries the state and federal laws have made great strides in protecting the environment more site and groundwater specific oversight is needed to provide the level of protection to sired for drinking water wells current laws and regulations such as those dealing with agricultural use h disposal and fields transfer and storage are very broad and complex and in many cases do not provide the detail of level of regulation that is necessary to ensure the protection of groundwater in summary the department supports the molly will have protection ordinance as a proactive measure to protect the drinking water supplies for mali the ordinance is necessary to provide is needed to preserve the high quality of drinking water that is delivered to the residents of mali by the mali department of water supply this ordinance compliments and does not what is the department assistance in that respect because mr taylor has said in many occasions we control what we control and what we don't we have a difficult time getting sometimes even getting information so how does state department of health approach that help us in that area so the private when you say private water systems they are actually privately owned reget publicly regulated water says yes yes so they are still under the department's regulation you for being here just so that i understand there's federal oversight there's state oversight and the county so federal and state oversight is not  the county oversight the federal oversight and the state oversight are broader than what you could be having for your county so the wellhead protection program is state wide but we a means of ensuring that you know contamination is not allowed or is that your rule yes the safe drinking water branch is  is responsible for the groundwater protection program and that is also involving the prevention of contamination of the wellhead so who says who says what we would provide the overall covering protecting you know drinking water right so the the regulations that are provided by the federal and state laws and roles are not as specific as what you could be creating for a county so as an example the wellhead protection program provides for the entire state and so we need to make sure that we look at the state and as a state agency with molly county you're able to look at your specific needs thank you thank you mr greville or any further questions your would like to know the president thank you good morning chair and good morning counsel i not really sure that i should say if you are twenty one but i'm i'm here to affordable housing as a kind of a crossover from all the different issues that we have with water so you know council members my name is sydney smith and most of you know me seem to be testifying here a lot these days most of you know that i'm a full time farmer and i own a coffee farm in moscow while i'm also the president of the maori coffee association and a member of the ag working group which you may not know is that i also design and renovate houses i know the cost of building and understand the difficulty in building low cost affordable housing building a one thousand square foot cottage from the ground up with the intention of running that house will cost about two hundred thousand dollars here in  county and that's without taking into consideration the cost of the land if you use standard methods to arrive at a rental price for that house you would use one percent of the cost and arrive at two thousand dollars per month rent and that's if you didn't add the cost of the land underneath i don't think that's affordable what you need to do is allow for building attached ohana type additions and allow for full kitchens to be installed currently will spence and joe at a planning department have plans to eliminate the wet bar provision in the building code this at least allowed for a rudimentary kitchen but they want to eliminate it i think you should do the opposite and amanda code to allow for full kitchens and attach to harness get rid of the fixture count restriction a couple of weeks ago i had a conversation with a mare and he didn't even know why that was a rule limiting the number of toilets doesn't change how much water a family uses it just limits the amount of privacy a family can provide and i know the theory behind the fixture count is that pressure can only be maintained for so many fixtures at a time but no one opens up every every toilet simultaneously by encouraging rather than discouraging families to build an apartment in your carport or garage you lower the cost of that apartment considerably the roof floor and walls are already there if you open this up and make it easy to get a permit now he's homeowners can solve the affordable housing problem for you this was done in toronto over twenty years ago and it was very successful toronto had a very high cost of living and a serious shortage of affordable housing they called this project second suites and even provided tax incentives for homeowners who followed building codes those codes or even changed to make it easier for the homeowner they amended the building code to allow for basement apartments that didn't meet minimum ceiling height requirements it will take smart and cooperative planning water and building departments to make this happen but it is possible taking a helpful rather than restrictive approach is generally a more successful testimony and heard you the question i have is no use saying that you prefer a to attach to a harness and another cottage yes i think we need both i mean i know that there's a density issue but we don't have that density issue now because people are living together you know in these houses and you know when i had this conversation with a mary he said he goes home it like two in the morning and there's like ten cars for every house and they're already there i mean we already have the density issue but we have the stress on the families of having to share a refrigerator in the kitchen because they can't have their own space if we allow people to build these carport little apartments there already the families are already there it just reduces the stress and strain on the family unit and i think a lot of the times these are family members but if it's a completely separate apartment then they can read it at an affordable price to another young family that needs to get out on their own and it's just not going to happen with building a house from the ground up it's just too expensive just of just a short while ago concrete was eighty dollars a yard and i just did a job where i used quite a bit of concrete is almost three hundred dollars a yard you know well right now it is ok to do attached but hollers as long as you don't have a detached on it but you're saying you're now want to essentially to own a lot as well as the main dwelling yes and what i've heard from the planning department is you can't have a second kitchen in an attached ohana and that's that's the issue that i have you know is that you can have a kitchen one kitchen and a house the only way you can have a second kitchen if it's called a catering kitchen which a lot of the really high end homes have but i think you should just be able to have us a small kitchen in an apartment so that people can have their own space  true if we tend to try and take care of housing and i'm just here to kind of push forward the sprinkler system that i think it's just a tremendous idea to have a sprinkler because when i was building my house it was  like you sign the paper because if the house burns style too bad you know i mean because the fire department was going to get there in time so this sprinkler the sprinkler heads i think is very important and again with this fixtures garden and somebody using water in the house and i support you know whatever though the sprinkler heads and housing that you know we need to get that it's a real bad problem right now i have people calling me begging me for homes so it's a bad problem thank you thank you very much  members any questions mr codes thank you madam chair the humus now for being here when you say sprinkler system are you talking about automatic sprinklers yeah i mean that would help i mean at least if the fire department gets there you know the water with the house down you know i think that's a brilliant idea especially for remote areas you know we all live in pastures so you know but a time to fight chuck gets you in a bumpy roads our house is gone you know but keep in mind that if that is required then you definitely are going to need a bigger pipe and that's the issue that we're we're ok i don't know what stipulations are on the pipelines but you know i'm for the sprinklers however which way but you know i don't know how that it's going to work so i mean at that time then w other amenities that i needed right now and again you put a fire hydrant a mile and a half away from the main road it ain't gonna happen yeah exactly so i greet you the other question i had is you know you mention about the fixture count and so in your mind by eliminating the fixture count and allowing people to do more in their home it won't use more water no because i mean i mean if you my father believed in tanks he had we every house we have up there i had a tank and that was for a reason the main one would break we would have the water you know or we would catch water in that tank you know and it was fine but now with all these rules and regulations is ridiculous all right well thank you again i can tell you today there's no water problems thank you but you know it's interesting that we're having this discussion on a day like today just doesn't have the position as it is in drought but it's important to love all of the ideas that are coming up and they're all possibilities for us good morning good morning everybody piece ok would like to talk about this well head protection back in zero four the upcountry water situation was crazy and they were concerned citizens that went to the keep in mind that the clean water and clean air act have been around for a long time they were initiated during the nixon administration and so we they were concerned citizens got together we got money from the fed thanks to dan annoy having pushed that through for us we were not a five zero one c three so the county take care of the money end of that and we did a lot of the lake work i just want to clarify our current water director was not the water director at that time so  these are people before him and the other thing is that the country area is served primarily by surface water so since then and now we've got now cyberspace worries about our water that's floating around up there so when we talk about doing this for everybody island and saw three wide we're not talking about wells as being the only solution right now required by the before they would cut the check for half a mile to the county it was the same mayor at that time not the same water director we dealt with that original study i think original oh for out of you each in the department of health i don't know if that has come by your recognition before anyway to exist we dealt with that and i'd just like you to picture what itself and so the most recognized deal is going to be where the well is well that we haven't dug the wells then what and in places like haiku where we had the fourth marine division there when we were under martial law after pearl harbor was attacked we ended up at the end of that driving jeeps this is a hell of a level at the library and at the time from the war you have to it's closing that material was not available but it is now and they just took them to the cliffs and drove the mob so all the batteries in the battery acids and everything were in there so not only do we have the contamination in that soil we've got it from mechanical and otherwise god help us ingredients so in the binder that's obscure as i went through that yesterday none of that is mentioned but it does give a list of the horrible contaminants that have been around for a long time and your most recent list has the same stuff in it the d c p use and all those forever latin names that are god help us and gradients that are in the a b and so that material really needs to go back to the history whatever caused the d o h to have done that originally and thanks that they did that that daughter is there somewhere so this is another generation and years later we need to get this done so i just wanted to also clarify on the private situation we had training done  came out and did the training for us and there were private people who were able to apply for those services in addition to be able to do that in say  government jurisdiction so if that helps what got brought up a little while earlier this morning that stuff was all available somewhere in the records in the oversight advisory committee and we had all of our meetings audio videotaped and provided them to the then water director in the assistant water direct deputy water director was at most of our meetings and the then mayor who just had his water people come he he was never at them but we gave them those audio videos so they are in living color and voice so hopefully that's a help and when we do talk about come to you why going on to optimizing the infrastructure improvements if you came down from michael  through them look like a fire boat in the harbor right and then nobody could see anything so pretty dangerous and so getting those done county wide i know we're hearing the real stuff in the visitor areas not a lot of visitors so just to make sure that it is a need and we're competing with current recognized history and without having the other history perhaps so deeply checked out  nationwide slice that we've geographic slice that we belong to they've known this for a long time too and came out did a lot of work with us we were trained those of us who were in that oversight and advisory committee which was required mil got cut loose in we were trained as to how to go out and sample the water and then they got sent to  labs that were not in hawaii and we had different numbers that came back from from labs in different geographies same specimens because we got them and we sent them so lots of work to be done and lots of history so we don't keep starting over and not building on what has been done by people who really care a great deal both within the employed service and in the volunteer service and th good morning madam chair and counsel i'm testifying and i'm richard pauli i'm testifying on w r twelve you have called point six million dollars to t distribute countywide but directed taylor has said that the infrastructure requirements for our country are more than two million two hundred million dollars and that's just for our country and that's before the latest rush before the media was close now i have one simple request when you pass the ordinance increasing the fire flow requirements for four hundred gallons per minute for two hours to a thousand gallons per minute or two hours you made all of the underground six inch pipes obsolete because according to the handbook they are not capable of furnishing a thousand gallons per minute a six inch pipe missed it by about twelve percent so my request is this simply grandfather in all of the six inch pipes so that they don't have to be ripped up except in the normal costs of maintenance don't rip up a perfectly good six inch pipe and replace it with eight inch pipe if you want to add on average pipe new new pipe should be a danger no question about that for the rural requirements but existing six inch will service quite well for the thousand gallons per minute you see the problem is not the flow to delivery of the thousand gallons a minute the problem is that when you have established this flow and you turn off sharply you have a surety pressure well that occurs after the fire of course and it also assumes that our fire department does not know this problem i think they know they're quite aware of it and they turn it off gradually so it's just a surge pressure that is the issue and that causes you to go beyond the recommended maximum function of the pipe but the pipe can still deliver a thousand gallons per minute depending on the pressure so that will save you an immense amount of money because it prevents dating a perfectly good pipe and especially note that some of these things you're responsible for fifty seventy five percent so if you waste your money by by doing this you are going to cost the council more well that was my testimony but i cannot avoid adding my high recommendation that picture counts should be eliminated they do nothing but make life miserable for people because old people may want to silence and you don't flush them all at once also the sprinkler systems should be considered in relaxing the water flow the viable so thank you very much because thank you madam chair and thank you dr foote pulley for being here when you say the sprinkler system should be considered are you talking about ones that are fed by tank as opposed to the line because yes i would consider that that this frank the system would contain a five thousand gallon tank to see to provide the early stages of it and the i'd like to also submit something else for your thought if i have honored people on a line and i add one more it does not impact fire protection that one more person only uses the fire if there reasonable and then you'd be able to use the money i mean by reasonable i mean twenty thousand dollars that can be put on the mortgage instead of all up front stuff and if you did that you might get some more construction especially upcountry  there is a website i have this if you pass this is my calculations for the five well it does show the website and i have you might get a little thing that says the website is not secure good morning counsel i'm going to reiterate a little bit of what the rest of the crew has already said but one of the things i've noticed over and over again is now county is that we have a whole lot of laws that are written to stop  bad people from doing some bad things but it stops good people from doing good things and this is also impacting our affordable housing on maui and so i want to address a couple of what i lovingly call stupid rules i hope you know i say that with all due respect i'm lumping them together as they relate to housing and water and again it's the one kitchen per house rule that makes it illegal to have two food preparation areas in one home that's all ohana as in which people could rent a portion of their home to others affordably either become impossible because it's not legal or makes maui citizens illegal by providing such facilities or forces people to share their kitchen hide their kitchen or what often happens to prepare their food using  less sanitary bathroom sinks and counters or outdoor facilities that are subject to dirt chickens or rats insects successor of it's also my understanding that the no wet bar rule in a bedroom is and may not actually be a rule yet but i assure you the planning department is already enforcing it as if it is a rule and this rule states that you cannot have a sink or any food preparation area anything that could be used for food preparation in a bedroom this eliminates studio apartments entirely and as you were asking mr couch about whether you would suggest an inhouse ohana as well as a second dwelling i say yes i have a house and he hay that has an attached room that could be used as an affordable accommodation but i can't rent it because i can't put a kitchen in it and it's not legal to have it so you know you could have a lot of the we all know it's already there it's just not allowed to be used and when you ask the planning department why i know what bar rule they say if they cite one wealthy man who has four wet bars in his house who wants to provide non affordable housing and they use the roof they made the rule to stop him from having non affordable housing and it stops other people from being able to provide affordable housing and then there's the faucet count which of course i also consider a stupid rule which eliminates the homeowner from adding any additional faucets as you've already heard this doesn't stop the use of water doesn't make us use the toilet less we just  them all the same time so it's just really absurd and i'd also like to address the belief that a vacation rental is a limb in aiding a portable housing the majority of these properties are not affordable by any standard that any long term rental provided by people paying huge mortgages will not be affordable housing this is like saying we should turn the grand while a into affordable housing apartment that facility will never be where we turn to for affordable housing and people's vacation rental properties or homes where they're paying a lot of money should also not be turned to for affordable housing my heart goes out to you all and how you're going to resolve all of this is my invitation to you is to look at the already existing rules that may be able to be changed or everybody is talking about allowing a little bit more density we do want to try and add density in places in a manner that has been planned in the issue is the way the rules are now are to be able to help predict how much the infrastructure is going to be needed how much you know how many parks have going to need if you start having we're trying to figure out how to do it and i can see and are you ok with in future development allowing you know for the possibility of that and again it's all the infrastructure right you have to pla with it i understand that the problem is huge i mean what we have now is no limit on how many people can live in a house so i have a house and the people next door have at least sixteen people living in that one house you know so the density issue is not being addressed by whether it's legal or all related this is a humongous family and they're all related and i'm not suggesting they shouldn't be able to do it i'm just saying your density issue is not addressed by ohana as it's addressed by a number of people in the house and how do you do that it's a really tricky situation and then you look to the  land where there's huge limitations in the one area where we could i could add another unit and affordable you know affordably hahaha rent it but i can't less i'm making thirty five thousand dollars a year on ag which is ridiculous if i make develop more affordable housing but affordable here is haha like yeah one hundred thousand that's what they call affordable i can tell you right now many of us in this room probably would have a hard time qualifying for four hundred thousand dollars you know and a twenty percent down everything else mr culture is famous say we got eighty percent of the problem solved you know well maybe we take this and we get eighty percent of the problem now we still have twenty percent right now we have a hundred percent yeah and it's  point one of the ones that annette raised to my attention is that it used to be on ag land that you could do you could have two five hundred square foot cottages and then they eliminated that made it one one thousand square foot cottage and if we were able to have two one five hundred square foot or two eight hundred square foot who cares how you know i mean like two thousand square foot cottages we would be able to provide housing for people a country you know may not be as affordable as it might be in downtown los to go there anyway and the church man and other issues are still part of this whole equation and i'm sure once we came really honestly fifty's and take these stupid rules out and allow things to happen maybe and only then would we see some positive results i agree and as you said with catchment what if we were to do like they did with solar and give tax write offs to people to catch i mean i'm looking at catchment systems that's expensive i'm happy to do it it's the responsible thing to do but it's not affordable and if they if we had abilities to do grey water had abilities to get tax write offs for putting catchment in all of these things are so systemic and related to each other and everybody looks at things so it seems seemingly so isolated in one thing once the housing and one's the water in one's planning when you look at them all together they link in such an amazing way to resolve the problems get larger communities in this then calmly and throughout the area called going down as you know has given a lot of latitude in the testimony today about different issues but i think they're all related and you know in misc privileges committee we're talking about affordable housing in this occultist committee we're talking about planning you know in your we're talking about other things you know it's all related everything is all we needed and if we're going to be effective we've got to look big picture and yes some of it is strictly water related but it all fits together with water none of this affordable housing is going to happen so thank you mrs alving this will invent yes but until the final person to sign up for testimony in the chamber is a sherman that lee to punt testifying on  years now the church we've been praying for rain and i think we've got to stop a little bit right now i don't know if we ever have at being between today i think i think looking at the i think it will be twelve whatever infrastructure building infrastructure i think we as a consul i think for me from my home i'm always watching a budget watching what i spend where i spend it how i spend it and making sure it's a good investment all the way around all the way to the end we stick money on big pipes large pipes to provide something that's it's not going to provide and the thing what i do is i put one hand one  hand we have hundred twenty thousand gallons of water waiting in a tank with eight inch water line going up for miles which we can put twenty fire hydrant right there in my yard if that fire truck cannot reach to that fire hydrant what have we got we have a problem ok we spin on my instant as an example of what it's like three point something million right now to put in that fire fire protection but it's not going to happen on the other hand we do a private sprinkler system the private sprinkler system five hundred six hundred even a thousand gallons tank that we put private on  on a on a property it goes off when a fire comes on at a certain level of course which one on those two do you counsel members and chair and even to water the rector which one of these will save a life not this instant that fire hydrant do not work if there is not an attachment to it the sprinkler systems work and they save lives we have sprinkler system even in this building the reason is the fire department cannot get to it in in amount of time from my house for a lot of people that is considered in significant by by our department of water supply way out on the line because they can't get the water to him or he can't get enough water that sprinkler system will save their lives and i feel every single one of us every one of us in this county is significant and should be treated sole includ turn off our cell phones when here we're here in this building here and read and we keep it off so that we pay attention to what the testimony is and we try to add here to what whatever is in front of us we have a large system we're putting in big pipes wasting lots of money in the areas that we're talking about it's been zoned that way for years we're talking about density there is ten fifteen people in a house yet what are we going to do with them we're going to follow the rules wouldn't it was going to police and then that person police in him how can how would you feel telling the people ok you have to move out of that house and goal homeless basically a lot because you can't afford the housing i've seen too many too many dreams get stolen by the water department because of fire protection because of lines not right because any reason that you can think of why not i'm saying why not we try something we start here today because we're we're in the modern age we decide the future let's start today and let's start looking forward for answers to solve our problems one of which i see is the fart private for protection sprinkler systems get in and then put it in looking forward not stepping back we can work the rules a little bit and change it and make it happen i've been doing this for forty years now serving and  think all of the council members are very much a boarding trying to make sensible rules and to do it our problems so you know what happened in the past have been in the past we're moving forward we want to to get some good rules made and to take care of problems and i really really appreciate all of the suggestions i think you're going to be very pleasantly surprised when you listen to the folks that are here today to help us i think they too are on board and want to help any questions members saying thank you very much jim thank you signed up to testify when this to anybody in the gallery feel moved to testify seeing non members without objections i'd like to close the public testimony thank you very much so ordered  we also have received written testimony and i'd like to accept that into the record with no objections thank you very much so ordered members it looks like this might be an opportune time to take our morning break so we're going t take a very short break here i'd like everybody back in ten minutes if that's possible and we're going to go ahead with our presentation from the department and working on our work for today so we are in recess will the meeting please come back to order we're going to proceed real our first item on our agenda today folks and that is the protection district w r one i turn your attention to correspondence from the department of corporation counsel transmitting a proposed resolution entitled referring to the pending commissions a proposed bill amending title nineteen  code relating to protection generally any bill amending title nineteen is referred to the planning commissions for their comments and recommendations that is today's purpose of this  hit ordinance i don't want to get into a lot of discussion today i think we will be able to do that when we get the bill back from the planning commissions my objective is to get this to the commission so they can begin to review and transmit their recommendations for discussion as soon as possible mr taylor would you like to help us with the summary of what's before us thank you madam chair and thanks for the opportunity to bring this before you we the department supports your intention to send this to the planning commission for public comment and review a discussion while this body's in budget so that this summer we can take this up in this committee just in general what we're trying to do with this bill is protect the existing county wells from future contamination this bill does not impact any privately owned wells only the department of water supply present and future wells i think we all know is it's very expensive and time consuming to develop new groundwater sources we also don't have a lot of extra groundwater sources so protecting our current groundwater sources becomes important because if we're working on new water sources and one of our existing sources becomes unusable that new source just becomes a replacement not an expansion and so we all know how hard it is to develop new water sources so one of the first things we need to do is make sure that our existing sources don't become contaminated so hopefully we can all agree that that's generally a good idea so i just ask everyone to look at this from the concept of either existing laws and regulations are ok we don't need to do anything on one end verses the far other extreme ends is we need to take all the areas where there wells and put up fences and kick all the people out you know those are the two ends what we're saying is let's stick to the do as little as we can to get the biggest bang for the buck and so that's what this bill intends to do we have no intention of fencing off the areas keeping private owners from doing pursuing their dreams on their land at the same time we're saying these wells are so important to the community that it's in our all of our best interest to take some action to prevent the worst from happening and doing that before have i would make this analogous to when we look at a school near a school we have lower speed limits there are certain things you're not allowed to do in your school like have liquor establishments are saying for the good of the community there are certain areas that need a little more protection so what happened here is the department of health in conjunction with the university of hawaii did some hydro geological modeling and essentially if you dump some stuff on the ground that seeps into the ground and moves through the water they took the location of each of our wells and they backtracked that one year two years back to ten years so they said where do you dump it on the ground will take ten years to get to the well where do you dump it in the ground that it takes one year to get to them and they drew those for each of our wells those are the overlay districts and essentially what this bill says is if you're within one year of that well meaning something you do to the ground can get to that well within one year there are some restrictions on what you can do in that area if you're within ten years of that well there are much much lower levels of restrictions mostly best management practices that  essentially we've mapped these areas upstream of our wells and said if you're really close to it or pretty close to it you've got to be careful that's the basis of this bill it prohibits outright very few things mostly it's about best management practices within those areas and again what we're trying to do is get the best bang for the buck recognise that this is private property but also recognise that these wells are vital to the future of the community and so to ask people who are doing activities in these critical areas to be a little more careful we think is a very reasonable way to approach them let me just say i think this body knows that from my previous comments relating to like water saving issues i have not wanted the department to get into what's happening on private property right i try to stay out of being the water police when i first saw this bill i didn't really want to get involved what people were doing on private property but as we went through it we realised that i realise there is no other way to protect these wells than to have some impact on these private property owners that are in direct s upstream connection to our wells so although i would rather not have to do this i think it's in the best interest of the community that the department stretch a little bit get a little bit more involved with what's happening in these private property because it is so critical to protecting these well so that's the big picture of what we're trying to do there's a lot of details my hope would be to skip the details for now vet it out in front of the planning commission and then when we bring this back in front of this committee in the summer obviously they'll be and then risk thank you madam chair just in my experience with trying to get send things to the planning commission we've been requested at least through my committee to at least go  over just to see if there's anything that we intend to either change or whatnot they've asked us to do some work in advance but that's totally  to have more details and i would like to know more about the existing state and federal what does exist and i i agree that we need to protect our water resources no question about it but my question is in regards to new sources or draw water supply don't you as a director have to approve  that i guess i call that wrong sources do is the permit issued from the department of water supply so if somebody owning private land were going to at their own expense build a water well and they were going to give that well or dedicate that well to the county that would come through our department and then for approval by this body in that case even without this bill in that case we would probably if this bill didn't exist what that well development agreement to define the same kind of things that are in here for the commission on water resource management which is a branch within the department of land and natural resources they are primarily about quantity of water this is about quality of water so the state water commission doesn't to my knowledge take a leading role in defining activities that may or may not contaminate water that is really the role you heard miss ito from the department of health this morning of the department of health safe drinking water branch which is why there are partners in this action to make sure that the water quality coming out of our wells meets federal state standards and this will another layer for us to assure that we're meeting state and federal requirements not as much as a nother layer but it adds a layer that i would say there isn't anything right now i mean if you just look at the even just t you news in the last year on a wahoo there's been two big leaks there's been the redhill fuel leak and then there's been this recent sand island fuel leak the redhill leak is in danger of contaminating a large portion of the city county of honolulu drinking water so the sand island leak i think is just in danger of not affecting the drinking water but the ocean in both cases once it happened they're monitoring it there may be people fined for it etc but we can see there was no rules to prevent it so there are plenty of rules at the state and federal level to fine people once they're caught but not necessarily to prevent it from happening and in the case of our wells just imagine we have a well you know out here in the fields out here and we start picking up contamination from diesel fuel we have to shut the well down there is no way to trace that back to who won or five years ago illegally dumped something so basically the county will just have to shut that down find some way to treat it and they'll be no way to go back to find who did it so this is a layer that doesn't exist or to identify critical drinking water sources and take some board of water supply are they in support i've seen cars finance out there the department of the board of water supply wrote a letter that they are not in support of of this bill and  am not sure if that was included but we don't agree with them and i will take full responsibility i think that i personally thought it was such a no brainer that i don't think i did enough explanation to them about what we were trying to do and why and i think it was a bad i think our department myself didn't do a very good sales job with the board and i think we learned a lot about how to better explain something really really complicated to regular members of the public frankly i think we started out the whole thing with the ph d hundred jala just with a big presentation and i don't think we ever gave the explanation that i gave in my opening comments today i didn't do that till the end when i realized it had already gone south so what we learned there i think is that we need to do a better cleaner job explaining it upfront and not jumping right into all of the p understand they don't feel comfortable in saying ok and that makes perfect sense are there any further thank you after question i have is you mention here that there were eleven stakeholder means throughout seen long before i joined the department had been managing this effort and i believe that she has run all of those meetings you you mentioned and knows exactly when they were so she'll be down in  ten where there were just other priorities going on the department so there were no public meetings held and we started up again in twenty of that and so i can absolutely get so these eleven means back to two thousand to defer so i believe was two thousand two how many have been held within the last couple of years or are you had only two in twenty eleven then we started on the final version is dated twenty thirteen so in the period between twenty and twelve and today have you reviewed this with any of the large landowners or other community groups fourteen it seems like a pretty broad broad stroke to be what you're trying to accomplish i think it's something we can all get behind to protect the water but at the same mr taylor yeah i have do you do you want the map i'd like to see i mean it yeah is it with the overlays ok that's fine we'll get it we'll get a copy of that is that going to take time so we need a recess  chief john to see to happens to be here to talk about her knowledge of how similar ordinances exist all throughout the country and that this isn't something we just made it's going to be very rare in these discussions that we're going to have the ability to h of applications or anything so it would just be something that staff would absorb within their normal time ok so so you also mentioned you know it's really really complicated and you know you felt that you should have done better job at least do you are your board i find it i support every effort we need to do to make sure our water is clean but you also mentioned what happened what what temple what role will we do to prevent county will not be costly just since to do that and i'm sorry just like you say it's quite complicated  how you're trying to approach this it is and thank you because i realize how it's a big bill and even the the science behind it gets it started with as i mentioned earlier identifying the areas that are upstream of our wells and prioritizing those areas areas that if you spill something on the ground that something could get to the well within one year versus further areas we're getting ten years and then coming up with reasonable precautions that people in those areas could take so any future development in those areas that would then come to us we'd look at what they were doing have things that were approved let's say they're putting in a fuel tank and this might call for double containment of fuel so just something  simple as that to make sure that god will be finished with that it's not something where we're going to go inspect them every week or something like that but making sure that what they're doing matches that those owning areas and make sure and if you tell us again who you are and who you represent then go right ahead joanna seato engineering program manager for the safe drinking water branch of the department of health representing that department of health so the wellhead protection  program is in effect in all forty in all fifty states but there are forty nine states that have ordinances and those ordinances are done on a case by case basis for each municipality or state so in this case we are the last state that does not have a wellhead protection or an incident any of our count code thank you and thank you for being here and the seato you said that there that the other states is that a state or law and then the each and individual regulations and then the states take that and develop their own rules so in that say hawaii administrative roles and then the counties would take it and put it into their ordinance so why aren't we doing it that way instead of we doing it first and you guys we that required states to try to protect their drinking water sources it was developed primarily as a voluntary program so states had the opportunity whether they could develop regulations or not develop regulations but run the program up on a voluntary basis think certain states have actual wellhead protection requirements which actually required the counties to develop a county or misspelt a level program for protecting their water sources in hawaii what we've done is we've taken guidelines from a to develop a statewide baseline for the per the state which we passed on to the county water department to decide what how the county should best protect their water sources and part of that is because of our funding levels we are able to provide funds to the counties to develop and implement protection of water sources as well as at the county level how each county wants to work the county level to do protection and i think one of the things is that the land use requirements and regulations are basically more at the county level that is that state level so the county has the advantage of colloquial land use requirements that can fit into trying to protect water sources then we left it up to each county to determine as a county how best to protect their water sources thank you very much very question i implemented well had protection question is how many states require their counties to implement well protection and have you looked at the at the the ordinances that have been required to be put program if a county decides that they want to use ordinances to protect areas that's their choice if they want to use soley best management practices that's their easy i'm i'm trying to get a sense and presented that this this bill that we have before us is what's being done everywhere else so i'm i'm trying to get a sense of whether this is a best practices type of legislation that has been implemented and works in other areas or not you know i'm just trying to get a sense of whether this is a blue ribbon or  and if it is then there is less of a concern on my part of sending it right on down to the planning commission and i'm sure that on the some of the comments that i've heard from others i'm not sure that this is a best practices bill that i'm comfortable just releasing at this point like kind of kind of agree with mr couch that we should when we send something to the planning commission it should be done in a way that they can at least say that it's come to them with some review by the council and some you know some assurances that there's been public input prior to is a bit of concern here and that members of this committee would like to look at this a little closer before we move this on and if there is the feeling of my committee i have no problem with it i am just your facilitator and i react and you know to the wishes of my members and if you feel that you would like to spend some time on this i would rather not do it today because i have the resources that are here to help us with the second bill i don't know if they're going to be able to be here and we're going to have i do like to get this information that they have to present to the committee to the community today so if you're feeling this gun for just tell me and i'm willing to defer this until we have time to take a closer look at cheating in a sense i understand it well but they don't and i think maybe at this point i would like to see just mad to defer so that we can spend more time going over members i'm very happy also you got your copies of your maps to take a look at and unfortunately like i say we'll probably have to schedule this after budget again but if you guys a comfortable doing that i have no problem any objections no objection ok so ordered we will defer medicare before you like the department to embellish or get prepared for the me next time we bring this up please address them to me and i would get them to the water department and i know they're more than willing to provide you anything you need  since we have the department of health your sources would you is it fair to say that today counties or i would say we have existing opportunities to make  those kind of determination and in protection yes yes thank you members anything more about this if not i'd like to think both of members thank you members we're going to take five minutes and we're going to start on the next bill i'm going to get the water department and the fire department and everybody down here so that we can proceed with the second item so we'll sandy along with staff to discuss a different approach to utilize this money i'd like to introduce folks we weren't able to actually do that earlier they were sitting in the gallery patiently waiting all this department and everybody knows her ching and he's the person that everybody says we all know him he's the chief engineer for the department of water supply i'd like to start our discussion with mr taylor think one of the issues that was brought up and mr coach very eloquently asked about it and it was brought up earlier today in testimony was the idea of can we  or or change or mander do whatever we have to do in order to reduce some of the costs that are associated with the fire protection requirements that you know would that be a good place for us to start  trying to reduce the costs involved in an adding meters in houses and whatever and of course we're concerned about engineering we have to make sure that we don't do anything that is you know not not go work engineering wise we also have to be sure we don't do anything that is going to cause problems with the fire department so we have the two experts here and we want to hear from them mr couch did you want to say something yeah thank you madam chair and thank you for th introduction the the first question that i think we had the members all had was the how much how many of these parcels or requests for water meters on the upcountry water meter list are being requested to have required to have the pipes size increased due to fire flow versus due to pressure you know somebody was saying if you had the hundred first house then obviously then the pressure for all the other previous hundred users will be reduced i think that was one of the questions that we had was is it that is that the bigger issue i discussed this the water system there's there's really two things we look at there's normal flow or the pipes big enough for normal flow if you want to put it that simply and then during fire are they big enough for fire fire for that single house and it tends to be fire flow that ends up being the bigger issue is you need so much flow for fire for so reducing the fire flow requirements would certainly lessen a significant number of the people who have to do improvements we've had some discussions with mr english and frankly i think he's the best one to talk next about he has some history about how some of these  requirements came into the fact based on fire insurance rates and things like that and how we got here and i think it would be helpful for everyone to hear his historical perspective that infrastructure in place after any time after seventy seven back in two thousand when we upgraded our fire floor in two thousand and six to upgrade agriculture requirements from two fifty to five hundred rule from four hundred to one thousand and then a residential water might stay the same the reason we did this back in one two thousand two thousand and one planning meeting with the need to be within five hundred feet of a fire hydrant and that's pretty much what the insurance bill looks at we do the insurance rating of certain areas so yes we did up those standards to try and help the homeowners to get better fire insurance  other than that the agriculture fire from one to fifty was bumped up to five hundred gallons a minute which pretty much a six inch water line for fire protection thank you  go lots first of all the far you said you have mended the fire code in two thousand and six is that you amended the whatever the international or the national standard is you actually added to it or do you just use the national standards when we adopted the ninety seven fire code in two thousand and six our local amendments were put in there to certain certain areas versus routines only when they subdivided including agricultural agriculture and that is only for new subdivisions existing subdivisions that met these rules are still in play we don't go back and retrofit possibly mr victory you know because of his other knowledge if if you would allow members have no objection but we are lucky enough to have me here so so the question is essentially it's a matter of lowering a few folks some folks insurance that are in the outlying areas so would a as was mentioned by several test and in home sprinkler system have the same same or similar effect on the insurance rates if the fire flow was still at say a six inch line when you would you want to require an line if they had a automatic sprinkler system with say if one thousand gallon or one person mentioned up to five thousand gallon tank would that be equivalent to the fire flow as far as insurance rates speaking of personal experience i spent in my home and i do have insurance bri other insurance company when i did discuss it did not give it so mentioned a number of them the one that most concerning to the insurance i saw group is the distance from the fire station to the hole that's number one once you fall out of that five mile radius almost everything else you do  doesn't help too much you know it really doesn't help too much sprinkler systems have in some companies they will give you a discount based upon the fact that they know that that sprinkler system was at least mitigate and slow the fire the surplus market or the high risk markets to get insurance so i hope that answers your question mister culture because again i'm not an expert just my knowledge of the business itself thank you that brings up another question if i may medicare and again for potentially for mr victory you know this well it sounds like we're saying in order we're having this problem because we want to increase the fire flow to decrease someone's insurance rates would it be cheaper for that person to have the higher insurance rates so we they don't have to put in the three hundred thousand dollars or have the rest of the taxpayers put in this big huge itself and i know that's not within the five mile radius of the fire department and i don't you want that house i will guarantee you their rates are going to be probably very high and they're probably in the surplus market i don't think any standard compan it's a new house if they put in sprinkler they may get a discount but fire floor only ensures the amount of water that it would take to fight the fire upon not only the fight apartment arriving but if anyone especially a sprinkler system was  again they had the storage tank is the initial draw but as that storage tank goes down you know you want to has to be augmented in there and so then you need additional source to get there so to answer your question mr college there is no ability to put extra pressure if you're using a smaller pipe so that's one problem number two the further you get out the longer it takes for the fire department to get in it may be more possible to go buy a higher insurance and live with that until the data fire department gets closer to you i remember cool it was all nine and ten for many years until they be built the pool of fire station but then a lot of people had only stand pipes so that didn't change so they got the fire department but now they don't have the proper firefighting tools which is a fire hydrant standby doesn't cut it and am i correct in saying that mr english yes so you know again this is a multiplicity of issues here but i'm saying if you're going to give a break to these people they have to understand that they're at risk their properties at to see the light that you know you do it that way oh you're going to do a three hundred or three million dollar pipe so i guess now reality is setting in maybe there's a change in attitude but i gan there is no clear cut one answer fits all it is a multiplicity of answers that have to be put out there really based upon the five factors mr english put out there and again the biggest factor is the ability of the fire department to get to that property to put the fire out and if it's every if it's not within that five mile radius or not you can be even three and a half miles but if you've got to go to a narrow windy roads like some of the up country roads you still almost back to square one so again i hope that helps you mr culture in what you were asking oh yeah thank you and thank you madam chair i just got to say i'm flabbergasted that we're having this issue that's going to be two hundred million dollars to help lower some people's insurance and that's a significant amount of the issue we have here if that's all that is i i'm sure that everybody here will have a little bit of common sense and say hey let's not put this burden two hundred million dollars on all of taxpayers to save somebody a couple thousand dollars a year in insurance if if they choose to be out there if they wan put the million dollar thing in to get lower insurance it just doesn't make sense if their house is worth five hundred thousand dollars and they they want to put a million dollar waterline in there just to protect their house i would think they'd want to do insurance better i think if you told the folks up country that that's what most of this is about they're going to say give us our meters please at six inch versus you know making us put an eight inch line but i'm not you know i don't live up country so i don't know but i'm guessing two interesting growth to six inches i mean there's a whole array of piping that goes to the upcountry system some of it is so old let me say that some of us weren't even on this earth when those might what is i mean this  rehabilitation is not justify issue so let's stop right there it may be part of it but it isn't the biggest part the biggest part is the long neglected upcountry system and the lack of storage and the lack of source that's the problem ok all of this is just band aids again we're just putting band aids ok so let's get to the source of where we really want to go this will help the people who want to be a house yeah grant great this will help general i think we've always acknowledged that if the end goal is to get eight hundred people on the list get them all meters and have them build whatever they're going to build then source treatment storage transmission and distribution all of these things and this is a multi hundred million dollar problem my understanding that the chairs go for this is to try to find a way that as people's names come up on the list that those individuals some portion of those individuals have an easier time and it makes it easier for at least some people to accept their meters rather than having to pay so i think we would agree with your overall assessment at the same time i think this is only meant to solve a very specific problem for some very specific people that are in that category i believe that's what the chair is trying to do and i think that was the intent behind this bill so we've gone to where we should be at this level and again fire flow isn't the biggest issue because again you can do what yes you know we haven't had an opportunity to hear from her chang and during our meeting her been very helpful in x you know trying to help us understand these requirements in a way we had and we did reduced fire protection requirements and maybe mr chang would like to comment on that we are not prepared yet to draft a bill but we're trying to figure out if we are going to do it exceptions or reductions who would we looked at the possibility of limiting these called maybe waivers or lessening the requirements for fire protection to low density type areas because those people are the most possible as far as possible changes you also talked about maybe limiting how much money we could actually provide to each project because we don't want a big project to take away the bulk of the twelve million dollars that we have your mark but does require a lot of changing of the ordinance is there not because as we talked about earlier we do have you know if we just change the fire flow requirement to whatever the nationwide standard is it sounds like we added a little bit because of the insurance we bring that about down to the standard  i guess the question is how many people would be affected if we said the standard whatever the national standard is of just bring that thousand gallons per minute down th significant part of this problem is the fire flow requirements that i hear that wrong you're correct and in fact i read some time in the last year a national study looked at all these different water systems and they came up with something that something like forty percent of the cost of a water system is for fire flow you know some enormous amount of the cost is just that extra flow you need for th structures so if nothing ever burned the entire water system would be you know down sized by forty percent that so so obviously when somebody comes in that's always going to be a big factor that especially these areas of country as mr victor you know mention these small lines fire flow tends to be the item they can't it's easier to meet domestic flow but obviously fire flow is so much higher that that tends to be more often than not the critical and deal with the fire flow so i think if we dealt with the fire flow issue we have a lot more meters going through if there's departments ready for that but after after we had the meeting with the folks and with staff we are kind of looking at proposing language to amend the fire code and say something like these folks will not be required to meet the fire protection requirements of section what we have to quantify and qualify very carefully is who would be eligible for that and of course the other part that has come up is the legal concerns and i'm going to ask mr khushi if you could comment on that because if these fire flow requirements that we're thinking about i've had people say well if you do that are you putting the county at risk because now you've changed it in my house burned down it's your fault and i if you can comment you know in public fine if not i understand be hard to venture a response at this point not knowing the they might do it in the scope of a reduction  you want to add more free shots correct yes ok in terms of liability yes and i understand it you know once we get a proposal in front of you in the form of a bill that you'll be able to do your research and give us more advice this is at this point of course we're just brainstorming and trying there's still uncertainty and what liability would fall back on a county whenever you go below what the national standard but i'd like testify department what is your take on we do seeing the national standards i mean you understand the dilemma yes we can help a lot more people but in your mind and the fire departments opinion i guess what i'm asking you for is this a good move i mean we know the positives for the people but you know if there is a fire and you have to be there to fight it and the flow does not meet what you need at that point in time and that house just goes up it's in flames again that's my question to you  open because you're exempt from providing fire protection and then we're going to still with the fire i mean try to put the father best that we can but we use all our resources from other areas because you have no fire protection an area  sprinklers is one aspect there are still other aspects in all of this and again i'm supportive to try to finances you know and we've worked on this for years and i have i like you must english time to think out of the box however there is the safety and well being and that can never be left in the back burner pardon the pun you know and really important that we keep this whole picture but in focus that the people and the property of my county still very important and i can tell you right now if there's a fire rush right next to your home you're not going to be asking oh yeah we do fire flock i'm ok no you're going to be saying where and what help am i going to get and i think that's very important so i thank you very much for that clarification i think this does bring a bigger dimension to the issue you know maybe we need more fire coverage we need fire station one knows what we need but there's a bigger picture and i don't want to go there that's not the anybody you know i do madam chair and it's good we got to this point about this meeting are out of the box thinking internally this is we follow the same line of discussion that the members here are and we ended up sort of with this out of the box solution that is multi variable multi disciplinary that gets into all the things being talked about what we're throwing around as perhaps as you heard some some my colleagues mention maybe allowing low density ones in twos and threes houses those kind of things in low density areas give them a waiver from the fire flow upgrades switch this ten million dollars the stuff that came from general fund that didn't come from the water apartment to buy some tanker trucks and use it to funds me p so from talking to the budget director he said these tanker trucks are about eight or nine hundred thousand dollars so they are expensive and then talking to the fire chief he said each one needs to come with three days because for twenty four seven three sixty five coverage you need three positions and i'm not sure whether those are firefighters or quicken operators i'm a firefighter three's so basically the idea we came up with to give coverage to kind of wrap all this together and it's already eleven thirty was three tanker trucks nine any piece so nine positions for those three tanker trucks of country so they would be kept full and scattered wherever the fire departments shift the money to that down level the fire flow requirements for limited developments that have maybe one or two or possibly you know three units subdivision that's it and then a number of people would be helped without putting the community at risk can imagine it was a very interesting discussion yes but i think it's time you know at this point where we have to try to look at new things because otherwise we're never going to move forward and all of us are very aware that we have a crisis in housing and we need to deal with it and so let's look at everything but we're looking carefully because we don't want to leave any big pieces out mr victory and thank you you hit the nail on the head and we've been talking about this all along as it affecting the folks up country have in your group have you had some of the folks from upcountry or is that the next step is to go and say hey we're looking at doing this it may cost you more in insurance more because it gets complicated and i think our little discussion makes everybody understand that there's no simple answer i mean i can put before you and say well it's by treating others and you know putting these people all of that stuff but we really need to discuss it we need to think about it and i don't think we want to you know formalize it until we do but what i am excited about is there has been hope and there's the question is  they work what they have to be tailored to be and what can the council as well as the electorate do but we do know that it's time that we need to take a good look and do something so because  unfortunate timing here this is the last water meeting that we will have the opportunity to talk about this before we go into but our meeting on the eighteenth of march will be a budget presentation by the department they're coming to talk to us about what they will be asking for and budget and i think that's really important so i get in today was to try to gather more information and we'll be talking and working during concurrently with the budget staff and i will be working on this and will probably be ready to put something before you after but but i did want to get all of this out so that the public knows what we're talking about can go back to their groups or their folks well again i thank you madam chair for doing this and i think we've worked on it and worked on it and we're getting closer and i think that's important thank you very much for continuing the path that we had set many years ago and not just me but many years ago we said to the meetings right after the budget so that we can get our teeth into this and i hope the public that's listening those that are here the members that have common spent time with us in the gallery that they'll come up with some other ideas and let's move ahead thank you thank you and i certainly encourage the public also to send us ideas and information and you know proposals we want to look at everything and i want to thank mr plod because he is submitted language they do you think might be helpful was discussions for today and being that there is nothing else i would like to defer the matter until a bill is prepared with no objections thank you very much i'd like to thank everybody who came to my staff resource people i really appreciate your cooperation it's a pleasure working with all of you and i'd like to think my members very much so without any for the business this meeting is