Are you ready to go?

Welcome to the 20th session of the communication reports and council oversight committee here at the Hawaii County Building in Hilo.

Hawaii it's June 2nd, 2026 at 1 p.m.

And present here in Hilo are Council members Kagiwada, Hustis Kirkowitz, O'Nishi, Viegus, and myself, uh the Chair, Michelle Galemba.

Um absent at this time, uh Council members Inaba and Kimball.

They should be joining us shortly.

Um, I'm sorry, Councilmember Inaba will be joining us shortly.

Council member um Kimball and is excused and council member County Lee Kleinfelder is absent.

Also excused.

Um let's see, let's go to oral public testimony.

Mr.

Clerk.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Just want to confirm that we do not have testifiers at your remote sites.

We do have one here in the Hilo chamber.

Shelley S.

Makala Hutty testifying on this communication.

Shelley, when you get to the front, you can turn the mic on by hitting the green button at the base of the mic, introducing yourself, and you'll have three minutes.

Hi, aloha everybody.

My name is Shelly Makalinakoa the third of the Ha Iohana.

I'm actually um my first to work um employment was actually with the environmental management here at the county.

And um my job is actually interviewing people working at the um transfer stations.

So um what I did notice was that it's not exactly the EPA, and that we don't really have a facility where we can go and you know, look at actual environmental management issues.

And so through these EPA webinars, Brownfield's revolving funds, that it is possible to go.

Um they do provide a um infrastructure.

We would just have to build it.

Um, of course, like where would it be?

Um, who would manage uh manage it, and it also correlates say with like the colleges, um, people studying OSHA, um, you know, occupational safety and hazard issues.

Um so for environmental management, um we do have certain issues here on the island of Hawaii, um, which includes um well they had a watershed meeting uh recently was brought up.

There's actually still three military dump sites, two in Hilo Bay, one by Hon Honolie.

Um we have issues of old sugar cane uh legacy chemicals like arsenic and whatnot, which um there are a lot of them are are leases that are you know no longer operational.

Some of them do have the Maheli titles, raw patents, crown land leases, things like that.

So the issue of getting homeless Hawaiians off the street correlates with environmental management because we want to look at where can we put homeless Hawaiians on the waiting list or whatever the dysfunctional problem is that causes the Hawaiians to suffer.

So under Uamauke Oka in Ikopono, um to pet perpetuate the land in righteousness, that actually the environmental management um division can fulfill that goal and the mandate um to help with the plight of the Hawaiian people, but also um to protect public health and safety here in Hawaii and to assess every single environmental challenge we have before it gets worse.

And we might be able to apply super fund and different things, but I know that in the um the laws it does say that um the county is actually the one to access revolving funds.

Um for s situations involving infrastructure for that could apply to environmental management.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your testimony, and with that, Chair, those are all the testifiers you have.

Thank you, Mr.

Archeli.

Mr.

Clerk, could you read in communication 906?

Last chance if anyone out there would like to testify in communication 906, please speak up now.

Hearing and seeing non-communication 906 requests an update and discussion with the Department of Environmental Management and the Administration on the Ali Drive proposed sewer extension project from Councilmember Rebecca Viegas, dated May 12, 2026.

Motion to close file on communication 906.

It's been moved by council member Viegas and seconded by Councilmember Onishi to close file on communication 906.

Councilmember Viegas.

Thank you so much.

At this time, I'd like to invite Mr.

Craig Kawaguchi up here.

Said it right this time.

And thank you for being here today.

There were some hiccups and misunderstandings on my part about where we were in the process for the sewer extension between La Aaloa and Kahaluu and the contracts that were out and money that had been budgeted.

So I just am grateful to have you here today in order for the public to hear the news on where we're at in that project and how things are moving forward.

So if you would go ahead and share that for us, that would be fantastic.

So Craig Kalgucchi, Deputy Director, DEM, and happy to say with all the hard work and especially on Jonathan Simmons those civil engineer.

So thank you a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.