Aloha, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for your patience.

Today is September 1st.

The time at 2026, and the time is 118 p.m.

Thank you for all of those of you who've been waiting for this committee meeting.

So we're running a little behind today.

This is the eighth session of the policy committee on environmental and natural resource management.

Joining me here today in Hilo Chambers are Council Member Galimba, Councilmember Kimball, Councilmember Kanye Lee Kleinfelder, Councilmember Inamba, Councilmember Oneshi will be joining us in a moment.

Councilmember Kirkowitz, Councilmember Houstis, and Councilmember Kagiwara.

My name is Rebecca Viegas, and I will be the chair of the committee this meeting.

This meeting, this meeting today.

At this time, we'll go to statements from the public.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Noting that we do have a handful of testifiers via Zoom.

We have a couple here in the Hilo chamber, so we'll start with them.

The first of which is I believe it's Brianni Kobayashi Kuali to be followed by Matthew Pickett.

Ms.

Kuilee, when you're ready to begin, you can press that green button at the base of the mic to turn it on.

Introduce yourself, and you'll have three minutes.

Aloha, Chair and members of the council.

Aloha.

My name is Brianni Kobayashi Kualii, and I'm the G general manager of SCP Hilo Hotel.

And for those of you who may not know, SCP Hilo Hotel is the first property in the entire state of Hawaii to achieve a silver benchmark recognition through Earth Check, which is the world's leading sustainability benchmarking and certification organization for both travel and tourism in the world.

We have worked hard for this distinction because SCP at Hilo SCP Hilo is not a slogan.

It's measurable, accountable, and built in the way we operate.

She's excited too.

For those who might not know, we've also eliminated single-use plastics for all of amenities, water bottles.

We provide filtered water stations.

Our solar panels provide more than 10 megawatt hours of energy.

And I can take her.

And through our Every State Does Good program, every time a guest checks in with us, we uh average tourist brings about 1.1 pound of trash, and we physically remove 2.2 pounds of trash every time a guest stays with us in partnership with Hawaii Wildlife Fund.

So this partnership has helped us to remove more than 60 tons of marine debris, so close to 200,000 pounds of trash so far.

Um our most recent wastewater bill reflects this story.

In our 128-room property, SCP Hilo Hotel is actually 32% below the national hotel median for water consumption.

32 cent percent below.

And we work hard to be as sustainable as we can, as I mentioned earlier.

We're doing what we can and we're constantly asking businesses and visitors in Hawaii to do the same, to waste less, to consume less, and to take responsibility for our impact.

But this bill does create a hotel wastewater class and charges hotels a higher rate simply just because we are hotels.

And it doesn't distinguish between a hotel that conserves aggressively like ours and one that does not.

And I believe this is where the policy gets it wrong.

If one hotel consumes dramatically less water than another, I don't believe uh its commitment to conservation should become irrelevant just because it's a hotel.

If the goal is to protect our infrastructure and our resources, then I feel the actual rate of consumption should matter.

We understand that infrastructure costs money, and we're not asking to avoid our responsibility or for someone else to pay our share, but for a smarter rate structure that would consider actual consumption, consider verified conservation performance such as ours, consider uh a conservation credit or a performance-based adjustment for businesses like ours that demonstrate other using your resources.

Um if we invest in solar, eliminate plastics, reduce our water use, and track our environmental impact and become the first ever in the state to use this to in hotel in Hawaii and use 32% of water.

I want that to matter.

And I don't want the message to be that we don't reward this.

Uh Hawaii County has an opportunity to create a policy that does more than just collect revenue.

I believe it can really influence behavior.

Um reward conservations, and we can all have a reason to conserve more.

Uh sorry.

We're just trying to be the example, and we don't want to punish the example.

Thank you so much for your obvious code.

Your time is up, so we're gonna have to move on.

Chair, your next testifier is Matthew Pickett here in the Hilo Chamber to be followed by Barbara Bell via Zoom.

Matthew, when you're ready to begin, please introduce yourself and you'll have three minutes.

Good afternoon.

Chair Naba and members of the council.

Uh the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel respectfully opposes Bill 183 in its current form.

We support a financially self-sustaining wastewater system.

We accept that the rates must rise for the Hilo water wastewater treatment plant.

Our objection is to one of the features in the bill.