Good afternoon.

Will the Committee on Energy Environment and Sustainability please come to order?

I'd like to welcome Councilmembers Tolba and Tupola to the chamber.

Committee Vice Chair Los Santos TAM is excused from today's meeting.

Pursuant to section 92-3.7 Hawaii revised statutes.

This meeting will be conducted as a remote meeting by interactive conference technology with the following procedures in effect for the meeting.

Members of the public will be allowed to provide oral testimony on all items on the agenda in two ways, remotely and in-person in the council chamber.

Remote and in-person oral testimony will be allowed when the agenda item is taken up.

As both English and Hawaiian are the official languages of the state of Hawaii, pursuant to Article 15, Section 4 of the state constitution and section one-thirteen of the Hawaii revised statutes.

Members of the public may testify in either language.

Video conference from a quiet location if possible.

Written testimonies, including the testifier's address, email address, and phone number will be available to the public as described on the posted agenda.

Is it courtesy?

Please turn off all cell phones.

That brings us to agenda item number one for action.

This is resolution 26172 confirming the reappointment of Naalehu Anthony to serve on the Board of Water Supply of the City and County of Honolulu for a term to expire on June 30th, 2031.

Members, we also have a proposed hand-carried CD one identified as OCS 2026-0507/8/20 slash 2026.

Time 810 a.m.

submitted by myself, making the following amendments, amending the title to read confirming the appointment, reappointment rather of Naalehu Anthony to serve on the board of the water board of water supply of the city and county of Honolulu, amending the fourth words clause to identify the mayor's letter dated July 28, 2026, as Mayor's message 99, 2026, and then also making miscellaneous technical and non-subsidive amendments.

If you want to come up and just identify your name for the record, uh as mentioned, um this is a reappointment, so extremely grateful for your willingness to continue serving on the um board.

So I'll go ahead and turn it over to you.

Yeah, aloha council members, uh, thank you for the opportunity to be to come before the uh chamber today.

Uh for the record, I'm not Alehu Anthony.

I've been a Board of Water Supply board member for six years.

I was the chair for three.

I just came off as uh the chair in June.

Uh I'm willing and able to serve another five years if you have me.

And I just want to um take the time to thank you all for uh your service uh to the city and county of Honolulu.

Mahalo Nui, and I stand by for any questions you might have.

I appreciate that.

And um, you know, so many different qualifications, but just want to note I know when we talked, um, you had just mentioned so correct me if I'm wrong, you're the only board member left um from the Red Hill crisis.

Is that yes, council member?

I I came on just a year before um the Red Hill crisis in in 20 uh 21, and I'm the sole remaining board member um that was there at that time.

And so one of the things that um we're working with uh staff and uh administration at the Board of Water Supplies to make sure that uh we have the institutional memory as to what occurred, what what uh what some of the remedies might be, and and uh you know want to support the administration in in uh bringing those remedies to fruition over the the course as we learn more.

Yeah, appreciate that.

Um, and I know the community is very grateful for that as well.

Any questions while we have Mr.

Anthony Councilmember Tupolo?

Aloha, thank you for being here.

So for the six years that you've served, um, I'm not exactly sure what the Board of Water Supply Commissioners do.

So specifically, you guys discuss rates and um maybe things that deal with customers.

Yeah, so there's the I think the first uh and foremost job is to uh uh oversee the the work of the manager, and so we have the the ability to hire and fire.

Um, and then outside of that, we also approve the budget, so roughly uh half a billion dollars a year.

Uh, if there's any bonds that go out, then uh we approve the bonds.

And in certain instances, if there are um large cases against the board of water supply that require a settlement of I think more than 50,000, then it'll come before the board.

Um, but this, you know, uh, and then I should also mention uh council member that uh the response to Red Hill has taken up um the the board's time, the staff's time, uh the managers' time to make sure that uh we provide uh subject matter expertise and water quality and kind of what the next steps are uh as well as the the as you well know the billion-dollar lawsuit uh against the Navy uh for remedies um in and around the Red Hill crisis, but but kind of pre-Red Hill, it was making sure that the budget got approved and making sure that um uh we we took care of any uh issues with the manager.

Did you all do you guys also discuss any type of like energy savings or things that could bring in more revenue to Board of Water Supply?

Yeah, you know, that's a very timely and important um piece of the puzzle.

So we've had that discussion actually um a number of times.

I should also mention that we uh have to approve any rate raise.

And if we go back to this last rate raise, some of the vigorous uh debate that occurred had to do with the pie wedge, if you will, of how much we pay for uh electricity to run the 1900 some odd sites that require power to pump water here and there.

And um the the the issue here being that um our rates are fixed for the number of years that we we set forth, and we had actually paused on a rate raise because of COVID, uh, but you know, HECO kept raising the rate, and so we were essentially essentially losing more and more money um against the rate that had been uh that had been that had been pegged.

And so one of the discussions, and it came up in yesterday's board meeting in um in the regular session was talking about how it is that not only are we looking to maybe save money in our energy costs, but also to become more resilient when we see things like uh Hurricane Lala uh take out, I don't know, 250,000 customers across the state, which included um you know hundreds of our pumping facilities.

And so, you know, when you lose um 911, the phone system, the internet, and then electricity, you don't wanna lose water as well.

And so we wanna make sure that we have the tools that are necessary to not only in emergency powering with with diesel generators, but also to look at the long term about what kind of um renewable energy we can use to take ourselves further and further uh into a more resilient state.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Uh we brought it up a few times.

I know it's a long-term discussion, but the Board of Water Supply has land, they have the ability to kind of determine for themselves that they want to install some of these.

So, in full support of anything we can do to provide insight or help or assistance to that, because you know, you guys are the determiners of the rates for Board of Water Supply, but the only way we can kind of combat all the rising costs is if we get smarter about what costs we we can cut down on.

So yeah, council member, that's absolutely right.