STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2524

 

Honolulu, Hawaii

                  

 

RE:    S.B. No. 2640

       S.D. 1

 

 

 

Honorable Shan S. Tsutsui

President of the Senate

Twenty-Sixth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2012

State of Hawaii

 

Sir:

 

     Your Committees on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs and Energy and Environment, to which was referred S.B. No. 2640 entitled:

 

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO WASTEWATER,"

 

beg leave to report as follows:

 

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to allow the use of individual wastewater systems as an on-site means of wastewater disposal in lieu of county-operated wastewater treatment works.

 

     Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from Ka Honua Momona International, Honson Company, Inc., Life of the Land, Sierra Club, and two individuals.  Your Committees received testimony in opposition to this measure from the Department of Health and Department of Environmental Services of the City and County of Honolulu.

 

     Your Committees find that Hawaii's fresh water sustains all life within this State, and that conventional wastewater treatment systems use more of this finite resource than many innovative, individual wastewater treatment systems.  Individual wastewater treatment systems should be allowed under specific circumstances to enable the State to meet its sustainability goals.   

 

     Your Committees have amended this measure by:

 

     (1)  Clarifying that counties shall permit individual wastewater treatment systems as an on-site means of wastewater disposal when the system pre-dates a county-operated wastewater treatment system and the county determines that allowing the system is fair and equitable;

 

     (2)  Requiring the counties, no later than December 31, 2013, to adopt rules or ordinances allowing individual wastewater treatment systems; and

 

     (3)  Making a technical, nonsubstantive amendment for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

 

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs and Energy and Environment that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2640, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2640, S.D. 1, and be placed on the calendar for Third Reading.

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs and Energy and Environment,

 

____________________________

MIKE GABBARD, Chair

 

____________________________

WILL ESPERO, Chair