Region IX of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the State of Hawaii, and the City and County of Honolulu announced today the broad outline of a seminal settlement agreement over the future management of Honolulu’s sewage collection and treatment plant system for the next 25 years.

The City will implement a long-term schedule for upgrading its Honouliuli and Sand Island primary waste water treatment plants to more advanced secondary treatment systems.

It should be noted that this action came about as a result of citizen watchdog groups who were dissatisfied by the slipshod way that the sewage systems was being run. Maui’s Cheryl Okuma, Director of Environmental Management, was especially criticized during her tenure in Honolulu for her lack of action in maintaining and improving the system.

And you wondered why Maui is having such a hard time getting progress out of our Dept. of Environmental (Mis)Management.

June 2, 2010

Mayor Charmaine Tavares
200 S. High St.
Kalana O Maui Bldg 9th Fl
Wailuku, HI  96793

Dear Mayor Tavares,

The purpose of this letter is to notify you of my resignation from the Community Working Group on Wastewater Reuse effective immediately.

I have come to the decision to resign very reluctantly. When appointed to the Community Working Group, I had high hopes that we could come together, talk together, identify different perspectives and concerns, and work to forge a practical plan to phase out injection wells and reuse the wastewater beneficially and safely on land.

In my view, however, the process that has been employed by those guiding the Community Working Group has frustrated, not furthered, the goal of community consensus building to implement the goal you stated more than a year ago. From the beginning, we were told by those guiding the process that the Community Working Group should focus on water reuse and should not be talking about wastewater injection, ocean pollution or coral reef protection. Repeatedly, the CWG membership sought to look at the whole picture – as your own goal did, but those guiding the process have not allowed the CWG to receive briefings during meeting time from its own members on the impact of wastewater injection wells on coral reefs. This is just one example of how the process has been designed in ways that effectively prevent community dialogue and understanding of both the problem and the alternative solutions.

The process has prevented a free flowing discussion in the whole group as to how to get to a realistic plan to phase out injection wells, treat the wastewater adequately, reuse an increasing percentage of it beneficially and safely on land, and pay for all this. Instead, the CWG has been managed in a way that has frustrated the process of community education and open discussion of how to achieve your stated goal. Even the beneficial discussions that have been held have not been recorded accurately. In short, in good conscience, I can no longer participate as a representative of the DIRE Coalition in a process that I regard as essentially a sham and a waste of taxpayer money. I regretfully resign from the CWG effective immediately.

Sincerely,
Jeff Schwartz