STAND. COM. REP. NO.126

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2003

RE: S.B. No. 920

S.D. 1

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2003

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Water, Land, and Agriculture, to which was referred S.B. No. 920 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO WATER,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to prohibit the addition of chemicals to the public water supply but not additives used to make water safe and potable, such as chlorine.

Testimony in support of this measure was submitted by more than twenty concerned citizens and environmentalists from around the State. Testimony in opposition to this measure was submitted by the Department of Health.

Your Committee finds that this measure would free Hawaii from periodic threats of mandatory community fluoridation, which have been occurring since the 1950s.

Your Committee has amended the measure as suggested by the Department of Health. The department's concerns with the measure would be assuaged by amending the measure's language to exempt the military, which has a standard practice of providing fluoridated water at its facilities, and to make the prohibition less broad, allowing the possible use of future new and safe treatment chemicals other than chlorine.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Water, Land, and Agriculture that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 920, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 920, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Water, Land, and Agriculture,

____________________________

LORRAINE R. INOUYE, Chair