STAND. COM. REP. NO. 1168

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2005

RE: H.B. No. 1433

S.D. 1

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Water, Land, and Agriculture, to which was referred H.B. No. 1433 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT MAKING AN APPROPRIATION TO THE COMMISSION ON WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to appropriate funds to the Commission on Water Resource Management (Commission) to complete water management tasks.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the University of Hawaii Environmental Center, EarthJustice, Hanalei Watershed Hui, Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and two individuals submitted testimony in support of this measure.

Your Committee finds that this measure is an important step in protecting Hawaii's most precious resource by enabling the Commission to implement monitoring of our State's fresh water sources.

Your Committee finds that a similar measure, S.B. No. 212, was heard and approved, with amendments, by this Committee and was subsequently approved, with amendments, by the Committee on Ways and Means. Your Committee has amended this measure to reflect the provisions in S.B. No. 212, S.D. 2, by appropriating moneys that would fund a:

(1) Hydrologist IV position to assist the Stream Protection and Management Branch's Instream Use Protection Section with testing to establish necessary instream flow standards; and

(2) Geologist I position to assist the understaffed Survey Branch with accomplishing its tasks of data analyses for aquifer tests, groundwater and surface water interaction, and groundwater interpretation, and advising other departments on geological matters.

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 H.B. No. 1433, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 1433, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

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

____________________________

RUSSELL S. KOKUBUN, Chair