Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Judiciary, to which was referred H.B. No. 662, H.D. 2, entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purposes of this measure are to establish criminal penalties for the abandonment of hazardous waste or used oil and to increase certain criminal penalties from a misdemeanor to a felony.

Your Committee received written testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Health.

Your Committee finds that the hazardous waste program has encountered situations where innocent landowners are left to dispose of waste illegally dumped on their property and must remediate and clean up a contaminated site. In other cases, lessees of a property create a hazardous waste site, file for bankruptcy, claim no assets, and are often back in business under a different identity within months.

Your Committee is supportive of the deterrents proposed in this measure as a means to protect Hawaii's fragile environment and to require remediation by the party responsible for the contamination rather than the innocent landowners.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 662, H.D. 2, and recommends that it pass Third Reading.