Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Water, Land, Energy and Environment and Agriculture, to which was referred S.B. No. 12 entitled:

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to appropriate funds for the emergency replacement of the Lower Hamakua Ditch flumes.

Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Agriculture.

Your Committees find that the ditch is the sole source of irrigation water for former Hamakua Sugar Company lands now being actively cultivated by former unemployed sugar workers. If the ditch flumes fail and are not repaired, these new start-up farming operations will sustain losses from which they could not recover.

Your Committees find that the Lower Hamakua Ditch flumes are a critical factor in the economic health of the Big Island and your Committees have amended this measure to appropriate $50,000 for replacement of the flumes.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Water, Land, Energy and Environment and Agriculture that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 12, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 12, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.