Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Hawaiian Affairs and Water, Land, Energy and Environment, to which was referred S.B. No. 1489 entitled:

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to authorize the Department of Land and Natural Resources to execute mitigation plans for a landowner, permittee, or developer, upon request, in the event of an inadvertent discovery of a burial site.

The measure also allows the Department of Land and Natural Resources to assess a fee for its services in this capacity.

Testimony in support of the measure was received from the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Your Committees find that under existing law, if an inadvertent discovery of a burial site is made, the Department of Land and Natural Resources sends a staff member to the discovery site to investigate the situation, and to decide on whether the human remains are to stay in place or be relocated. If the remains are to be removed, the Department sometimes undertakes the responsibility, especially in cases where the ocean has eroded parts of the site or remains along the shoreline. In most cases, the property owner hires a consulting archaeologist to perform this work. The Department then coordinates and assists the property owner with the reburial and other mitigation measures.

Your Committees find that this measure provides explicit authority to the Department of Land and Natural Resources to implement such mitigation plans and to offset their incurred costs by enabling the Department to assess and collect fees for their services.

Your Committees have amended the measure by making a technical, nonsubstantive amendment to correct a drafting error and by clarifying that a landowner, permittee, or developer must solicit bids from pre-qualified archaeological firms, rather than the stated pre-qualified architectural firms, to implement mitigation plans.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Hawaiian Affairs and Water, Land, Energy and Environment that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1489, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1489, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.