Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2003

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Energy and Environment, to which was referred S.B. No. 503 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to strengthen the enforcement provision of the State's Clean Water Act.

Testimony supporting this measure was submitted by the Conservation Council for Hawaii, Life of the Land, Hawaii Audubon Society, Surfrider Foundation Oahu Chapter, Hawaii's Thousand Friends, and one individual. The Department of Health, Land Use Research Foundation, and Hawaii Agriculture Research Center submitted testimony opposing this measure. The Hawaiian Electric Company and its subsidiaries provided comments on this measure.

Specifically, this measure enacts provisions relating to muddy water, underground injection wells, and nutrients, allows citizen suits, and increases the fine for each violation of the water pollution law, or any rule, permit, or variance issued under that law from $25,000, to $40,000.

Your Committee finds that this measure will help assure that future developments along our coasts do not produce the devastating polluted runoff into our ocean waters and coral reefs that has been produced by past developments, such as at Ma'alaea Harbor on Maui, Pila'a on Kauai, Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island, and Palauea on Maui.

Your Committee has amended this measure by:

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Energy and Environment that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 503, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 503, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs.