STAND

STAND. COM. REP. NO. 915

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2005

RE: S.B. No. 212

S.D. 2

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Ways and Means, to which was referred S.B. No. 212, S.D. 1, entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO ENVIRONMENT,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to appropriate funds to the Commission on Water Resource Management to hire a hydrologist and a geologist.

The classifications for these positions are listed as a hydrologist IV and an geologist I.

Your Committee finds that the Commission on Water Resource Management's Stream Protection and Management Branch and the Survey Branch are in need of a hydrologist IV and a geologist I position, respectively, to carry out their duties. Specifically, the measure appropriates moneys that would fund the:

(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.

Your Committee has amended the measure by:

(1) Appropriately identifying the Hawaii Supreme Court decision referenced in the measure;

(2) Correcting a spelling error to accurately reflect material quoted from the Hawaii Supreme Court decision;

(3) Changing the amounts appropriated to unspecified amounts to facilitate further discussion; and

(4) Making technical nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and style.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Ways and Means that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 212, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 212, S.D. 2.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Ways and Means,

		____________________________ BRIAN T. TANIGUCHI, Chair