Recent OTF Meeting of 9/19/08

Got some blogging and pics to share from the most recent OTF meeting. Was waiting for the full-text online version of some of the presentors, including HSF's terse responses to Belt Collins' RRA, Greg Kaufman's testimony on whale avoidance and the whale season starting in 3 weeks, and Irene Bowie's testimony on total fiscal costs to the State of this project at a time when the rest of the State budget is being cut substantially. Those I have in original format, but there was actually a lot of other good testimony not detailed in the newspaper reports. I was particularly impressed with the Hana High School students' testimonies and other speakers from Hana about the documented resource depletion. I'll have my main blog post on this up soon.

For now, here is a comment I left about it on somebody else's blog today:
http://kauaieclectic.blogspot.com/2008/09/musings-breaking-silence.html

"About the OTF meeting on Sept.19th, there was actually a lot of good information from the meeting that was not reported by any of the papers. I will try to get out some of that and some pics from it in a blog post. Also look forward to the report on that OTF meeting that will eventually be put up in it's entirety on the DOT website by Mike Formby's assistant.

The overall sense I got from the meeting is that the committee members are starting to feel overwhelmed by all of the information, ideas and recommendations being presented to them by the public, DLNR/DOCARE, and DOA. As an example, two or three Maui speakers asked that of the 3 OTF committee meetings left, that one be on Kauai and one on the Big Island. During the meeting Mike Formby pointed out that the committee members need to start compiling the information and recommendations from all of the monthly meetings/reports to come up with the final report to the Legislature at the end of the year. Then at the end of the meeting, with no discussion, the next meeting of the OTF was set for Honolulu Airport. I get the sense that Kauai and the Big Island may not get a chance to see this committee in action and give testimony and that the final report may let a lot of good detail fall through the cracks."

Here are links to all of the recent newspaper articles about resource depletion and the OTF Meeting of 9/19/08:

http://starbulletin.com/2008/09/20/news/story06.html

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080920/NEWS11/809200326/-1/RSS02

http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/508693.html?nav=10

http://www.kauaiworld.com/articles/2008/09/20/news/news01.txt

Will add to what they have reported next,
Aloha, Brad