 Aloha, welcome to Sustainable Hawai'i. We air every Tuesday from 12 to 12.30 at ThinkVecHawaii.com. As I discussed and demonstrated in last week's show, anticipated sea level rise to climate change is already occurring. Hawai'i already experienced a record number of high sea level days this year, some of which I showed last week in my slides of the monster waves and resulting north shore erosion this winter. As we all know from the epic Eddie Aikau surfing competition that was held in February, scientists generally predict the average sea level will rise up to one meter during the next 100 years. Hawai'i and other central Pacific islands are expected to experience significantly greater than average sea level rise. The Hawai'i Interagency Climate Adaptation Committee, ICAC Handbook, reminds us the consequences of sea level rise for Hawai'i are severe compared to many other coastal states, as the majority of our population and public infrastructure exist on low-lying coastal planes which are highly susceptible to coastal hazards. On this show on May 17th, we discussed city and county planning responses to climate change with George Jata, director of the Honolulu City and County Department of Planning and Permitting. I've invited George back again today to tell us about specific city and county initiatives designed to either mitigate against or adapt to climate change. Welcome back, George. Thank you for having me. Again, you've run over from a cabinet meeting. Yes, I have. We always appreciate the time you give us. You're extremely informative for the public. So tell us about some of those city and county projects that are either mitigating against or adapting to climate change. Well, I guess there's actually many kinds of projects and these initiatives overlap. But as you know, the Honolulu was recently selected as one of the 100 resilient cities from the Rockefeller Foundation. So we'll be getting several million dollars. And so we'll be actually getting a sustainability officer. And this is also a charter amendment to create an office of sustainability. So that's something that is happening. Is that going to be at the state or city and county level? This will be the city and county. So Honolulu was selected as a 100 resilient citizen. This is across the globe. So it's not just a U.S. initiative by the Rockefeller Center. That's terrific. And I know that the state is also looking at hiring a sustainability coordinator. Yeah. Well, they used to have one. And I guess the position was defunded and the person who was there left. And so my understanding is they're looking to refill that position. Terrific. And so those two positions will be working together? Hopefully they will be. And for us, I think at the city, the city's sustainability person is actually going to be working on a multi-departmental basis. So somebody said that that person should be in my department. But I actually deferred and said I think the person should be in the managing director's department because that function of sustainability is broad and crosses all departments. So that person would have more, a better communication coming out of the managing director's office rather than my department. So I think that's the direction the city's moving in. And they'll certainly be working very close with you in both planning and project implementation. They will be. And especially since they will also tie in with our transit oriented development program, which is also a sustainability measure. And so, yeah, definitely we have a lot of catalytic projects related to TOD, which the sustainability office will be helping to coordinate. There's even talk about maybe moving my TOD division into this either this agency or possibly a land assets management agency that is also part of the Charter Amendment. So the Charter had a number of provisions which we supported. And these are sustainability aspects to some of many of these proposals. And that amendment is going to be on the ballot this election, this fall? It will be on the ballot. It's very exciting. So it also means that the rail approach is going to have a very specific sustainability component. I think it has very different, many sustainability components. I know this is not an aspect that's often discussed because it's usually cost and where they really have an impact on travel seems to be the dominant issues. But in fact, rail is a game changer in the sense of how we grow as an urban community and cluster around the station. That's one aspect that helps us stay more sustainable because we keep more of our open space by clustering it. The other thing is that the rail shifts the fuel use for transportation from petroleum products to electricity. Now while the Cahey plant uses petroleum products, in fact, the electricity can be generated from many sources. And so there's been talk about possibly developing a PV field to help support the electrical needs of the rail. So because rail runs on electricity and not on petroleum, and there are many sources of a thing, whether it's wind or PV, that we have a chance of shifting the energy use for transportation away from cars onto a system that doesn't have to use petroleum products. Now that power plant could, I would assume would be developed by the utility or other options? It will probably be by utility or a contract of the way I guess the PV industry is growing is that HECO does not create the PV fields. Usually there are some other developers that come in like Sun Edison or a number of these alternative energy companies. They develop the project and they enter into a power purchase agreement with HECO and then feed into HECO's grid. So yeah, probably HECO won't do it, the city won't be the one actually developing. But if the demand is there, the private companies will come in with their proposals and so. Is this though within the parameters of the planning for the rail and the transit oriented development? Well it isn't specifically on the planning, but there has been discussions with HECO about the power needs of the rail and whether the HECO would have sufficient electricity. It's a question that has been raised from time to time. I think the answer right now is that HECO hasn't told us they don't have power, but there's been ideas floated around about developing a PV field out in Kunia to help power the grid and since I sit on the board of heart too, so we would be open to any suggestions that would make sure that the power needs of the rail are met and if it can be met by a renewable source or partly by a renewable source, we'd be more than happy to, you know. In the planning of the rail, have you also looked at developing some of this power at each station and maybe even storing power with, for example, electric vehicle plug-ins and things at each station? There's been talk. We have not put it into the specs per se, but there's been talk about either at the time of construction or retrofitting afterwards either the roof tops of the station and more importantly our rail operation center, which has large warehouses where the trains are serviced, where those things should have PV panels and I would say right now the ideas are being discussed, no decision has been made. I would imagine some of that discussion is limited by the limited budget and the difficulties there. Definitely those things, both the budget and the schedule affect whether we would go for it now or later because everybody's aware of the increasing costs and then as well as the delay in schedule and so we're trying to meet that and when you add more things to the equation it always gets more complicated and often in delay in time so there's a balance as we're discussing this. But in terms of long-term operation of the rail, it certainly would make sense to build that in now because it would bring down the costs of operating. Well I can't speak for the board as a whole because we haven't taken a position but I personally think so and it's a valid discussion to be having. Certainly the transit-oriented development would be both a mitigation against climate change because you're backing off on the use of fuel and you're limiting... Well by clustering development stations within a walkable radius people can walk or bike to places and it's not just to the station because when you cluster development we're talking about services, offices, doctors, jobs with clusters so people could walk to their jobs or to the services they need or to the entertainment within a walking distance so it would be just in that kind of compact urban setting with all of the different uses. There'd be less need for a car and the more exciting is I think people will want to walk in that kind of a neighborhood. Well we usually look at it as making it a better quality of life but it's really important to note that the more we leave the cars at home the more we benefit the environment. Right man, less CO2 in the atmosphere and hopefully slowing down global warming. Less fuel imported, less ships having to fuel up. And so real place apart in that whole future vision or scenario that we are looking at. One of the things I know that you've been doing immediately is the Complete Streets program. Tell us a little bit how you funded that and you've brought some great slides about some of the projects. Well the Complete Streets program is I think what I would call a shift towards mixed uses like I think I talked in the past about our Euclidean Zoning versus Foreign Basic Zoning. Can you explain that for our viewers? Okay Euclidean Zoning is when you do your zoning code is defined by the type of use. So it's like residential use, apartment use, commercial use. So you separate your lands by type of use and so you don't mix uses and so you have these discrete homogenous zones of use. Strip malls came from that approach. Well I think I don't know if you can blame the zoning on that. Strip malls came I think just from the suburbanization of America after World War II when the automobile came, came and then the Federal Highways Act came and all of a sudden the highways were being built and the strip malls took advantage of the highway. Okay. But often we have our stores all clustered along one corridor. It's along a highway corridor that's the thing that the focus is the highway became the main transportation mode. And so the commercial focused along the highway corridor so the strip malls follow that. So now when we're saying that an alternate means of transportation is a rail and the rail station becomes the point of contact with the transportation system and that's why TOD is around the station whereas on the highway you could have it anywhere along the edge of the highway. So it tended to spread out all along the highway. It's a big paradigm shift but it's not a new one in places like Europe, right? It's something that's been done before and done well. Well actually I mean it's been done, it was done in Honolulu because back in the, if you look at old pictures Honolulu in the, we used to have a streetcar system and then it faded away and then you know in the old days there's horse and buggies and things but early photos of Honolulu show not only the railcars but people crossing and people and cars mixing in the street. The streets were not seen as for cars, it was just to travel along and whether you had a carriage, an old car or horses or people, the street was shared by everybody. And so actually the complete street's concept really goes back to that old model that the street is for everybody and every mode of transportation, not just cars. So the exclusivity of focusing on the cars is really a post-World War II phenomenon and we're actually going back to an earlier model where the street and when we say complete streets we mean it's for everybody, pedestrians, bicyclists, cars too and buses. So it's to design a street for all modes of transportation. So it's multimodal as I was saying it's about zoning. And no longer by discreet zone, we're mixing it. So the street belongs to the car, the bus, the bike, the pedestrian. We're coming full circle with urban planning and transportation just like we are with a natural environment with understanding that less is more, hands-off, allowed natural cycles to take care of. And I think the thing is there's a recognition that things are not so simple or clear anymore and so many things have a multifunctional aspect to them and the same with the street. From a transportation standpoint we're looking at it as a multimodal facility, not just for cars. Now from a function standpoint we're also looking at it as multifunctional because you realize that the street is not just about transportation because the mayor likes to point out that our streets are the biggest open space we have in the city and owned by the city is our streets. Wow, very important point. And so what do you do with this open space and so in complete streets? Well when we come back we have to take a little break. We'll finish that discussion and we'll look at your slides of the projects you've done. 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Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Hi you're back with Sustainable Hoyi and we're having a great conversation with George Ata, City Planning Director about complete streets. And you were about to tell us about a few projects you have planned and we have some slides. Yes we do. And the first one is the 10th Avenue. Well like most of these projects are at different stages of completion. So what you're seeing of course at the 10th Avenue is a simple striping of a bike lane onto the roadway system. And this is in Kaimuki. This is in Kaimuki. So we have various projects as I think some of you know the mayor has an ambitious roadway repaving resurfacing program and as we're going through our roadway repaving program where we have either the time or the room on the roadway we're kind of rethinking some of the striping, the simple solution just striping at bike lanes and you know bulb outs and things like that. And it's important to note that even roadway repaving is an important sustainability measure because it helps cars to save on their fuel if they're not having all kinds of obstacles and just like keeping air in our tires. Right in fact I mean it's not just fuel. Definitely fuel is part of it but you know repairs as well. So this slide that is up is about the King Street. Yeah this is the King Street after. So this is the first protected bike lane project. Let's look at the before. There we go. Okay. So yeah this idea of the King Street is it's a protected bike lane as opposed to simply a bike lane. And now the after. And so in Europe they have a lot of these and I've seen you know in Seattle, Portland they've got more. And this is working out pretty well isn't it? Do you get many people complaining about it? Well we had a lot of complaints in the beginning as people were trying to get used to you know how to maneuver you know making left turns and stuff like that. We're getting less so and then also the use has been increasing. We actually have statistics. I don't have them at the top of my head but I think even if you were to drive along in the beginning you rarely saw bikes in the lanes. Now I think you'll see many of them going in and it's a two way. You'll notice this is one way. Well we converted it to a two way cycle track so in the beginning we had it just as one way. And I noticed too that it's a behavior change. It is a behavior change. And even myself you know I have to watch because I mean you know I'm not used to watching for bikes but you know it's just something people have to learn and adjust to. Right. And then you have a couple on a canal project. Yeah. This is part of our TOD planning. This is Kaplama Canal and the street that's next to it. I think this is Coho Street. Yeah. So this is the before and we had actually a homeless encampment. I remember that. This was a cleanup after the homeless encampment. So that's a continuing problem. And so you know the idea was to activate the street. So the plan and this is in the we're in a contracting phase with a consultant. And let's see the after. This is the consultant's rendering. Yeah. This is a rendering about just an idea. This is not a design plan but the idea of another pedestrian bridge going over to the Honolulu Community College site and then on the right side will be the Kaplama Schools properties. That's a phenomenal transition. Beautiful. But the one question I have in terms of the natural environment is it looks like you've hardened the shoreline of the river canal there. Again, this is Kaplama Canal. Yeah. So it's that way. What stream comes down from there? I'm not sure what stream. Yeah. It goes up to Kamehameha Schools. Right. So the question I would have is on that you're filling in on the where otherwise you would have absorption when there's an overflow on the canal. That cause problems? Yeah. Again, as I said, that's not a design. That's just a concept, right? And the idea of the concept is to try to bring the water, make the water accessible to people. Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. So that's the whole idea. And so the issue you're bringing up about how landscaping versus hardscape I think is something that hasn't been really, we haven't gone that much into design. So what you see is not quite what you're getting, but it's just ideas. Well, and we have to remember there are a lot of permeable surfaces now that can be used. Yeah. And if you look at the paving here, it sort of indicates that. Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. But there's been other ideas of possibly even moving the street completely from the buildings and rerouting the street. But it's the idea is to activate the stream and the edge of the stream. And we are actually going through a study of Kapalama Canal and dredging, an idea of dredging and things like that. So it's really a transformation of the area on both sides of the canal and to make it more place people want to hang out. Right now you notice a pretty desolate in that mostly homeless people hang out there because there's nothing to bring regular people to the area. Right. And hopefully all those homeless folks have a better place to stay now. Well, that's another issue. That's a whole other issue for another show. But I think it's also a sustainability issue in the sense that it's a social equity issue. And so we have to solve that because I think it's about sustaining our society and community. It's not just an environmental issue. There is a social issue to sustainability which I think the homelessness is about. Absolutely. And I'm so glad you point that up because social justice is a key tenet. We can't be sustainable unless everyone can meet their needs. Yeah. So some of the city planning projects around that we're going to have to bring you back on for another show to discuss. Maybe on that one, the housing coordinator or the housing administrator. We'll definitely be addressing that. Yeah, right. And you have one more show on Waipahu Depot. Yeah. Now this is Waipahu Depot Road. I don't know how many people are aware of this one. But this is the road that leads down to the police training facility and the refuse convenience station. And this is the current condition. I don't know if we have a rendering of it. No, there should be one. Oh, there it is. Yeah. And this is just an interim thing. And actually this is just one segment of it. And it's not as it's just a it's like a phase one concept because there's there is plans to convert that whole stream channel. That's Kapka. He's stream and turn turn this whole thing into a really active community area. Well, that's certainly a social justice issue. When we make assets are natural assets like streams, rivers and the coastline more accessible for everyone. Right. And that's a problem in previous planning is that we also hardened those assets and made them inaccessible. Right. And definitely the city is moving in that direction. All of these kinds of things. Some of it is in the early phase. But the idea of working with nature. I think this whole idea about green capitalism and green infrastructure is related to using nature for the functions that are already provides. And then channelizing, you know, you let the stream do what it naturally does. So we're changing our codes and regulations there because just as the Army Corps of Engineers is changing its mindset from channelization to more natural. Our street, the complete streets is part of it. What I didn't mention is that when I think it earlier was that multifunctional. It's not just for transportation. It's channelized because you notice under the street is our storm drains and the sewer lines. So the storm drains really is part of the old way of looking at stormwater runoff is just channelize it and flush it down to the ocean. Right. Right. Now in some of our complete streets designs we're looking at rather than creating storm drains making bioswales adjacent to the stream to catch that runoff. Which would do two things. It would handle the stormwater runoff issue. It will also percolate into the ground. And then the complete streets also encourages street trees and what's called the frontage zone or the planter zone on the street. And so, you know, encourage putting plants along the street and that functions with the mitigating the heat island effect. Because when you have tree canopies they'll, you know, it cools down the area. It cools down. And in addition it captures that water. As you mentioned it allows it to soak into the ground. Right. So we'll also be protecting our reefs from right now. The phenomenal runoff yesterday driving down from Mililani to Wailua. It was unbelievable how far out the brown staining was more than I've ever seen. So we know that all that. This is all the remnants of Darby? Of Darby and we've also had some residual rains. And the coverage of, you know, basically suffocation of the reef as a result. So you'd be protecting the reefs with this. You mentioned two other things. One is building codes and the coding that the Army Corps of Engineers is doing. How are you changing the city's building codes and reviews that will be subsequent for any new developments to make sure that we're mitigating or adapting to climate change? I don't know if I mentioned this the last time, but the city has a new plumbing code that allows great water reuse. That's currently in draft phase and soon to go to council. And council actually submitted a draft bill to allow great water reuse. So that's one code thing, clearly more environmentally friendly. So that could happen this year? That could happen this year. That's terrific. And then as far as our site, what's called our Chapter 14, which is our public work standards, we have a new low impact development standards for surfaces on commercial areas. So we're requiring more stormwater retention on site. And that's already a lot of regulation. Right now it applies to certain commercial areas. I've asked my staff to begin to expand it into residential apartment zones so that more of our codes require a low impact development standard for the site developments. Right. And so you're going to be upgrading codes as you go along. Right. And that's going to make a huge difference with private development. Yes, because it will become, at some point, a mandate when you can't any longer flush the water or flush things down into a tube or into a channel. You have to deal with it then, right? And so the codes require some flexibility and how to do that. And are we going to see those codes being rolled out this year or next year? Because actually my staff has already drafted and sent to the Corporation Council both the plumbing code and the electrical code and both the housing code and the building code. Well, we look forward to seeing those and having you back to talk even more about projects. I know we've touched the surface. Thank you for coming. And this is Sustainable Hawaii. We'll see you next Tuesday at noon.