 from Sunny Honolulu. This is Howard Wigg, Cold Green, Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you one and all for joining us. And politicians generally have not so good name. Whenever there's a mistake, everybody likes to blame them. However, there is one, I hesitate to call him a bureaucrat, but he is in the government hierarchy. And he has a bumper sticker that reads, I heart Ernie Lau. And that is indeed my guest this afternoon. So welcome, welcome Ernie. We haven't physically seen one another for for many, many years here. Well, thank you for having me. That is quite an honor. I heart Ernie Lau. And let me begin with the fact that on my in my own water bill was a sufferer, water protect our precious legacy. And more and more we're seen from climate change. There's more water in the atmosphere, which results in things like what do you call it the atmospheric rivers going through California, and flooding the heck out of many large regions. And then the water goes away. And next thing you know, we have a drought. So Ernie, I know that you have thought about this, we have periods of heavy rain, if we could only retain more of that water for future use. Any any thoughts in that direction? Yeah, thank you, Howard. You know, we are doing a study right now to look at one of our large open reservoirs that we control the new one reservoir number four. It has a lot of capacity so it could be used to kind of capture some of these intense short term duration rainfall events. And then take that water, treat it to a certain degree, and then use it to recharge our underground aquifer. So basically use the underground aquifer as storage. So these brief short intent high intensity rainfall, capture that and then use it for long term from our aquifer. Because our aquifers are going down. So there's plenty of capacity down there. Yeah, well, you know, all of our drinking water right now in on this island of Bawahu originates as rainfall. So that's precious rains carried by the trades of the subtly cona storms depositing the rain over especially our mountainous watershed areas along the coal now and Y9 mountains. So that rain percolates down through the forest volcanic rock and recharges these underground aquifers. But we're how that rain happens over our islands over the long term has an impact on our freshwater resources. So we need to start to look at that. We have done studies with the University of Hawaii researchers going out to 2100. And you know, there are two scenarios being envisioned right now. Either we're going to get wetter, especially along the coal mountains and maybe drier along the Y9, or we're going to get drier overall. So we have to prepare for our future. Well, you know, there was a guest from Thailand who spoke at the UH School of Architecture just last week, and I can't pronounce her Thai name, but she is a renowned geological engineer. And what she has done in Bangkok, Thailand is taken a flood area that after every monsoon rain, it would cause really, really bad flooding. And she has redirected or she's landscaped a beautiful park, which in turn collects the water instead of letting it spill all over and puts it into the reservoir under, or the aquifer under Bangkok. And she just, she called it nature's law, gravity. Let's make use of nature's law. And she has succeeded in reducing the flooding area in Bangkok, which of course is a huge city. I don't know if you have landscape architects with similar ambitions. Actually, we're part of a broader citywide effort called One Water. Looking at water, all types of water, stormwater, wastewater, rainwater, drinking water as a resource to be managed in an integrated comprehensive fashion. So it involves multiple city departments working together to manage water jointly for the good of our community. This One Water approach is similar to, I just read an article also about Singapore and what they've done to capture their stormwater and meet their city's needs for that small country of Singapore. Pretty amazing. But that's the approach. And Howard, actually, it's the practices of what the people that first came to Hawaii, the Kanakama Oli, they practice kind of the One Water, I would say integrated water resources management by looking at the whole Ahupua from mountains to the ocean and managing the resource and the environment and man's activities in a more integrated holistic way of learning to live with the land and with the by. Yeah, I'm something of an amateur historian and it never ceases to amaze me that when Captain Cook first arrived in Hawaii, the estimated population back then was somewhere between a half million and a full million. And of course, we've got about a million on this island now. And we import virtually everything. But the Kanakama Oli were described as being large and strong and healthy. And the average British sailor on Captain Cook's and other ships where it was scrawny and emaciated. And that spoke volumes about the Hawaiian's ability to be so sufficient, including having plenty of fresh water, which may segue into the fact that the vai means fresh water, vai vai means wealthy. They had their priorities straight here. Yes, indeed. Yeah. And what, you know, I look at my sewer line charges and they're larger than the water line charges. And I think one of your big, big challenges is the fact that in many neighborhoods, the water lines and the sewer lines are deteriorating. Is that part of your responsibility also? Yeah, well, I actually want to clarify. So the water lines are for most of this island, except maybe in some small areas like like the military bases and joint base Pearl Harbor Hickam, the rest of the water systems serving the island are predominantly owned and operated by the Board of Water Supply. The sewer lines are actually the responsibility of the Department of Environmental Services, another city department. So although they appear on the same bill coming to your home, like your home and my home, they're actually going to two different city agencies. So the water charges come to the BWS, sewer charges go to environmental services. And what about maintenance of both of those? I live in the back of Manoa and I swear every two or three years, there's a certain section of road that suddenly has red flags around it in police. And I don't know if it's a water line or a sewer line, but it has collapsed once again. Yeah, we have aging infrastructure. So in total on the island for the Board of Water Supply, we have about 22,100 miles of pipes, underground pipes, and Howard, some of those are over a century old now. And it's a continued investment that we need to do and to replace these lines over time. And during my tenure as a manager now, it's going on now to 12 plus years. I have, we've really ramped up our capital program or the program to invest in our aging infrastructure from 40 or 50 million dollars a year to now 150 to 200 million dollars a year. And I've heard, I don't know if it's made its way to Hawaii, that you can take a smaller pipe, I think it's made out of polyesylene or something, and stick it into existing pipes and just kind of push it through. That's true. That's what's happening there. No, that happens. There's different ways to install water lines. And we've used this in certain sections of our pipe, where it would have been really difficult to actually install a brand new pipeline and keep, while keeping the old pipe in service. So we've been able to do that. That's called slip. This is called slip lining or putting a liner inside of the pipe. And I think the wastewater environmental services department does it on sewer lines also. It's a little easier for them to do it because a lot of their system, their collection system is gravity based, not pressurized pipe. For water supply, everything is under pressure to meet our needs of our community. And speaking of under pressure that involves pumping, heck of a lot of pumping, and you and I both worked in the energy efficiency field for a while. Any thoughts of upgrading these pumps? And I'm imagining that the pumps are pretty darned huge. Any thoughts of upgrading them to more efficient units, sir? Yeah, we've actually done some of that work already. We did do something and Howard, this is going to be familiar to you at the energy office, energy savings performance contracting. We've done, I've worked on that while I was at the state with DAGs, with you also at D-Bend. But we've actually looked at efficiency, more efficient pumps and motors, trying to adjust the power factor on these large horsepower pumping stations to try to save energy and cost. It does take a lot of energy to pump water. And because we serve almost a million people every day with fresh drinking water, our electricity bill the other year was about $33 million, just our electricity bill. And the majority of that is to pump about 145 million gallons a day every day to meet the needs of our community. I would point out that we probably are serving more than a million because I think at any given time, there are something like 200,000 tourists. That's true. That transient population, that's a lot of it in Waikiki or Kuala Lina, you know, we have to serve them also. Yeah. So any thought to speaking of electricity costs of taking advantage of Hawaiian electrics, time of use offer, where we are now less with too much solar power and photovoltaics. So we have to do something to use it. So Hawaiian Electric is urging people to use as much electricity as they can, they're in the middle of the day, and doing the incentive by lower costs. And then when the evening peak hits, the cost goes way, way up. Anyway, you can take advantage of that with those huge pumps. There may be ways that we could do that where we would be pumping when the cost electricity is lowest. We do also in our water system, not only the 2100 miles of pipes, but we have about 172 water tanks around the system. And those tanks store water, usually enough water to meet at least a day's worth of needs without pumping. So between the storage that we have located in these sealed tanks, they're usually at higher elevation. We can moderate our time of pumping to try to fit within the time of use rates. We've also conducted a pilot study with Hawaiian Electric. We do try to do a lot of collaboration with the electric utility since we really rely upon them and we have a big electricity bill looked at something called demand response. So we did that pilot and it looks positive. I want to try to expand the demand response, time of use rates, and maybe even leveraging batteries, battery storage to reduce some of the peak demand or high demand factor that we, our large pumps, when they start up, they use a lot of electricity initially to get running. But once they're running, they use less. But we have to pay that demand charge. Yeah, yeah. Is there a way of modulating the initial demand so that it ramps up slowly instead of going up in a big spike initially? Yeah, that's one where I think utilizing battery storage might help to modulate that that initial surge in energy demand so that we can save money. So looking at that, we've also installed about three megawatts of renewable energy, photovoltaic energy, in our system through our ESPC project. And we're looking for opportunities to actually do more renewables also on our system, on our lands. Well, congratulations. You're doing all of us a favor getting us cleaner, closer to 100% clean energy then. Yeah, it's been a good, you know, partnership with Hawaiian Electric, because there's a strong energy water nexus. If people take shorter showers, they use less hot water, which means less energy costs to provide that hot water, but also saves precious drinking water or vye and keeps that in our underground aquifers. Absolutely, which, you know, given the huge fluctuations in climate conditions that we're seeing all over the world, that large amount of stored water is very likely going to come in very handy, even within our lifetimes. Yeah, we are facing some serious challenges. But the good thing is we're getting ready for it right now. Yeah, and I think what I'm encouraged is that the younger generation, I think they're getting it. They understand it and they're preparing for the challenges that they're going to face in their lifetimes, too. Just to pat myself as an individual on the back a little bit, I acquired many years ago a beautiful home in the back of Manoa, very, very, very wet, about 120 inches of rain a year. And I have a gradual slope roof. And what I did was have technicians put in gutters that extend out about two and a half feet from the roof line so that the water from the roof goes into the landscaping. And in other places where the water is falling, I put what is it, grasscrete, the concrete tubes that allow the water to come in, all of which leads to harvesting virtually 100% of the water that falls on my property, whereas my neighbor has just concrete, concrete, concrete. And after a heavy rain up there, his driveway is virtually a river, whereas my driveway is just a tiny little trickle of water. And I'm wondering about water supply incenting permeable surfaces and incenting people to harvest that roof water. You know, that's an interesting idea. We do have a rebate program for people to install rain catchment systems or rain barrels to harvest the water, so we'll reimburse a part of the costs to do that. We also conduct classes. That's an interesting concept of rebating for permeable surfaces. I know that the Department of Facilities Maintenance or DFM is looking at stormwater, the stormwater utility in the future. And they have put out different recommendations or guidance on how to reduce discharge off property by creating more permeable or porous surfaces so you don't, the water percolates down and stays on site as opposed to running into the streets, into the storm system. Yeah, yeah. And let's see, another idea that I had, and now that one slipped away. Oh, I know in the energy efficiency business, we go down to the residential level and we work with the Pono Homes. I don't know if you're familiar with them. What they do is actually go into a residence at the invitation of the owner, of course, and they install different energy-efficient appliances such as LED lamps, but they also install low-flow shower heads and faucets. Do we still call them low-flow or do we have more? Yeah, I think that's still a pertinent term that's used, you know, low-flow or water savings shower heads, water-efficient shower heads. We actually do work with that company and coincidentally Howard, we just started in the last, I guess this is the second week of our outreach program to Kupuna, to senior citizens with their permission going into their home to conduct water audits to show whether there's opportunity to save water or to help find leaks inside or inside the property. We just started that. Interesting. I think it's helpful. Many of the Kupuna, of course, live on fixed incomes, so just a few dollars savings, that's a big deal. Yeah, and you know, as I get older to be able to hear a running toilet gets a little more challenging over time, sometimes, you know, when a running toilet is probably one of your biggest water wasters in your home, so this program, they'll look for leaks in the toilets, you know, like leaky flapper valve that needs to get replaced. And this sounds like a fairly ambitious program and it goes right along with the fact that we need to, we as government, people need to focus on disadvantaged communities because we realize there's a large gap between those of us fortunate enough to have a really good job and nice places to live and then there's the people who don't have. So this is going right at the, in many cases, lower income people. How in the world did you initiate this? I mean, this is well, you know, we, we've always kind of thought about it and and recently, though, our board last November adopted new water rates because for the water supply, we are financially self-sufficient to maintain and operate our island-wide water system. We don't have any property tax revenue come in to the board of water supply. So it's people like you and I paying our water bill. The water charges come to us and they pay for the operation maintenance of the water system. So we felt that we had to do what is necessary in terms of rates to ensure we had enough revenue to continue to provide safe and dependable water service to our community. The challenge is affordability. So looking at disadvantaged communities and if we can encourage them to practice better water conservation and assist them in that effort, that could help to reduce their bill because for the BWS, at least our bill is set up that the fixed charge is a smaller portion of the typical average bill. The water use charger or charges for the per thousand gallons of use, that is the predominance size of the bill for the water bill, water BWS water bill for our average homeowner. And how did you actually initiate it? Did you actually pick up the phone and say hey? It was actually hard. It was at a Mayor's Town Hall meeting that we had in Kalihi last year where somebody from a non-profit that works in the Kalihi area and other parts of the island working with disadvantaged seniors, especially brought up the issues. Is there anything we're doing to help them save water, conserve water, which would help reduce their bill? And that idea kind of sprung to this program that we just initiated last week. And we're kind of focusing on the Leeward Coast, although we're going to do some audits in other areas, but starting off with the Leeward Coast that are eventually expanding to the whole island. Wow. And do you, does Pono Homes come in with the entire package that includes the LED lamps? You know, we work actually, Pono Homes is a contractor working for Honeywell. Our prime consultant on this effort is Honeywell. They also help with energy rebates for Hawaii Energy. But they have Pono Homes as their subcontractor that's doing the effort. So I think there's a great opportunity when we go into a home and this focuses on water. But I think the opportunities are energy savings. At the end of the day, energy efficiency, water efficiency saves the same customer who's paying both bills saves them money each month. So I think it makes good sense to try to do this efforts together. We are looking at how do we expand this effort to say larger buildings, businesses that have more energy and water use, and how do we leverage the rebates from Hawaii Energy and the Board of Water Supply to their benefit? Well, restaurants come to mind in that instance. Yeah, restaurants, we're already working with them and through the Hawaii Restaurant Association, reaching out to them and also to the hotel industry, to the visitor industry, because there's some sizable water use there. You get a hotel with, I don't know, 300 guest rooms and the guests are out beaching or shopping or whatever. And then in the evening, they all come back to their hotel and probably one of the first things they do is jump in the shower. That's true. And we've been working closely, some of the chains that are been very helpful is like the Outrigger Hotel Chain. They've been a good partner and they also hotels have a lot of restaurants, food establishments, so they're also big water users there. So going in there to do water audits to educate the restaurant owners and operators. Also spray nozzles, handheld spray nozzles so that the water is not continuously running in their sinks, but it's all of this effort together. Before I forget, Howard, I just wanted to say too, for the next three months or so, we've over doubled our rebate for replacing old water inefficient toilets. So toilets that use 1.6 gallons or more, we're providing a rebate now. It used to be, I think, around $40, and now we've increased it to $100 per toilet to go to a 1.28 or less gallons per flush. And we want to encourage people to retire those old toilets that are used more water, because that's almost a guaranteed way to save water in a home because we all have to use the rest of the bathroom every day. And toilets that are more water-efficient will save water and save our customers money too. And just to end on a cheery note, we go back to the disadvantaged communities. They very often, you and I may have one, two, three people in a home, very often they have eight, nine, 10 people in one apartment, and that equals a heck of a lot more water use. So again, you're helping the disadvantaged. Yeah. Yeah. We hope that the toilet rebate program will be a lot of demand for it, because we can look at trying to make that rebate even more permanent, and it's available to residential and to commercial customers too. Beautiful. Well, on that very, very cheery note, Ernie Lau, great seeing you again, and congratulations. And I will, maybe I should ask you for the bumper sticker. I heart. No, no, Howard, please don't mention that. It's a little embarrassing. Like you said earlier, I'm on just say a government bureaucrat, a government worker, public servant, and just doing our kuleana for our community. Yep. I'm exactly of that same mind. So we must say fond adieu, Ernie Lau, Howard Wing, Code Green, think te kawaii, see you next time.