 Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart-Turner and this is Sustainable Hawai'i, streaming live every Tuesday at noon at thinktechhawaii.com. You can join our conversation by tweeting at thinktechhi.com. We all live in a watershed in Hawai'i, and our daily lives rely on the eco-services provided by these watersheds. Native Hawaiians understood this. They forged the ahupua'a system to care for the life-giving water and the land it nourished. But generations of poorly planned development in our state has imperiled this system and left us with serious water pollution issues, like the infamous Alawai Canal. My guest today, Dr. Ken Kanashiro, and recently retired Major General Darryl Wong, have created a foundation to tackle these issues head-on. Dr. Kanashiro is the Director of the Center for Conservation Research and Training at the University of Hawai'i. He is also well known as the founder of the Hawai'i Conservation Alliance, which is a cooperative partnership of 25 government, education, and non-profit organizations. HCA's mission is to promote effective, long-term management of Hawai'i's native ecosystems through collaborative research, training, and outreach among land managers, scientists, educators, and the general public. Major General retired Wong, recently retired as the Adjutant General for the State of Hawai'i, where he commanded the Army and Air National Guard, while also serving as the Head of Emergency Management and Homeland Security. He was also advisor to the governor under that age. He's currently Senior Advisor to the University of Hawai'i Applied Research Lab and serves on the Board of Directors of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, which through its worldwide voyage has been focused on raising global awareness of the need to take care of our rivers and oceans. Welcome, General Wong and Dr. Kanashiro. Thanks for having us today. You two have been very busy. Yes, we have. All the right means. Well, why don't we begin today by telling us about the new foundation you've created? Well, I guess it was about three years ago that I first met General Wong, actually, and he was very concerned that his agency, the Hawai'i National Guard at that time and Hawai'i Civil Defense, really didn't have the kind of scientifically valid data information for his agency to make the best informed decision in mitigating the impact of a flood, for example. And so he posed a question, how can we engage the broader community, but perhaps especially the K-12 community, in helping to collect those kinds of data that would help this agency make better informed decisions? So that's how I got pulled into the discussion, and we've sort of joined together in developing this new initiative, the Hawai'i Exeperate State Initiative, and subsequently reformed the foundation to sort of build on that concept. Now I know that you've been working in trying to integrate K-12 education ever since you started the NEON project in Hawai'i. That's correct. And so how did you rope Major General Wong into this conversation and work? Yeah, well, so when he posed that question about how to engage the K-12 community, and I suggested that we use the foundation that we had already developed in getting graduate students to mentor K-12 students and teachers in actually conducting scientific research and collecting data that's actually publishable in scientific journals. So I never thought as a field researcher that I would get involved with K-12 science education, but that project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation at that time, was probably the most successful project I've been involved with. It's collecting this information and data that's very relevant to the communities where the schools were located. So we wanted to take off on that foundation that we had built in engaging the university through the graduate students and the K-12 schools. Now where is the data housed, and how is it then accessed and utilized? Yeah, well, right now we have portals. We've developed portals for each of the schools because they're not all doing the same kind of research. And so the students at the various schools are able to enter their data into those portals and manage it by themselves. We actually help to maintain the portals and so on, but it's primarily the students and the teachers of those schools that contribute to that database, which we will have access to on an ongoing basis. In general, then, how are your agencies that you headed up in the past able to access that data and utilize it? Well, eventually they'll get all that data to use when they need to do any type of flood mitigation type work, but I think the thing is, you know, you ask, how did I and Dr. Connoisseur get together? So as you look at it, it's a systems-wide approach of looking at this thing. So the third person in this foundation is actually Dr. Kevin Montgomery. And he's another scientist, but he's more doing technology. So if you look at Ken, it's more research science. And you wonder to someone who's more on the operational side, how do we come together and continue? Well, it's the coming together of the needs of the community, the operational needs, and enlisting the science and the kids, and then using technology. So it's a diversity of the three of us that really makes what we're doing probably more different than anybody's ever done that. And I know that you've been working with Kevin Montgomery since we worked together, and he's from Stanford University. So you're bringing in outside resources and integrating the knowledge base there from Stanford here, and we're fertilizing Stanford's knowledge with our UH expertise. Right. Absolutely. Indigenous knowledge, but we are in a world of science, so you leverage all of it to come up with a solution for the operational needs of, say, the state government, city government, or even the local community. Yeah, being able to integrate traditional knowledge with 24th century modern technologies has, I think, revolutionized STEM education in our community. So tell me, again, the name of the foundation, so we're all, we can all be aware of it. It's the Hawaii Exemplary State Foundation. Hawaii Exemplary State Foundation. I think we have your logo, too, which I thought was really a powerful logo. There it is on the screen. So the Hawaii Exemplary State Foundation is working with the schools using the data. What else are you doing that we should be aware of there? So again, the schools have done quite a bit in citizen scientists, what do you call science that matters for these kids, and they're doing things that are very meaningful. Some major hotels across the street are very interested because the Hawaii will impact the economic viability of the state of Hawaii if it pollutes enough and pollutes the rest. So we've also went to the University of Hawaii Engineering Department, and there's also industry people outside that are willing to kokuwa. So again, it's really a statewide community approach to tackle a problem that can have large impact for the economy in the state of Hawaii. Well, for our viewers who may not be aware of all the issues of the Hawaii, maybe you can just recap a couple of the things that you're trying to solve there. A couple of things. Give us a picture. I mean, I think we have some slides that we want to show. So if we look at that first picture, which is really a picture of some fishermen fishing for mullet in the Alawai Canal, believe it or not, and this was a picture taken in the early fifties. And so, you know, when I was a kid, I actually went with my dad to the Alawai Canal and learned how to mullet fish. You could eat the crab. You could eat the fish and the crab, and it was not a problem. But since then, of course, the Alawai has become probably the most polluted water body in the state. And so the biggest issue is that how do we actually clean up the watershed so that it can again become one of these multi-user recreational facilities for the community? And so I think you mentioned in your introduction that the traditional Hawaiian culture actually looked at watersheds from the top of the mountain down into the coral reef ecosystem. So even though we were focused on the Alawai Canal and trying to clean up this water body, we have to actually start our work at the headwaters of the Manoa and Palo Alto and Makiki streams, which are all empty into the Alawai Canal. So the Alawai Canal project is actually General Wong's brainchild. I mean, he thought that this was a situation in a community where you've got the hotel, the tourist industry, you've got residential communities, you've got schools involved. And if we can really engage the entire community to help work on this and have ownership to this watershed. Yeah. You can see the stakeholders that are involved behind the golf course there. There's hundreds of thousands of people who have a stake in how the water becomes polluted as well as using that water. Right. Right. Yeah. It's a very good illustration. A lot of our kids train canoe paddling. I think Olympic kayak teams had practiced there. But if it gets polluted, then people won't use it anymore. But the important thing is illustrating to the whole community that everyone's involvement is very important. So when Ken and I and Dr. Montgomery had a room full of people, everyone sat there and said, where do we interrelate with each other? So we didn't have a project. So the project I saw, we just said, we're going to take on the Alawai. Which is very ambitious and very exciting. Yeah, he's very ambitious. Particularly given the number of stakeholders we saw in that photo. Right. Well, I mean, if we go to the next board, I think it'll show you sort of a systems map of the stakeholders that would be involved in this. You've got academia all the way from the university to the K-12 schools. You've got the community with nonprofit organizations and so on. You've got private industry. You've got all of the government agencies. And so the Alawai Watershed Association, which has been, I think it's been incorporated in Hawaii maybe about 20 years ago, 15 to 20 years ago. And they've been working with all of these community stakeholders in agreeing to work together and collaborating in restoring this watershed ecosystem. So where do you start? What are the first things that you're working on, the first steps to begin cleaning up the Alawai? Well, we need to really identify what all of this is. So there's things like invasive species. If you go up to the headwaters on the back of the Alawai Valley, there's 150 acres that used to belong to the Catholic Church, the Paradise Park facility. So it's two 75-acre plots. And those two 75-acre plots, 150 total acres are just stacked with albizia. Which is an invasive tree. Which is an invasive tree. And it probably was the main reason for the flood that we had in October in Halloween Eve 2004, which caused about $90 million damage in most of it at the University of Hawaii. Because those are so fragile, they toppled over and clogged the streams. Clogged the drainage and it came over the top and we had this big flood event. And so that's one I think we need to really start to remove those kinds of invasive species in order to begin to restore the ecosystem. Because if you remove those, it not only removes the potential obstruction, but you can replace it with native plants that hold the soil better and reduce the soil erosion as well. And I would imagine that that also contributes, and I'm saying this because I learned it from you Ken, that it also contributes to less invasive bugs and other things that disrupt all of the native species that would hold the watershed together. And the other thing is that as we've been talking, we're taking the system-seeking approach so that whatever we do in this watershed, whatever component of what they were doing really does depend on other aspects of this ecosystem. For example, removing the albizia, it's very expensive. We just heard that the Alawai Watershed Association is trying to remove one albizia tree, which is about 125, 150 feet tall, and it's going to cost them $12,000 for one tree. Now, so they have to remove it and dispose of it, but if you collect and harvest those trees and use it for biomass to energy, the biochar, then we've talked about that before. And there's tremendous opportunities for so many albizia. We need to take a break, but when we come back, we'll hear about what other steps are being taken to clean up the alawai. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, host of Lakeable Science on Think Tech Hawaii. I hope you'll join me each Friday afternoon as we explore the amazing world of science. We bring on interesting guests, scientists from all walks of life, from all walks of science, to talk about the work they do, why they do it, and more why it's interesting to you. What the science really means to your life, its impacts on you, how it's shaping the world around you, and why you should care about it. I do hope you'll join me every Friday at 2 p.m. for Lakeable Science. Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is my mainland here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. Start your Paul Hano weekend off with the show where I talk to people about issues pertinent to Hawaii. You can see my previous shows at my blog, kauilukas.com, and also on Think Techs. Hi, we're back with Major General Wong and Dr. Ken Kanashiro who are telling us about their very ambitious project to clean up the alawai. We're most indebted to you guys for taking us on. So we talked first about the albezia and the importance of restoring native species. What are some of the other steps that need to be taken to begin to clear up the alawai? So initially when we talked about, you know, there's three legs to this foundation. There's Kevin Montgomery, Dr. Kanashiro myself. So Kevin Montgomery is the technologist. So the idea is putting in sensors in the rivers to measure not only fast-moving water which can show the community when they may need to get out of their homes because the river is moving fast and high, but also to measure bacteria in the water. So it'll come down the mountains and into the alawai. That way as they make changes to say what they use to wash their cars and do things, you can measure the effect it has on the water that is coming into the alawai. So again, going back to data, going back to the community is saying that what you're doing is making a difference. Without that, they're going to say, I don't know if what I'm doing is changing, is doing anything, but it really will. But then those sensors will be owned by the middle schools or the high schools. And those technology will be taught to those kids. We're kind of joking. So they'll manage those sensors. That's awesome. That was your vision over 10 years ago when we talked about the neon project. It's so wonderful to see it coming to fruition. On our own. Yeah. So it's all interrelated because, as Ken talked about, the albija of the trees is going to cause flooding. If we don't take care of the riverbanks and everything else, so flooding and the emergency to that community, so they own those sensors. I told them when I was a little kid, if I saw that in a river, I'd be throwing rocks at it. But if you know that it's going to take care of your community, you're going to make sure that sensor is operating. Absolutely. So how do some of the other constituents in that spaghetti chart that you have showing the system's approach to understanding the impacts on the alwai? How do some other agencies or organizations, say, for example, the Minua Community Organization or Mila Li'i, how do they get involved and what would their role be? So we've been working with, as I said, the alwai watershed association, and we've sort of depended on that organization, which has been in operation for nearly two decades, to bring to the table the partnerships that they've already developed, established with these stakeholders. But at the same time, General Wong and I have been meeting with DLNR. I had a meeting with the Department of Health. The core is involved and so on. So we are engaging as many of these stakeholders that have either responsibility of regulatory responsibility or some management responsibility in the watershed. And the DLNR, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, a couple years ago now, executed that wonderful program, Rain Follows the Forest for Watershed Management for Oahu. Is that coming into play in terms of using that plan to educate the K-12? I think DLNR has quite a growing and strengthened educational outreach program. Are you utilizing that to reach out? Whatever tools are out there and curriculum that's out there, we will take advantage of rather than trying to start from scratch. But the idea, I think the most important idea is that we want to get the kids out there conducting actual research that's valid for scientific publication. So that's why the mentorship by the graduate students is so important. Many of the teachers, they may have a science background, but conducting research by themselves without some kind of mentorship by real scientists that's being trained in scientific research is difficult. And so by having, it was incredible when we had the GK-12 project funded by the National Science Foundation, how many teachers have been knocking our door, can we have a graduate student to help us with these kinds of research projects? So, yeah, getting the kids involved in actually conducting scientific research as part of their STEM education curriculum is critical to this project. So one of the component people might not understand is, so Ruth Gates is an expert in the choral. Actually, she's going to be on the show again in a couple of weeks as we work up to the World Conservation Congress. So my relationship with Ruth Gates and going back to your original statement, so just to make a correction, I'm not on the board of the Polynesian Women's Society, but I know and I have been friends for many years and I've gone on a voyage in Australia with him and gone in New York and that's where Ruth Gates and I know and some others, we dove the Great Barrier Reef. So part of the water, the all of why look is we can measure it with technology, but the true measure of life and the purity of water is the choral. So we will add choral also in the look of from the mountain all the way to the ocean. So yesterday we were at a symposium and Mrs. Avi made a statement which really took, I think caught both of us and we thought it was very, it was very important to say you cannot disconnect the forest from the ocean. Absolutely. And we, so we, as Ruth Gates spoke there, then she talked about the choral is kind of the forest in the ocean. So the forest in the mountain, all the way to the forest under water needs to be connected. And that's the only way we're going to have a true ecosystem restoration of this water. So we're including quite a bit of things, but everyone is very interested. So if I wanted to get involved, do you have a website that you're establishing or do I have to work through the schools? We are planning to develop a website. We're in the very early stages of our organization. We haven't gotten any funding yet, but we're anticipating significant funding to really take this and complete this project, but more than just doing it for Hawaii and just for the Hawaii community, but just take it across the other I hope why in the state, but also use it as a model for other watersheds globally. Absolutely. So there's already interest. I mean, General Wong has, while he was the Adjutant General National Guard had connections with the government in Bali and they have actually agreed to take two of their streams and watersheds and apply whatever we've been doing in the Hawaii, apply it there. That's wonderful. Are you going to get an opportunity to share all this at the World Conservation Congress? No. I think we need to share this show with folks as they come. We'll have to talk about how to do that because certainly this is something that should be shared widely. I know as we wind down our time, I want to make sure we also talk about your other exciting and important project about mosquito vectors. Can you tell us about that? Right. In fact, that's the reason why the Alawai watershed got superseded about a year ago or a little more than a year ago. I got a call from the IUCN, one of the program directors there, the Species Survival Commission Director. And he gave me a call from Switzerland asking me, do I think we could eradicate mosquitoes from the state of Hawaii for the purpose of reducing the impact of avian malaria for the native birds? Of course, you know that we've lost many of our native bird species due to avian malaria and avian pox. And so I'm not a mosquito expert, so I sort of put it in the back of my head and I spoke to my mosquito colleagues. And there were some interests, but not overwhelming so. And now, of course, the whole concern over Zika makes it even more pertinent. That's what happened. So when that happened, and I got a call then from Senator Brian Schatz's office asking me exactly the same question from the perspective of Zika and Dengue and these human diseases, and at the same time, about a week or so later, we got an interest from the Asian Development Bank in the Philippines about how we might be able to address mosquito issues more broadly, not just in Hawaii. So the pressure was on us, taking a systems thinking approach, which is our foundation, in addressing vector-borne diseases like Zika and Dengue. So in a matter of a couple of months, I pulled together maybe 40 experts, mosquito experts globally, to agree to come to Hawaii to discuss the feasibility of eradicating mosquitoes from the state of Hawaii. Using, again, the systems thinking approach. So it's going to be pretty exciting. So it's going to be held during the Congress, September 6 and 7 on the Big Island. And in fact, the mayor, Mayor Kenoise's office, actually committed to funding the workshop. Terrific. So that's on the 6th and 7th. Are the participants also participants in the World Conservation Congress, or are they coming just for this? A few of them are already coming for the Congress, but the rest of them are actually coming just for it. Just for this. The workshop. That's very exciting. And it's going to be a series of workshops. We're not going to be able to do it in a two-day workshop. Come up with an effective strategic solution for addressing vector-borne diseases. So if someone of our audience wanted to get involved in that, how would they get connected? At the moment, it's not an open meeting. We wanted to keep it small so that we can have more effective discussion. But as I said, it's going to be a series of discussions, meetings, and workshops. But I think as we approach maybe the third or fourth workshop where we'll be able to put up a develop and establish a strategic plan is when we'll have a sort of an open meeting so that other people in the community can actually begin to hear about what our plans are. Well, I'm sure you're going to be very successful at drawing money to this endeavor, and perhaps as a secondary. There's a lot of interest. There's a lot of interest. Because it's such a huge concern for the world right now. I'm wondering, Major General Wong, as you move forward, are you going to be continuing these educational opportunities? You seem to be a man of many seasons. As we close, give us a peek into your future. I think Ken and I have kind of committed ourselves to not the alibi, but this concept of true, how do you solve problems with systems approach thinking? So I think I'm doing several things. One is the applied research lab, really helping influence cyber and critical infrastructure protection. But I think this is going to be, I mean, I can't speak for Ken, but I think we've talked. This is going to be our life's work. We'll do this till we're dirt, how's that? Sounds good. Well, I hope you don't, I hope you hang on for a while. We really appreciate all that you're both contributing to Hawaii's well-being and our sustainability. And I hope our audience will join us next Tuesday at noon at Sustainable Hawaii, thinktechhawaii.com.