On
October 17, 1995, the parties in Save Our Bays and Beaches et al. v.City
and County of Honolulu, Federal Civil No. 92-00263 entered into a Consent
Decree to resolve the litigation brought by four groups against the City
and County of Honolulu to address the lack of compliance with the federal
Clean Water Act. The
Consent Decree established the Kailua Bay Advisory Council (KBAC). KBAC
is comprised of eight members, four member are selected by the plaintiff
organizations and four members are selected by the City and County of Honolulu.
Parties may elect to sit on the KBAC, thus, need not appoint a representative.
The Consent Decree outlines KBAC's goals and objectives:
- to study nonpoint sources of pollution in the Kailua, Kane‘ohe,
and Waimanalo watershed areas;
- to determine effective measures to mitigate such pollution, to the
maximum extent practical;
- to oversee the implementation of measures to mitigate such pollution
as may be adopted by decision of the Council;
- and to oversee a volunteer water quality monitoring effort.
These objectives are to be fulfilled through three programs: the Volunteer
Water Quality Monitoring (VWQM) Program, the Technical Report Program,
and an Implementation Program. In addition to the creation of KBAC,
the Consent Decree allots funding for each of these three components:
$300,000 for the VWQM Program, another $300,000 for the Technical
Report Program, $1.5 million for the Implementation Program, and an
additional $1.0 million, to be disbursed by the City upon request
by KBAC to be spent at follows: $.5 million for the Implementation
program and $.5 million for any of the three above programs. KBACs
strength rests with its Council and its organizational infrastructure
as a private organization. With its small size and private standing,
KBAC can focus its efforts and streamline its actions to facilitate
the goals and objectives of the Consent Decree. KBAC also will remain
open to refining its processes to ensure access to the information
it obtains about the watershed, to provide physical improvements,
and to foster stewardship opportunities throughout the watershed that
improve water quality.
