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When it comes to environmental issues addressed by the 2013 Legislature, repeal of the Public Land Development Corporation grabbed headlines.

That agency, established by the Legislature just two short years ago and signed into law as Act 55 of the 2011 session, never was so loved by the public as it was by its creators (chiefly Senators Donovan DelaCruz and Malama Solomon).

Following last year’s elections, with both incumbents and challengers hearing an earful from constituents — outraged over the land development corporation’s exemption from so many environmental and zoning regulations, and angry over its lack of transparency — the agency was shut down.

The closure was effected by Act 38 (House Bill 1133, Senate Draft 2). So unpopular had the agency become that even its original sponsors voted to give it the axe.

The bill’s preamble is probably about as close to an apology as the Legislature has ever come: The exemptions granted to the PLDC, it says, “coupled with the manner in which Act 55 was passed, have led to distrust and uncertainty of the public land development corporation’s intentions and development plans.

Despite efforts to allay concerns, many individuals and organizations, particularly environmental and native Hawaiian organizations, have expressed support for legislation to repeal Act 55. While the optimization of the use of public lands is a meritorious goal, achieving this goal requires a greater respect for existing laws and procedures.” (For more on the manner in which Act 55 moved through the Legislature and its final provisions, see the cover article in the August 2011 issue of Environment Hawai`i.)

But aside from the PLDC’s repeal, the environmental measures passed by the 2013 Legislature, for better or worse, generally flew under the radar. Here are some of those that perhaps should have received more attention than they did:

SPRBs for SWACs

Seawater air-conditioning has captured the legislators’ collective imagination. Act 238 of the 2013 session authorizes the state to issue up to $40 million in special purpose revenue bonds for a project that says it will cool the Keahole airport and the nearby Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai`i Authority. Act 129 authorizes up to $200 million in Special Purpose Revenue Bonds for a similar Waikiki project.

The bonds are not direct grants or loans from the state. Rather, when a company receives permission to issue the bonds – after approval from the state Department of Budget and Finance – buyers are attracted by the fact that they pay no federal income tax on the interest those bonds yield. The bondholders benefit in this manner, so, as a general rule, the companies issuing the bonds get a break on the interest that they have to pay. The full faith and credit of the state is not at risk, but the state is limited in the total amount of SPRBs it may issue.

Consequently, approval of SPRBs is one way the Legislature has of providing indirect support to companies that lawmakers think will benefit the state economically, environmentally, or socially.

Testimony in support of the two measures was not plentiful, but it was generally enthusiastic. Jeff Mikulina of the Blue Planet Foundation (formerly director of the Sierra Club, Hawaii Chapter) praised seawater air-conditioning as a means of achieving substantial reductions in fossil fuel consumption.

Cord Anderson, a partner in Kona SWAC, LLC (the entity proposing to build the Keahole facility) claimed his project would replace 23,000 barrels of oil a year, reduce potable water use by 35 million gallons a year, reduce sewage discharge by 15.4 million gallons a year, and reduce “harmful gas emissions of approximately 11,100 tons/year.”

Anderson, a grandson of politician D.G. “Andy” Anderson, has been involved in several business ventures, including a foreclosed-upon effort to renovate the iconic Ilikai hotel in Waikiki. He has also run afoul of the Board of Land and Natural Resources for the way he has managed state-owned land in the village of Kailua-Kona. Anderson, by the way, is a member of the Honolulu Planning Commission.

In his testimony, Anderson said his plans included “leveraging” unused capacity in an existing 55-inch pipeline at the National Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority. There was no testimony from NELHA to indicate whether such capacity exists.

Anderson’s company, he said, is a subsidiary of Kaiuli Energy, whose management team, he said, “is comprised of Hawaii business leaders with the necessary experience critical to the project’s success.” Among them are Ray Soon, former head of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands, and Darryl Nakamoto, former chief financial officer of the bankrupt alternative-energy company Hoku Corporation. (Hoku, by the way, was also a SPRB beneficiary. As of mid-July, its stock was selling at 1.66 cents a share.)

The lone discouraging word came from Henry Curtis, executive director of Life of the Land. He pointed out that the request by Kona SWAC for as much as $40 million in SPRBs (Senate Bill 1280) “was filed before the company registered” with the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. (It finally registered on February 5 of this year; the DCCA website shows that its sole member is Kaiuli Energy, LLC.)

“Neither company has a working website,” Curtis said in his testimony. “Neither company has any public information about their skill sets, knowledge of Sea Water Air Conditioning or ability to deliver. In the interest of open government, sunshine, and community participation, we believe their requests for SPRBs are not ripe and should be deferred until the public has had adequate time to evaluate their proposals and to offer meaningful comments to this committee.”

The Waikiki project will save 106,000 barrels of oil a year, according to Nakamoto, identified in his testimony as a partner in Kaiuli Energy. Nakamoto also claimed it would reduce potable water use by 157 million gallons a year and reduce sewage discharge by 69 million gallons a year.

Since 2005, the Legislature has authorized up to $145 million in SPRBs for yet a third seawater air-conditioning project intended to cool downtown Honolulu buildings. Although Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning, LLC, prepared a state environmental impact statement for the project in 2009, the necessary federal environmental statement has not been completed. In 2011, a draft federal EIS was panned by the Environmental Protection Agency.

A source at HSWAC told Environment Hawaii that the company had submitted a revised environmental impact statement to the Army Corps of Engineers “recently… within the last three months.” Earlier this year, a spokeswoman for the company told Pacific Business News that the final EIS would probably be available for public comment in May with a record of decision in July. At that time, start of construction on the $250 million project was anticipated by the year’s end.

For more on some of the important environmental bills that quietly became law this past session, read the August issue of .

About the author: Patricia Tummons is editor of Environment Hawaii, a publication she helped to found in 1990. Before that, she wrote editorials for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Reprinted with permission from the current issue of , a non-profit news publication. The entire issue, as well as more than 20 years of past issues, is available free to Environment Hawaii subscribers at www.environment-hawaii.org. Non-subscribers must pay $10 for a two-day pass.