It was a sad week for the democratic process and for those of us who encourage others to show up and participate at our state legislature.
Gut and replaced resolution SCR136 HD2 passed in the CPC committee hearing on Wednesday afternoon and already had a floor vote in the House Thursday morning and was passed and adopted. This despite overwhelming opposition testimony from the public — even the State Energy Office didn’t support it.
Please call and thank Representatives: Grandinetti, Iwamoto, Kapela, Muraoka, Poepoe, and Souza. These courageous Representatives chose to stand up and represent the voice of the People and voted NO on SCR136 HD2.
You can find their numbers at:
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/legisl…/legislators.aspx…
BACKGROUND
After strong outcry from the public, along with lack of support from the Hawaii State Energy Office, SB1588, a bad and wasteful bill towards a nuclear power task force did not receive a hearing from FIN and was stopped. Normally this would have been the end of this measure for the legislative session. However, on 4/10 the EEP committee, at the request of the Senate Energy Chair, chose to use a process commonly known as “gut and replace” and took a resolution on geothermal that was moving forward, SCR136, and turned it in to this same nuclear power task force using the text from measure SB1588 that was killed. EEP passed the measure without an opportunity for the public to comment on this significant “amendment.” SCR136HD1 was then scheduled on 4/16 in the CPC committee. Despite the HUGE amount of opposition testimony submitted against this measure, only Representative Iwamoto voted No, and the committee pass the measure, sending it on to be voted on by the full House.
Aloha Chair. Vice Chair, members of the committee. My name is Sherry Pollack and I co-founder of 350Hawaii. 350Hawaii stands in strong opposition to this measure.
We realize that this measure would just establish a working group, but why direct our limited resources on something that the Energy Office has already indicated would be an expensive form of energy. And importantly, the text in this measure is rife with factually inaccurate information, including the fallacy that nuclear power is “carbon-free electricity”. Regarding small modular reactors, despite the claims, they are unproven, too expensive, too slow to build, have unresolved safety risks, worsen the challenges of nuclear waste management and disposal, and are too risky to play a significant role in the critical transitioning from fossil fuels that must occur in the coming 10-15 years.
Bottom line, if we are already having such an immense challenge just being able to site a landfill on Oahu, how would we ever be able to site a nuclear waste facility that would contain lethal radioactive waste, that scientists say must be maintained and funded for at least 200,000 years?
In some ways even more important than our opposition for the purpose of this measure is our deep disappointment by the process that was used to amend it from its original intent. The entire contents of SCR136 were removed, and replaced by new content that is unrelated in either subject or substance to the original measure, using text from a measure that died earlier this session, and without the public having an opportunity to testify on that major change during that hearing. Many are tracking specific measures by number at this stage in the session, so many of those from the public who have interest in this issue were unlikely to be aware of this hearing and have an opportunity to testify today.
Your committee choosing to pass a measure that was amended in this manner, regardless of the measure’s topic, would only serve to seriously erode public confidence and trust in government. With that in mind, and the overwhelming amount of opposition testimony submitted for this measure, we urge you to vote NO on SCR136HD1.