HI HCR33

Encourages Hawaiʻi County to complete the Puakō Sewage Project in collaboration with the Puakō community, Department of Health, and other stakeholders to protect and restore Puakō Reef, where live coral cover has declined from 70% to 7%.

Addresses Hawaiʻi's cesspool crisis, with approximately 80,000 cesspools dumping 53 million gallons of untreated sewage annually; all must be upgraded by 2050 at a projected total cost exceeding $1.5 billion.

Puakō community volunteers have worked 13 years to develop a solution and raised $2.5 million in private donations without government funding, creating a design that integrates wastewater collection with fiber-optic broadband infrastructure.

The project aims to establish a replicable model using public-private-philanthropic partnerships (the World Economic Forum's 4P investment model) for financing cesspool conversions in similar coastal communities statewide.

Certified copies of the resolution to be transmitted to the Director of Health, Mayor of Hawaiʻi County, and President of Puakō for Reefs.