The event began with Kanani Aton of the Hawaii County Water Department presenting a pule.  Jim Juvik then showed a power point presentation on the many watersheds of Hawaii Island for both the attendees and the mayoral candidates present.  Featured topics included the hydrologic cycle, the free ecosystem services watersheds provide us humans, land use districts on the island, the ways that the mayoral candidates could take responsibility for maintaining Hawaii’s various watersheds, how “watershed partnerships” can do more than individual groups, and how, if Kona ditches were well maintained, they would reduce electricity costs for pumping water.  These ecosystem services are clean surface water and ground water, biodiversity conservation, flood and erosion conservation, and cultural resources.  Jim Juvik also mentioned the Hilo Bay watershed facts of the watershed collecting 3-4 billion gallons of rain fall daily and the Hilo community uses half the groundwater; 5-6 billion gallons.  He especially urged the candidates to consider lobbying other agencies that did have power to initiate new beneficial watershed policies, even though they could not personally allocate funds.

The candidates then asked questions of Jim and Sonia Juvik and other HBWAG representative’s questions. Issues that were brought up from these questions were whose hands watershed management should be in and if the UH Hilo should be involved in watershed research.  Kanani Aton also discussed changes the Water Department has made like installing a hydroelectric generator.  HBWAG representative Jéné Michaud concluded the evening with her answer to Candidate Billy’s Kenoi’s question of “What can we do to improve our water supply?,” which was “We can improve, get rid of cesspools.  The thing with Hilo Bay is that there is not much we know.”                   Submitted by Tara Anderson