WRRC organized a two-day conference at the Pagoda Hotel, Honolulu on October 30 -31, 2008. Approximately 120 people registered to attend. The title of the conference was “How Clean or Polluted are Hawaii’s Drinking and Recreational Waters?”.
The goal was to invite expert speakers to address the following four questions raised in many previous meetings:
1. How clean or polluted are Hawaii’s recreational and drinking waters?
2. What are the best ways to analyze these waters to determine if they are safe for their designated uses?
3. Are the tests performed to meet water quality standards sufficient to ensure that these waters are safe?
4. If these water quality standards are not adequate, what actions should be taken?
The premise of the conference was that the best way to determine whether waters are safe is to analyze them for more relevant water quality parameters, and to interpret the data using a weight of evidence approach. Therefore, most of the invited speakers were scientists involved in analyzing water in Hawaii for various water quality parameters.