PUHI, Kaua'i — Regulate the state's dams for safety, but don't regulate them so strictly that owners choose to destroy them, many people told a legislative committee meeting here yesterday.

The state House Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday afternoon on a bill to establish strict safety guidelines for dams, in response to the failure last year of Kaloko Dam, which caused the deaths of seven people. Committee Chairman Tommy Waters, D-51st (Lanikai, Waimanalo), said the committee is scheduled to vote on the bill Tuesday.

"I am the public face" of the Kaloko tragedy, Bruce Fehring told the committee. His daughter, son-in-law, grandson and four friends died in the flood caused by the dam failure. He suggested placing electronic monitoring devices that could set off alarms downstream when a reservoir begins losing water at a rapid rate.

"If my family and friends had just three minutes' notice, it could have saved their lives," Fehring said.

Kilauea Realtor Mike Dyer said the bill in its current form "seems unnecessarily adversarial," and he with others feared dam owners would decommission their dams rather than face an inordinately high cost of maintaining them.

"It would be a terrible tragedy if we started ripping out these wonderful resources," he said.

State Board of Land and Natural Resources Chairman Peter Young said the state is conducting a study of dams to determine which need special attention and which may require a lower level of scrutiny. He asked the committee to allow the list of dams to be amended or ranked when that study is complete.

Attorney Robert Klein, representing a dam owner, suggested the bill be amended to allow the DLNR to use rulemaking to establish which dams need what level of care, rather than putting that in the law.

Kamehameha Schools land manager Kapu Smith said seven of the trust's nine dams have no potential for loss of life if they failed, and she suggested that putting expensive regulatory requirements on those dams could inhibit their use for providing agricultural irrigation water.

Kilauea, Kaua'i, area farmers said they will be immediately out of business if, for instance, Kaloko Reservoir, which still functions with a low water level, is closed. Farmer David Whatmore said other landowners with dams could decide to abandon their reservoirs rather than pay high regulatory costs.

"Let's not make this bill so restrictive that it's going to cause people to decommission dams," Whatmore said.

He and about 20 other farmers using Kaloko water could face that problem, though. Kaloko owner Jimmy Pflueger has applied to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to shut off the flow of water through two ditches on state land that feed the reservoir, said Pflueger Properties employee Gordon Rosa. That could effectively shut down its ability to produce agricultural water.

Rosa said Pflueger Properties supports strict dam-safety regulations and said the lack of adequate oversight was a cause of the Kaloko failure. State officials have conceded they never inspected Kaloko, despite a legal requirement to do so.

"This is the reason Kaloko fell through the cracks: because nobody followed up," Rosa said.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.