A Pledge to Our Wai: Red Hill AOC 10-year anniversary reminds us of our kuleana to wai, future generations

September marked the 10-year anniversary of the 2015 Red Hill Administrative Order on Consent (AOC), a largely toothless agreement between the Navy, EPA, and Hawaiʻi Department of Health that only enabled the Navy to continue operating the Red Hill facility, even after its 27,000 gallon jet fuel spill at the end of 2013 - notwithstanding the many warning signs, and plain common sense, indicating the clear and present threat it posed to Oʻahu’s aquifer.  

Accordingly, these last two months saw a flurry of activity to ensure that we continue to remember our responsibility, individually and collectively, to ensure the healing and protection of our wai - and to hold government regulators and the military accountable for the messes they have made.  

First, on August 23, 2025, Artists + Poets for Clean Water (APCW), HŌʻĀ, Sierra Club Oʻahu Group, and the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi hosted an awards ceremony and celebration for the Tainted Waters: Art for Truth youth art and poetry contest at the KEY Project in Kahaluʻu, Oʻahu. 

The contest, organized by high school members of APCW, and sponsored by the Hawaiʻi Peoples Fund, Pacific American Foundation, and the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, enabled students from elementary through high school to use their creative talents to uplift the importance of clean water - as well as the role we all can and must play, in advocating for our wai and by extension, the future generations that will call Hawaiʻi home.

Featured speakers included Deputy Director Kathy Ho with the Hawaiʻi Department of Health, Chief Engineer Ernie Lau with the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, and student organizer Sydney Chung. Top entry winners from each category also gave speeches explaining the inspiration behind their work to a crowd of over 120 attendees.  

View the dozens of incredibly thoughtful and inspiring contest entries and category winners here - and read to the end of this article, to learn about how these artistic contributions continue to help remind the community of our kuleana to our wai. 

Second, the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi launched our ongoing social media education campaign to highlight the legacies of the AOC - and the lessons we must carry as we navigate the ongoing Red Hill water crisis.  Now decade-old promises such as complete groundwater flow and contaminant fate and transport models remain unfulfilled, leaving us “working blind” in the search for the contamination plume in our aquifer; risk assessments demonstrating a nearly 30% chance of a 30,000 gallon fuel spill in any given year were downplayed and dismissed; and the Navy repeatedly pointed to the AOC as a reason for us to trust that they would keep our water safe: these examples and more make clear that we must never again place our faith, or the fate of our wai, in empty promises made by decisionmakers thousands of miles away. 

Stay tuned as we continue to reflect on our ongoing responsibility to ensure the healing of our aquifer, as demonstrated by the empty promises of the 2015 AOC and now, the 2023 Red Hill Administrative Consent Order.

Third, in partnership with Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC), Earthjustice, and Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi, we hosted a webinar, Uē Ka Lani: Hawaiʻi’s Red Hill Water Crisis and the Fight for a Livable Future in Oceania, on September 21. Featuring panelists Ernie Lau of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, international law and human rights attorney and WPLC director Natali Segovia, former Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi director and lifelong social justice advocate Marti Townsend, and water protector and organizer Kainoa Azama, with Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi director Wayne Tanaka moderating, the webinar reflected on the 2015 AOC, the connections between the Red Hill water crisis and water crises throughout the Pacific and across the continent, the role played by indigenous water protectors in safeguarding the foundation of life for all people, and what we must all do to ensure a livable, hopeful future for water drinkers everywhere.   

View the webinar, which was also included in the Climate Week NYC opening day lineup, here.

 Finally, September ended with the launch of a “Pledge to Our Wai, Pledge to Our Keiki,” a way for individuals and groups to commit to take future actions to heal and protect our wai - at Kapūkakī and throughout Hawaiʻi. The launch event at Honolulu Hale was hosted by the Honolulu Mayor’s Office of Culture & the Arts, and sponsored by Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiʻi Alliance for Progressive Action, Wisdom Circles Oceania, 350 Hawaiʻi, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Oʻahu Water Protectors, Livable Maunalua Hui, Lāhui Foundation, the Green Party of Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiʻi Alliance for Community-Based Economic Development, the Iwamoto Family Foundation, the Red Hill Registry, and the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi.   

Featured speakers included BWS Chief Engineer Ernie Lau, City Council Chair Tommy Waters, the Red Hill WAI Initiative's Senator Jarrett Keohokālole, former Red Hill CRI Chair Marti Townsend, and student organizer Sydney Chung, with kupuna water advocate Rev. David Nakamoto reading excerpts from the pledge. Attendees also included leadership from the Shimanchu Wai Protectors, Unite Here! Local 5, ACLU Hawaiʻi, and 15 Craigside, as well as Office of Hawaiian Affairs Board Chair Kai Kahele, Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke, Senator Carol Fukunaga, Representative Linda Ichiyama, Representative Della Au Belatti, Representative Garner Shimizu, and Honolulu City Councilmember Matt Weyer.  

With keiki art from the Tainted Waters: Art for Truth contest as a backdrop, and Wisdom Circles Oceania volunteers providing beautiful banners and hosting a fabric print-making table, the launch event culminated with speakers and attendees signing a large pledge board to express their commitment to our wai, and to the future generations whose lives will depend on this precious resource.

At the event, the Mayor’s Office of Culture & the Arts also announced that the winning entries from the Tainted Waters art contest would be showcased outside of City Council Chambers through the month of October - reminding council meeting attendees of their own kuleana to heal and protect wai, and encouraging them to take the pledge. 

See the press release for the event here, and watch the speakers’ powerful remarks here - and don’t forget to take the pledge, and encourage your friends and organizations to do the same, at bit.ly/waipledge.

With the Red Hill catastrophe still unfolding, and with regulators once again demonstrating more deference to the Navy than to the community whose water is at risk of remaining contaminated for generations to come, it is clear that we - and our successors - must ensure our needs are uplifted and continuously carried forward in the years and decades ahead, until they are finally addressed.

As we reflect on the last 10 years, we must all commit to continual action to protect our wai - because as the AOC demonstrated, neither our “defense” nor “protection” agencies can be relied upon to do so.