Red Hill Updates: Navy Ends Extended Drinking Water Monitoring Program, Plans to Reopen the Navy ‘Aiea-Hālawa Shaft & Proposes Water Treatment Facility for Red Hill Shaft

Mālama Monthly
Written By Sierra Club Hawaiʻi Chapter

By Madison Owens, Red Hill Organizer, Rosalie Luo, Volunteer, and Wayne Tanaka, Chapter Director | Reading time: 5.5 minutes

This month’s Red Hill updates includes the Navy’s conclusion of their extended drinking water monitoring program for Navy water system users, as well as plans to reopen the Navy’s ʻAiea-Hālawa shaft. There is also possibility of reopening the Red Hill shaft. Read on for more about upcoming events and the draft environmental assessment for a drinking water treatment system for the Red Hill well, with comments due by April 20, 2025.

In addition to the below, be sure to check out updates on Red Hill and wai protection bills in our CapitolWatch section, and a final reminder for our “Tainted Waters: Art for Truth” art and poetry contest.

Community Representation Initiative 

As uncertainty persists around the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plans for Red Hill, both agencies failed to attend the Community Representation Initiative’s (CRI) 18th meeting on March 27, 2025. 

This meeting focused on the conditional approval to re-open the Navy’s Halawa drinking water shaft. You can watch the recording of the CRI meeting linked here or read below for key takeaways:

  • The Navy’s Lack of Community Involvement & Lack of Transparency: The Honolulu Board of Water Supply was not included in the decision-making process regarding  the Department of Health’s  conditional approval to re-open the Navy’s ʻAiea-Hālawa shaft, despite its potential impacts on BWS’s municipal water supply, such as drawing contaminants from the Navy’s Red Hill shaft to the BWS’s Hālawa shaft. In addition, communities served by the Navy’s water system have not been informed or meaningfully engaged in the process of reopening the Navy’s ‘Aiea Hālawa shaft. These residents have the right to know about the conditions and concerns of their drinking water, as these decisions directly affect their water and overall wellbeing.

  • EPA Inaction: The EPA is forgoing the $5,000 fine they previously imposed on the Navy and Defense Logistics Agency for not attending the quarterly CRI meetings they are required to attend under the legally binding Administrative Consent Order.

  • CRI Signs Ground Rules: The ground rules, unanimously created by the Navy and EPA, were verbally accepted by the CRI in December 2024. The EPA has now requested the CRI to approve with a written signature—CRI members complied in hopes of having the NCTF-RH return to the table. 

  • CRI Meetings Adjusted: To ease the workload from CRI members, future CRI meetings without federal officials and regulators will be shortened and attended by half the CRI members.

Stay tuned for further updates as we continue to fight for truth, transparency and justice. 

Extended Drinking Water Monitoring (EDWM) Program Concludes

On March 31, the Navy Closure Task Force concluded its EDWM Program that collected and monitored samples to test for fuel. As of April 1, the Navy is preparing to return the JBPHH Drinking Water Distribution System to normal drinking water compliance monitoring. While the Navy has maintained that no fuel has been found in the samples collected under the EDWM and the previous Long-Term Monitoring (LTM) Program, community members have raised concerns that compliance monitoring is insufficient to comprehensively understand the water quality within the drinking water system. As the public has repeated consistently, compliance is the minimum requirement, and cannot be substituted for full transparency. 

Water Treatment Facility May Result in Red Hill Shaft Reopening

The Navy’s Red Hill shaft - which was disconnected from the Navy’s drinking water system after it was contaminated with jet fuel, but not after thousands of residents were poisoned - may once again be used to provide water to Navy system water consumers, according to a draft environmental assessment for a drinking water treatment system for the water pumped from this major (former) drinking water well.

For years, community members and agencies like the Department of Health have urged the Navy to find some kind of beneficial use for the millions of gallons of water being pumped out of the Red Hill shaft every day, and dumped into Hālawa stream. This “pump and dump” scenario - which has resulted in the waste of billions of gallons of water since it began in January 2022 - was part of an effort to prevent the contamination plume under Kapūkakī from migrating to other areas of our sole source aquifer.  Accordingly, this proposal may help to end this rampant waste of our most precious resource

In addition, the Navy’s current reliance on a single source - its Waiawa shaft - means its water supply may be completely shut off, should that shaft be rendered inoperable for any reason. This would likely result in the Navy tapping into the Honolulu Board of Water Supply’s system, putting even further strain on our already limited municipal water supply. Reconnecting another water source to the Navy’s system could help to prevent this from happening.

However, there are a number of concerns that may not have been adequately addressed in the environmental assessment or plans for the reopening of the Red Hill shaft.

Most importantly, this should not be used as an excuse, now or in the years to come, for the Navy to defer, delay, or renege on its responsibility to clean the contaminated lands and waters that may contain up to 2 million gallons of jet fuel, PFAS, and other hazardous contaminants released from the Red Hill Facility. 

Soil testing and other environmental evaluations must also be conducted prior to any major groundwork that could disturb or mobilize soil containing PFAS, and any contaminated soil disposed of accordingly, especially in light of the history of PFAS spills at the facility.

Moreover, mechanisms to ensure adequate and continued maintenance of the Red Hill shaft and the proposed treatment facility - which will need continuous monitoring for contaminants in the water both entering and leaving the facility, as well as continual replacement of its granulated activated carbon filters - must be put into place, to protect the health and well-being of the families, businesses, and service members on the Navy’s water system.

Comments on the draft environmental assessment are due on April 20, and can be submitted to:

ATTN: Red Hill Water Treatment Facility EA Project Manager
Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Hawaii/EV21
Building 55, 400 Marshall Road, JBPHH, HI 96860-3139

Or email: RedHillEA@hhf.com

Upcoming Events:

NASEM Service Session 1 - Public Health & Health Care 

Red Hill Task Force and Fuel Tank Advisory Committee (FTAC) Meetings 

NASEM Service Session 2 - Mental Health 

CRI Meeting

  • Thursday, April 24, 2025, 5:00 -7:00 PM HT

  • Location to be determined

  • Visit the CRI website or Instagram for further updates

NASEM Service Session 3 - Pediatrics 

Sierra Club Hawaiʻi Chapter
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