Write to Congress to Shut Down Red Hill
By Kirsten Kagimoto | Reading time: 1.5 minutes
1,000 gallons of fuel leaked out of a pipe at the Red Hill fuel storage facility on the evening of May 6. It then took over 12 hours for the Navy to notify the Hawaiʻi Department of Health that there had been a leak.
The Navy's response to this leak was misleading—while reassuring us that they had contained all of the leaked fuel, they also claimed they could not share any data to prove that was in fact true due to their ongoing investigation.
Days later, data was released that indicated that fuel had reached the environment directly beneath the tanks: soil vapor measurements beneath the tanks were 1,000 times higher in the days following the leak than measurements two weeks prior.
This latest leak—on top of almost 80 years of fuel releases totalling nearly 200,000 gallons of fuel—demonstrates clearly that the Navy is unable to deliver on its promises to protect our water from their fuel and the tanks need to be drained and the fuel relocated.
We've launched a new action urging our congressional delegation to do everything in their power to relocate the fuel at Red Hill away from Oʻahu's main drinking water source. Our senators and representatives are well aware of the risk that the Red Hill tanks pose and have the power and means to require the Navy to relocate the fuel. We need your help urging them to do so.
Can we count on you to write to Congress?
From years of advocacy, we know handwritten personal letters are hard to ignore and are incredibly effective. We also know that Oʻahu’s drinking water future is so important, and the threat of the Red Hill tanks to that future is so immense, that we are going old-school and asking you to take a few minutes out of your day to sit down and write impactful notes to all four of Hawaiʻi’s congresspeople.