Hawaiʻi Organizations, Youth Demand EPA and Navy Restore, Respect Community Voice in Red Hill Water Contamination Crisis
The voices of Hawaiʻi youth organizers, along with the demands of dozens of community organizations, fell on absent ears Thursday night, as the U.S. Navy and Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) backed out of a planned meeting with the Red Hill Community Representation Initiative (CRI), where they were anticipated to provide updates and answer questions regarding the Red Hill water crisis.
The CRI was originally established under the 2023 ACO, after nearly 2,000 public comments on an earlier draft demanded greater community transparency and engagement in the wake of a 2021 fuel spill that poisoned thousands of Navy water consumers, and a 2022 spill of 1,300 gallons of firefighting foam concentrate containing PFAS “forever chemicals,” from the Navy’s Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. These spills followed years of warnings and concerns from community groups and the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, given the location of the massive, 80-year-old facility just one hundred feet above Oʻahu’s sole source aquifer and the primary drinking water source for the island.
While the Pentagon ordered the facility to be decommissioned in March of 2022, years of work to close the facility, and decades’ worth of remediation efforts, remain; the CRI was created in part to provide transparency and a community voice to ensure these long-term processes are completed in a timely and safe manner.
However, despite their initial agreement to the ACO, the Navy and DLA representatives have only attended two CRI meetings in all of 2024, despite having been required to be present at at least two meetings per quarter, under the terms of the original 2023 ACO. These entities have not been to a CRI meeting since March.
In anticipation of the Navy’s long-awaited appearance, youth water advocates organized a free lemonade stand outside the meeting – “while our water is still safe” – and formally presented copies of a joint letter signed by 57 community organizations. The letter urged the federal entities to comply with the terms of the ACO, and rescind recent ACO amendments that give the Navy and DLA veto power over CRI discussion items, reduce their attendance requirements to once every three months, and limite public testimony to thirty minutes per meeting.
“The Red Hill CRI established itself as the leading, trusted voice of the Hawaiʻi community, willing to raise our most pressing questions and concerns about our water crisis no matter how inconvenient the Navy may find them,” said Wayne Tanaka, Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi director. “Now the Navy is strongarming the EPA to give them even more power over the CRI and effectively silence their and the community’s voice – and the EPA has given in.”
At the meeting, EPA Region IX Regional Director Martha Guzman announced that she would not reconsider the new ACO amendments. EPA Region IX Enforcement Director Amy Miller, who was in attendance, did suggest that the Navy may face fines for their absence Thursday. The ACO stipulates fines of up to $5,000 per week for an initial violation, but whether and how any fine would be levied remains to be seen.
In the letter, the community groups highlighted the recent release of three Department of Defense Inspector General reports detailing myriad failures on the part of Navy leaders and contractors to safely maintain and operate the Red Hill Facility, and respond appropriately to the 2021 and 2022 spills, despite years of community concerns and intensifying scrutiny.
“We are sorely disappointed that the Navy was a no-show yet again,” said Kahelekeiao Jamile, a Native Hawaiian youth organizer at Thursdayʻs meeting. “This is our home. This is our future. Why can’t the Navy face us? Why are they afraid of keiki [children] and kūpuna [elders] and mākuahine [mothers] who just want answers, to be heard? All we are asking is that they stop ignoring us like they ignored us for years before our aquifer was poisoned.”
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