Litigation Station: Enforcing the Public’s Right to Know
By Wayne Tanaka | 3 minutes
Despite the Navy’s supposed commitment to transparency, the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi’s efforts to obtain critical information regarding fuel leaks from Red Hill have been stymied yet again by vague and unsubstantiated assertions of “national security” – requiring us to file suit to enforce the state’s open records law.
In July of this year, Navy officials finally acknowledged that an “active leak” had existed in Puʻuloa (Pearl Harbor) since 2020, and that approximately 7,700 gallons of spilled fuel had been recovered from Puʻuloa’s soil and nearshore waters. This acknowledgement came only after a Department of Health letter concluded that two failed pipeline tests in January and other evidence was sufficient to confirm the leak’s existence – as well as its connection to the Red Hill fuel tanks.
Since that time, the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi has repeatedly requested records, documents, and emails relating to the leak, which are currently held by the Department of Health. This information may be critical to our, and the public’s, understanding of when and what the Navy knew about the leak, particularly in light of recent whistleblower e-mails; how much fuel was actually recovered; and, critically, whether the Navy’s Red Hill pipeline pressure monitoring system worked – and if so, why this leak was not detected or confirmed as an “active leak” for such a long time.
Without a satisfactory response from the Department of Health, in September we submitted a formal Uniform Information Practices Act (UIPA) request, which requires the production of requested information. However, the Department of Health did not comply with this mandatory deadline, and its attorney claimed that some unspecified information needed to be withheld due to the Navy’s claims of “national security.” In addition to being highly suspect, such a claim alone is notably not a sufficient legal basis for withholding information under our public records law.
Accordingly, the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi was left with no choice but to file suit against the Department of Health to gain access to these critical public records. Our suit was filed on October 25th, and notice was served to the Department of Health on October 26th.
The law is the law. The public has a legal right to know what's in these documents. And it is extremely disappointing that we now have to litigate, just to get the public records we need to understand what happened with the Pearl Harbor leak. We all need to know whether and how the Navy can monitor and respond to fuel leaks connected to its Red Hill underground fuel storage facility, which the Health Department has itself acknowledged as “inherently dangerous.”
The public has a right to information that pertains to the protection of our aquifer, access to safe drinking water, and pollution of our coastal waters. The need for litigation to attain these records debunks the Navy’s supposed commitment to transparency. A dubious claim to “national security” cannot take precedence over the security of the only water source for 400,000 Oʻahu residents.