Editorial: A Red Hill ‘milestone’

TL;DR - The Joint Task Force Red-Hill (JTF-RH), the coalition riding herd on the painstaking and risky work of defueling the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, has shared some encouraging news lately — a rarity in a saga of lax oversight and missteps that has fouled a critical water source.

In mid-May, the timeline to start emptying the 20 tanks in the underground storage facility was accelerated so that the process could begin in mid-October, said Vice Adm. John Wade, who heads the task force.

More recently, both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Health have given conditional approval to JTF-RH’s defueling plan, contingent in part on its completion of 253 listed repairs — a list that, according to the task force, has been checked off.

July 8, 2023: Editorial: A Red Hill ‘milestone’, Honolulu Star-Advertiser