Regulators Were Watching The Navy’s Red Hill Fuel Facility. What Went Wrong?

TL;DR - After a catastrophic leak from the Red Hill fuel facility in 2014, the Navy agreed to work with state and federal regulators on an oversight plan that they hoped would help prevent a similar incident from happening again. 

But now that military families have been sickened and displaced by jet fuel contamination, that regulatory agreement – called the Administrative Order on Consent – is widely considered a failure, environmental advocates say.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which was a party to that agreement signed in 2015, said Thursday that it is launching an investigation into Red Hill next week. But Marti Townsend, who advocated for Red Hill’s shutdown for years as the Sierra Club of Hawaii’s executive director, said that’s too little, too late. 

February 24, 2022: Regulators Were Watching The Navy’s Red Hill Fuel Facility. What Went Wrong?, Honolulu Civil Beat