Nearly three years after one of the Navy’s massive underground fuel tanks at Red Hill leaked 27,000 gallons of fuel, the military has yet to clean up the spill or commit to long-term remedies for improving the 18 active World War II-era tanks that sit just 100 feet above a critical aquifer that supplies Oahu drinking water.

The slow pace has frustrated some local lawmakers, environmental groups and officials with the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, who criticized the Navy’s efforts during a Thursday meeting at the state Department of Health and later in the day during a community meeting at Moanalua Middle School attended by more than 100 people who at times grew hostile toward the Navy.

The meetings included top military officials as well as officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Health and Board of Water Supply.

“The status quo at Red Hill is no longer acceptable,” said Marti Townsend, executive director of the Hawaii Sierra Club, during a news conference held shortly before the community meeting. “We want to see these tanks be leakproof and the contamination that has already escaped into the environment to be cleaned up. That is our minimum basic expectation, and if the Navy can’t meet this expectation, then they need to investigate relocating their fuel storage facility.”

Townsend was flanked by state Sens. Glenn Wakai, Breene Harimoto and Gil Riviere, and City Council members Carol Fukunaga and Brandon Elefante. Several others held signs that read “Don’t turn this into Flint” and “Fix the tanks, stop the leaks.”

The Red Hill Underground Fuel Facility was built during the early 1940s and includes 18 active tanks that support the military’s Pacific operations. Following the Navy’s disclosure in January 2014 that 27,000 gallons of fuel leaked from one of its tanks, media investigations revealed that the aging facility actually had a long history of leaks and that the military for years had been concerned about the tanks’ deteriorating conditions and the possibility of a catastrophic failure at one of them.

The tanks, each big enough to envelop Honolulu’s Aloha Tower, sit just 100 feet above an aquifer that supplies 25 percent of urban Honolulu’s drinking water, according to the Board of Water Supply. The military itself also faces a serious risk if there is a major failure at the facility — leaking fuel poses the greatest risk to a well that supplies water to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. The Navy’s drinking water well sits just 3,000 feet makai of Red Hill.

Capt. Ken Epps, commander of Naval Supply Systems Command Fleet, assured local officials and community members that the Navy is working hard to make sure that the tanks are safely maintained and drinking water supplies safe.

“The drinking water on Oahu is safe. It has been safe. It is safe today, and the Navy is committed to keeping it safe,” he said during the community meeting.

While regulatory officials have discussed double-lining the tanks, which could significantly improve their safety, since the January 2014 spill, Epps said Thursday that the Navy is still looking at whether it is feasible. He said the Navy is also still working to find out where the fuel that leaked in January went and whether it can be cleaned up.

“I think a lot of people presume that there is a lake just sitting under there that you can puncture a hole in the ground and suck it out and it is all done,” he told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “The geology of Red Hill is basalt. It is very porous rock, and (the fuel) has been absorbed into millions of little cracks and fissures. So part of the (studies) will give us the technology and wherewithal to figure out what has happened to the 27,000 gallons and whether or not it is remediable.” He said that if it’s not feasible to clean up the fuel, then the Navy will study how quickly it is expected to degrade in the environment over time.

The Navy has also installed four new monitoring wells to gauge whether fuel products are migrating toward drinking water wells, and plans to install two more, though the Board of Water Supply has said that there needs to be a more extensive monitoring plan.

Epps stressed that the Red Hill facility is critical to national security and that finding a new location for the tanks would be difficult.

“It is well documented that we are having a transition or a pivot to the Pacific. This entire area is becoming much more critical to our national security, and that is because of just the activity that is happening here now,” he said, referencing countries such as China and North Korea. “So in order for us to be able to support any kind of major mobilization, which could happen in the next hour or next day or next week, we need to make sure that we have enough ready reserve fuel supplies to resource that mobilization, whether it is for a military mobilization or we have a hurricane that comes through here like what is happening in Haiti today.”

The Navy entered into a consent agreement with the EPA and Health Department in October 2015 that lays out a series of studies and criteria for upgrading the tanks, but more concrete plans on how to upgrade the aging tanks or better monitor for leaks aren’t expected to be finalized for another couple of years.

As officials from the Navy, EPA and Health Department took questions from the community late into the night Thursday, the situation at times grew tense as people asked what type of health risks are associated with fuel contaminants and whether the Navy was acting fast enough.

Gary Gill, former deputy director for environmental health at the Health Department, who was formally involved in negotiations over Red Hill, also questioned the Navy’s commitment to transparency during the meeting and posited that it could be safer if the Navy cut its number of active tanks in half.

“The military had been slow to respond, slow to admit problems, and continues to be very slow in finding a solution,” Gill told the Star-Advertiser.

Gill said that the risk of the Red Hill fuel tanks to Oahu’s drinking water “gets worse every day,” given the age of the facility.

Ernie Lau, head of the Board of Water Supply, echoed those sentiments.

“I wish progress could be a lot faster because this is a 73-year-old facility right now with the same mortar and steel plates keeping the fuel from leaking out into the environment,” he said. “So our concern is we need to move much faster to prevent a large-scale release.”