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U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono
defended her decision Tuesday not to sign onto a congressional bill that would mandate the permanent shutdown of the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility, telling reporters that she was focused instead on a state permitting process that could accomplish the same goal, but faster.
“I can tell you that I am working very hard to shut down Red Hill. There are many steps and many people to convince, and I am doing it. I am doing it through the channels and steps that I think will actually get us there,” said Hirono as she stood in front of a closed food court at the Navy Exchange Mall at Pearl Harbor, following a tour of Red Hill.
The restaurants were shut down after fuel from the Red Hill facility leaked into the Navy’s drinking water system in November, causing thousands of military families and civilian residents to be displaced from their homes and shuttering some businesses.
Earlier this month U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and U.S. Reps. Kai Kahele and Ed Case announced that they had introduced companion bills that would require the Navy to cease fueling operations at Red Hill, drain all the tanks by the end of this year and permanently decommission the facility. The legislation, which Kahele took the lead on, would also require the military to reimburse Hawaii for the costs the state and local governments have incurred as a result of the current water contamination.
Hirono was the only member of Hawaii’s congressional delegation to abstain from signing onto the legislation, an anomaly for a delegation that in the past typically moved in lockstep when it came to issues of Red Hill, often sending out joint statements when approached by the media.
But in this case, Hirono said that she wasn’t interested in “signing onto a bill that is not going to get us there.”
Hirono did not respond to a question asking why she didn’t think the bill would help, though it’s difficult to get a bill through Congress. Just a small fraction of the thousands that are introduced in any given year actually get enacted.
Still, Kahele and Case both expressed confidence during a news conference announcing the measure earlier this month that the legislation would pass.
Hirono, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee and is chairwoman of the subcommittee on sea power, said that a permitting process playing out at the state level is a more efficient avenue.
The Hawaii Sierra Club successfully sued the state Department of Health in 2017 over its exemption of the Red Hill tanks from underground storage tank regulations. The Navy has since been embroiled in a contested case hearing as it seeks a state permit to continue operating the facility. The Hawaii Sierra Club and Honolulu Board of Water Supply intervened in the case.
In September, after months of deliberation, Lou Chang, the hearing officer overseeing the contested case, which is an administrative process, recommended that DOH issue the Navy a permit but said it should come with stringent inspection and repair requirements. Chang found that the Navy had not been adequately inspecting its underground Red Hill tanks and that storing more than
180 million gallons of fuel 100 feet above Oahu’s sole source aquifer was “inherently dangerous.”
Chang’s recommendation was to be taken up by Health Director Dr. Elizabeth Char, who is tasked with making a final decision. But the case has been reopened amid the current water contamination emergency, and a new hearing in the case is scheduled to begin May 23.
Hirono has said that she expects DOH will ultimately rule against issuing the Navy a state permit.
The permitting process is just one thread in an increasingly complex legal, regulatory and political landscape involving the Red Hill tanks. Separate from the contested case, DOH issued an emergency order Dec. 6 instructing the Navy to defuel its tanks and cease fueling operations until it can convince state health officials that the facility can be operated safely. The military is suing the state over the defueling order, filing appeals in state and federal court that argue Hawaii overstepped its authority in trying to shutter the aging facility.
The U.S. Department of Defense has said it’s on an aggressive schedule to analyze its fuel reserves in the Pacific theater so that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin can make a decision on the long-term future of Red Hill. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks has said that includes the option of permanently draining the tanks.
Meanwhile, top defense officials have faced mounting pressure from Hawaii politicians at the local, state and federal levels to permanently shut down Red Hill.
Hirono told reporters that she’s had regular meetings with Department of Defense officials.
She said she wants to get them on “the same page as us, because I hardly need the Department of Defense to say, ‘No, we want to continue to run Red Hill even without a permit from the state of Hawaii.’”
“That is not where I want us to head. I want us to head to the point where we all agree we are going to need to find an alternative to
Red Hill being operated,” said Hirono.
Prior to the November fuel contamination, Hirono, like other members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, had supported the continued operation of
Red Hill. She pointed to
the corrective action plan implemented by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency and DOH after 27,000 gallons spilled from a Red Hill tank in 2014. Hirono said that she expected that regulatory agreement, which included a litany of studies and additional safeguards, to keep Oahu’s drinking water safe.
That agreement requires the Navy to relocate its World War II-era tanks by 2037 if it can’t significantly upgrade them, a date that most political leaders now agree is far too late.
Mikey Inouye, who attended the small event for news outlets, is among many community activists who in recent months have criticized political leaders for not advocating to shut down Red Hill before the water contamination happened. He said that there were warnings that the crisis was inevitable.
“She didn’t do what she could have,” he said.
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