In a positive first step with many more difficult ones to come, the state Department of Health on Friday approved the U.S. Navy’s plan to start “unpacking” about 1 million gallons of fuel that’s been sitting in three pipelines at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility since last year’s water contamination crisis.

The Department of Defense “must continue to work with state officials and community leaders as quickly as possible,” reacted Hawaii’s U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz. “There’s no turning back, and there’s no time to waste.”

He’s correct, of course. The pipelines’ draining, due to start in two weeks, is simply the beginning of the arduous task of removing about 100 million gallons of fuel from the massive Red Hill tanks, which sit just 100 feet above a key Oahu aquifer.

Rear Adm. John Wade on Monday vowed safety, swiftness, transparency and community inclusion as he leads the new Joint Task Force-Red Hill (JTF-RH) on the complex defueling process, toward a July 2024 completion.

Wade surely is aware of the depth of public distrust against the Navy, after last year’s major fuel spills that contaminated the drinking water system for 93,000 people, including military families, schools and businesses. Many got sick while the Navy obfuscated, sparking outrage about the Navy’s mishandling of that crisis and earlier spills.

So Wade was on point to say his task force is exploring the possibility of creating an oversight board composed of local community leaders, to be involved as the defueling process gets underway.

But there are no firm plans for this. Furthermore, in order to truly realize the spirit of local involvement, these civilians should be made an integral part of the decision-making task force, not merely an entity kept at arm’s length. The JTF-Red Hill is expected to have about 124 members; at least a handful of community members well-versed in this crisis should be among the group, as being advocated by the O‘ahu Water Protectors coalition.

It’s been nearly a year since fuel from the Red Hill tanks contaminated the area’s water system. In the aftermath of the November spill, a bevy of problems same to light about the fuel facility’s pipeline system. A structural assessment in May found more than 200 needed repairs, with 43 of them deemed critical. The recommendation that infrastructure repairs were crucial before defueling of the tanks could even begin belied the many years of false reassurances by the Navy that the Red Hill facility was sound and safe for many more years to come.

“Every day that that fuel was sitting there is a threat to our community and to the environment,” Wade said. He’s certainly right about that — and pressure will be on him and his team to get all that fuel removed, swiftly and safely.