Hundreds of people marched from Keehi Lagoon Beach Park to the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Hawaii offices Saturday afternoon demanding the shutdown of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

Following the latest incident at the storage facility, where 1,300 gallons of concentrated fire suppressant spilled Nov. 29, organizations including the Honolulu Board of Water Supply and Hawaii Sierra Club led residents and supporters on a 3.5-mile march from the lagoon to demand that the facility be shut down.

The procession crossed and progressed along Nimitz Highway as protesters called in unison to “shut down Red Hill.” Some 60 organizations, via a news release, also supported a BWS demand for the immediate defueling and cleanup of the Red Hill facility.

The 1,300-gallon spill of aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, contained PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” that are toxic to humans. The incident followed the November 2021 spill of some 200,000 gallons of jet fuel into the Navy’s water well, contaminating the water supply for 93,000 people on Oahu.

Hawaii residents, lawmakers and advocacy groups make up a long list of people and organizations that have criticized the Navy’s handling of the facility and the spills, indifference toward the public’s well-being and lack of transparency. The Navy’s refusal to release a video of the AFFF spill was the most recent cause for ire.

“I’m tired of enduring, I’m done enduring. We’ve endured too much. We’ve endured years of misinformation, of lies, of cover-ups,” said Wayne Tanaka, executive director of Hawaii Sierra Club, at the Navy Exchange parking lot Saturday. “We’ve endured continual contamination of our aina … and we’ve seen people get poisoned.”

Despite the jet fuel spill taking place more than a year ago, the movement to shut down the Red Hill storage facility immediately remains strong.

“For 50 years, the Hawai‘i People’s Fund has sought to empower the people of Hawai‘i to stand up against the systems that oppress them. The poisoning of not just our drinking water, but the drinking water of our children, of our grandchildren’s grandchildren — that’s not just oppression, that is genocide,” said Micky Huihui, executive director of the Hawaii People’s Fund, in a statement. “There is absolutely no way we — or any organization or person that calls Hawai‘i home — can sit this fight out.”

Hawaii People’s Fund helped provide funding for Saturday’s event, dubbed the “Walk for Wai.”