Top officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Navy weathered a barrage of criticism from residents who crowded a town hall meeting Wednesday evening to discuss a proposed regulatory agreement relating to the defueling of the military’s Red Hill fuel facility.

Community activists, concerned residents and the top official from the Honolulu Board of Water Supply panned the agreement as largely toothless and called on the EPA to wield more of its power as regulators to speed up the draining of the Navy’s massive, underground fuel tanks.

“Use whatever power you have,” demanded Mikey Inouye, an activist and member of Oahu Water Protectors.

John Miller, a member of Wai Ola Alliance and Navy veteran, accused the EPA of being largely absent and failing to hold the Navy accountable for disasters at Red Hill over the years. He questioned whether the agreement between the EPA and Navy would serve as “another vehicle to effectively delay the safe shutdown of Red Hill.”

The meeting at the Oahu Veterans Center in Honolulu attracted several hundred people, dozens of whom peppered the EPA and Navy with questions and comments for more than three hours.

The agreement, called an administrative consent order, requires the Navy to make repairs to its tanks and pipelines prior to defueling, and enhance spill monitoring and response plans. It also requires the Navy and Army to take additional steps to ensure the safety of their respective drinking water systems.

While those systems are completely separate from the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility, they came under EPA scrutiny when a fuel leak from Red Hill in November 2021 contaminated the Navy’s Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam drinking water system, sickening military families. The Pentagon ordered the facility be permanently closed in May 2022 following widespread community and political outrage over the leak.

The state Department of Health has been largely overseeing the closure and has an emergency order in place that outlines required steps, studies and safeguards.

The EPA’s new consent order with the Navy enhances the work being done by DOH, according to Amy Miller, the enforcement director for the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region who attended the meeting and fielded questions.

“I understand that you have lost faith in the federal government,” Miller told attendees, while assuring them that Red Hill was the top priority of her office.

She said that the proposed agreement carves out a regulatory role for the EPA beyond what is being covered by DOH’s emergency order.

“The risk here is extremely high and it is very important that the EPA play an oversight role and bring their expertise to support the Department of Health,” she told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser during an interview before the meeting.

Miller said that the EPA’s consent order adds requirements that the Navy have an emergency response plan in place for Red Hill in the event of a spill or other disaster and that the Navy and Army have more robust protections in place to protect their drinking water systems.

“We are, with this new consent order, being much more aggressive about our oversight and enforcement,” she said.

She said the agreement gives senior leadership at the EPA and Navy more oversight and that Red Hill-related issues will be elevated quicker than in the past. The agreement also would be overseen by Miller’s enforcement division.

“Our approach to overseeing orders is to make sure they are fully enforced,” she said.

In addition to holding the town hall meeting, the EPA is accepting written comments on the proposed agreement, which is subject to modification.

The order builds on a 2015 consent order entered into by the EPA, DOH and Navy after 27,000 gallons of fuel leaked from one of the 20 massive Red Hill tanks. That order largely required enhanced inspections and repairs of the Navy’s aging tanks and more groundwater monitoring. Fuel spills in 2021, including the one that contaminated the drinking water, refocused attention on Red Hill’s pipeline system, which has since been found to need extensive repairs just to safely drain the tanks.

In the aftermath of the November 2021 leak, the EPA and DOH came under fire for not being tough enough on the Navy. The risk that a fuel leak from Red Hill could contaminate the Navy’s drinking water system and further pollute the aquifer below the tanks had been known for years. The Honolulu Board of Water Supply and Hawaii Sierra Club had urged regulators, as well as state lawmakers and Hawaii’s congressional delegation, for years to force the Navy to remove the tanks or at least install much more robust protections to prevent additional leaks.

The EPA’s Office of Inspector General is currently reviewing whether the EPA’s oversight of state programs related to Red Hill had effectively addressed the potential for contamination and is expected to issue a report in the spring.

The Board of Water Supply, in recent weeks, took the unusual step of sending a letter to its customers outlining its opposition to the currently proposed consent order and urging them to attend the town hall meeting. BWS Manager and Chief Engineer Ernie Lau wrote that the order does not contain clear deadlines for completing work, lacks strict penalties for noncompliance, doesn’t include opportunities for stakeholder and public participation, and might conflict with DOH’s emergency order and the prior 2015 consent order.

Lau said that the agreement also needs to include actions to address the Navy’s latest spill at Red Hill of concentrated firefighting foam, known as AFFF, which contains toxic chemicals that are slow to degrade in the environment and are potential carcinogens.

Lau told Navy and EPA officials during the town hall meeting that he felt that history was repeating itself with this latest consent order.

“The 2015 AOC (administrative order on consent) didn’t save us from the crisis we are in now; didn’t prevent us from the disaster we are dealing with,” he said. “The risk is tremendous.”