Two years after fuel from the Navy’s Red Hill storage facility contaminated the drinking water of 93,000 Oahu residents, naval officers connected to the disaster are being held to account — finally, and just barely.

In fact the sanctions are so weak, and so late in coming, that the Navy can hardly expect the public to consider the matter closed.

Three rear admirals who had leadership roles at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam received letters of censure from Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro last week. Del Toro cited their “leadership failures” and negligence in oversight that led to fuel spills in May and November 2021.

The censure letters went to retired Rear Adm. Peter Stamatopoulos, commander of Naval Supply Systems Command during those spills; retired Rear Adm. John Korka, Navy Facilities Engineering Command Pacific commander from May 2018 to September 2019; and retired Rear Adm. Timothy Kott, commander of Navy Region Hawaii during the November 2021 spill.

All three are safely retired, their pensions and benefits intact. The censure letters, each just one page long, will be placed in their official service records, along with any rebuttals they may want to submit. And that’s about it.

Also, seven captains received nonpunitive letters of censure; three of them await a board of inquiry to determine “if they may continue their naval service.”

Meanwhile, as Wayne Tanaka of the Sierra Club of Hawaii rightly noted, “We are left with a contaminated aquifer, ballooning water bills, and hundreds if not thousands of community members struggling with the uncertain long-term health impacts of jet fuel poisoning.”

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply (BWS) was forced to shut down the Halawa Shaft, its largest single water source, and drill exploratory and monitoring wells to track the contamination. Partly to cover this expense, BWS proposes to raise water rates for consumers in the range of 8%-10% annually, from 2024 to 2029.

This is some of the fallout from years of Navy dissembling, treating successive spills like public relations problems, brushing aside warnings from local officials and the community, saying it was committed to keeping the World War II-era facility in good shape, when it was not.

Some of this shoddiness came out in Del Toro’s letters:

>> Stamatopoulos “negligently approved an insufficient investigation of the 6 May 2021 fuel spill at Red Hill … the investigation was cursory, contained little independent analysis, did not recommend meaningful corrective actions, and failed to investigate the response efforts during the 6 May 2021 fuel spill.” The May spill was “the primary source” of the November 2021 spill that contaminated drinking water.

>> Korka “failed to ensure” compliance with requirements and procedures in installing a foam fire suppressant system that “resulted in the use and acceptance of PVC piping,” an unauthorized material that was a proximate cause of the November spill.

>> Kott “negligently failed to adequately deploy” a team and conduct an independent risk assessment in response to the November fuel leak, which “was actively spilling for approximately 34 hours.” A swift analysis could have identified the risks before the first reports of contamination. Kott also “negligently failed to notify the public” that the Red Hill well was secured, giving “some members of the public the impression that the Navy was not transparent in their reporting.”

This impression remains. The Navy would do well to take some lessons from Joint Task Force-Red Hill, which one year ago took control of the poorly maintained facility in order to defuel the tanks. The task force has been informing the public regularly on its progress, including the 253 repairs needed just to complete the job.

“What happened (with the Red Hill spills) was not acceptable and the Department of the Navy will continue to take every action to identify and remedy this issue,” Del Toro said in a news release. “Taking accountability is a step in restoring the trust in our relationship with the community.” Fair enough. But we can’t take the Navy at its word. There needs to be a full, independent and transparent investigation of Navy’s handling of the Red Hill disaster.