The Environmental Protection Agency is asking members of the Red Hill Community Representation Initiative to enter into mediation with the Navy as the military continues the shutdown process for its underground fuel storage facility.

During the CRI’s March meeting held Thursday night at ‘Olelo in Mapunapuna, Amy Miller, director of EPA Region 9, said the agency has invited the Navy and CRI to enter into mediation with an “EPA arranged mediator” with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

The CRI is made up of a mixture of local residents and activists along with people directly affected by the Red Hill water crisis — which began in November 2021 when fuel from the Navy’s bulk Red Hill fuel storage facility entered and contaminated the Navy’s Oahu water system, which serves 93,000 people.

The CRI was created as part of a federal consent order regarding the closure of Red Hill among the EPA, state Department of Health and military. Its formation came out of requests for community involvement in the defueling and shutdown process.

CRI Chair Marti Townsend told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser she believes “the EPA is appealing to the Navy’s desire to lock down the conversation on Red Hill. What I think they don’t realize is that the conversation is essential to healing the festering wounds of the lingering Red Hill water crisis.”

Meetings have often been contentious, with members of the CRI and from the community frequently accusing officials of withholding information and dodging questions. In January officials informed the CRI that they would not attend the January meeting because the December meeting “did not go well” and that they wanted to establish new “operating procedures and ground rules.”

Officials attended the February meeting, but in a media release Monday asserted that “following (Navy) and (Defense Logistics Agency) efforts to consult with the EPA and the elected community representatives throughout January and early February, the CRI meeting held on Feb. 15 did not live up to the (Navy)’s and DLA’s enduring commitment to interact with stakeholders in a safe and respectful information sharing forum.”

In a dueling statement released by the CRI, Townsend accused the Navy of attempting to “strong-arm the CRI,” calling it “a significant setback in the Navy’s stated mission to rebuild trust with the people of O‘ahu.”

During the Thursday meeting Miller said that “the EPA expects the Navy to continue to participate in CRI meetings as required by the 2023 Consent Order; it affirms CRI’s role as the host of these meetings. … However, we also recognize that the Navy is limited in what they’re able or required to share in this forum under the terms of the order. It is imperative that the CRI and Navy agree to a mutually agreed-upon set of ground rules for conducting these meetings so that they can continue to be productive.”

Throughout the meeting Thursday night, the deep differences were evident. Among them were concerns that despite continued reports of illnesses from people on the Navy water system, there is no formal advisory on drinking water on the Navy system. Maj. Mandy Feidnt, an Army officer who lived on Ford Island with her family when the crisis began and sits on the CRI, told officials there needs to be a “drinking water advisory to protect human health right now until you all figure out what the heck’s going on (with) that drinking water system.”

The DOH issued an advisory in November 2021 when the crisis began. The Navy initially insisted the water was safe until eventually admitting the system was contaminated. The advisory was lifted in March 2022 when the Navy and state DOH deemed the system safe after months of pumping it.

But many residents remained skeptical, and some — including those who have arrived since March 2022 — have continued reporting symptoms and seeing oily sheens on their water from the faucet. Prompted by requests by the CRI, the EPA began testing homes of people reporting symptoms. In December the EPA released a report after testing four homes. Three of them had traces of petroleum in the water, and in each case previous Navy testing had shown no traces.

In January an influx in complaints from residents on the Navy waterline prompted the Navy to extend its water monitoring programs for an additional year. The Navy has since assembled a “swarm team” of water experts to examine the water and committed to extending testing for an additional year.

During a March 7 meeting of the Red Hill Fuel Tank Advisory Committee, a DOH initiative, a member of the swarm team said detections of total petroleum hydrocarbons, or TPH, found in test samples throughout the past two years didn’t necessarily indicate the presence of petroleum. He asserted that nonpetroleum substances — like chemicals found in plastic — could trigger a positive test for TPH, and that those substances could be introduced in the lab itself, saying, “In a sense you could call them false positives.”

During the Thursday CRI meeting, members grilled Navy officials on the comments.

“I’m not sure why we’re investing so much time investigating the lab when we should be finding the cause — why are people getting sick?” said CRI Vice Chair Lacey Quintero. “That every time there’s a positive detection, it’s lab error, it just doesn’t sit right. It doesn’t make sense, and I don’t understand why we’re going down that route.”

“The laboratory method that is utilized, it’s not a drinking water method,” said Capt. James Sullivan, commander, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Hawaii. “As we all know, there should not be fuel in drinking water. So therefore, there was not a method developed for that specifically.”

Sullivan explained that “since it’s chlorinated water, it is causing these peaks to show up. And those peaks are due to a reaction in the lab and not due to the water. So that’s, that’s what the method and the hypothesis and all of the discussion is all centered around. How do you prove that all of those peaks that you’re seeing are, in fact, reactions that are occurring in the lab, and not lab errors? It’s just this, this method is not and was not designed for drinking water.”

EPA and DOH officials said preliminary data they have reviewed suggests that the Navy’s hypothesis is possible, but that they want to see more data to support it.

The CRI also asked federal officials about testing for potential “forever chemicals” associated with firefighting foam that has been used at Red Hill. Rear Adm. Marc Williams, deputy commander of the Navy’s Red Hill Closure Task Force, repeatedly answered questions about the chemicals with, “It’s not part of the (Administrative Consent Order); we will continue the discussions with EPA at the interagency level.”

After Williams answered five questions that way, David Henkin, a prominent local environmental attorney who represented the Sierra Club at the meeting, told the officer, “The Navy is trying to repair a relationship of trust with the public that you are duty-sworn to protect, and that relationship has been badly eroded. It doesn’t help the Navy or the public that you are duty- sworn to protect (for) you to stonewall and say that it is not within the scope.”

Henkin added, “If you have a commitment to be transparent, which is what you repeatedly say that you want to do, I hope that you can understand that if you’re a resident of this island and you rely on this water supply, you are concerned about all the various forms of contamination that the Navy has posed as threats to that water supply. Because unlike you, we do not rotate off of this island. We live here, and we rely on that water supply.”