Hawaiʻi lawmakers are calling on the Navy to decommission the Red Hill underground fuel tanks.
A letter sent to the military signed by House members this week comes on the heels of Gov. David Ige’s order demanding the Navy suspend operations to reduce the risk to our aquifer.
Speaker of the House Scott Saiki said Ige needs to now bring all of the affected parties together to ensure a common strategy and approach to dealing with the crisis.
"I think what's happening now, unfortunately, is that different people are acting on their own. And that's to be expected, but at some point, everybody has to be brought together because we need to solve this together," Saiki told The Conversation.
State Rep. Aaron Johanson, whose district includes affected areas like Red Hill, Aliamanu and Foster Village, said coordination efforts need to be improved.
"This situation needs to be approached in a proactive manner. A proactive manner means a whole lot of collaboration, a whole lot of data sharing, a whole lot of the evidence from samples and tests, etc," Johanson said. "That, quite frankly, that has been just completely lacking. And unfortunately, nothing exposes that more than a crisis."
"But I still see that same sort of, sometimes unilaterally acting, and then the Board of Water Supply and the Department of Health are left to sort of catch up or they read it in the news for themselves. That's unacceptable," Johanson told The Conversation.
Rep. Linda Ichiyama echoed their sentiments, saying the Hawaiʻi health department having to send a letter to the Navy to obtain test results and other information is evidence of a breakdown in communication.
"The Navy should be producing it already and it should be coming over in real-time," Ichiyama said. "Most of my district is on the Board of Water Supply system, thankfully. But I think everybody's main concern is: what happens if any of the fuel somehow travels through the Halawa Shaft? And what implications does that have for the rest of Oʻahu?"
Saiki said that if the federal government and the military believe Hawaiʻi plays a vital role in national security, then it needs to make some hard decisions about how it wants to handle the Red Hill situation.
Speaker of the House Scott Saiki, and Reps. Linda Uchiyama and Aaron Johanson appeared on The Conversation on Dec. 7, 2021.
