Above photo: People wave signs in front of the Hawaiʻi State Capitol during a rally calling for the closure of the Navy’s Red Hill underground fuel storage facility near Pearl Harbor, Friday, Feb. 11, 2022, in Honolulu. AP Photo/Caleb Jones.
Honolulu, HI – A bill seeking to facilitate the cleanup of contamination from the Red Hill Fuel Facility, and further insulate the Hawaiʻi Commission on Water Resource Management from political favoritism and undue influence, has received another wave of widespread community support, as 46 community organizations urged Hawaiʻi legislators to ensure its passage before the end of the 2024 legislative session.
Read the letter here: 46 Organization Letter Supporting HB2690 HD2 SD1 Red Hill and Water Commission Bill
Representing medical, public health, labor, religious, agricultural, cultural, and environmental stakeholders, among others, the organizations submitted a joint letter to conference committee members on HB2690 HD2 SD1, emphasizing the importance of the bill and noting that:
For too long, politically connected special interests have impeded the public interest and the public trust in our water resources. This has led to dried out and fire-prone landscapes; farmers, communities, and watersheds deprived of adequate stream flow; and the contamination of Oʻahu’s once-pure sole source aquifer.
HB2690 HD2 SD1 provides a critical opportunity to finally turn things in the right direction for the protection, management, and fair distribution of our precious wai, free from political biases that would only undermine the sustainability of our islands and the security of our future generations.
Among its provisions, HB2690 HD2 SD1 would provide the Water Commission with the ability to hire its own attorney and choose its own Chairperson, who together hold significant sway over the Commission’s priorities and decisions, and who are currently both selected by and under the control of the Governor’s office.
The bill would also ensure that Commission staff – working under a proposed “executive director” – would be protected from arbitrary disciplinary actions and potential acts of reprisal, concerns raised after the still-unexplained “reassignment” and eventual departure of accomplished former water deputy Kaleo Manuel following the Maui wildfires last August.
In addition, the measure would establish dedicated commission staff and a special fund to receive federal monies for the remediation of what may be up to 2 million gallons of jet fuel and other contaminants released from the U.S. Navy’s Red Hill Facility over the last 80 years. Many have attributed the underlying cause of this contamination, including the current Oʻahu water crisis resulting from a 19,000 gallon fuel spill in November of 2021, to government inaction arising from political deference to the U.S. Department of Defense.
“The crisis at Kapūkakī, whose victims are still suffering to this day; the desertification and destruction of Lahaina; the continued water hoarding and waste by former plantation interests and their successors: these are all conditions resulting from the abdication of our public trust, and the water code, to appease special interests with political connections,” said Wayne Tanaka, Chapter Director for the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi. “We need a water commission that is free to do its job and uphold the rights and needs of the public in our water resources – and prevent our kids and future generations from inheriting the kinds of water crises we are now experiencing.”
The letter submitted by the organizations today has added even more weight to the already voluminous community support that has been expressed for the bill.
Over 400 pages of written testimony, nearly exclusively in support, was submitted for HB2690 HD2 SD1 at its last hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees. Only two testifiers opposed: the Board of Land and Natural Resources Chair Dawn Chang and Attorney General Anne Lopez, whose control over the Water Commission would be curtailed by the proposed legislation.
Last week, both the BLNR and the Attorney General were rebuked in a stinging opinion by the Hawai‘i Supreme Court, which found that they had “tried to leverage the most horrific event in state history” by submitting and refusing to withdraw false accusations regarding a judge’s water protections for East Maui streams, the day after the Lahaina fire. The court found that their filed statements, seeking to allow more stream water to be diverted by former plantation-turned-real estate investment trust Alexander & Baldwin, were so “manifestly and palpably without merit, so as to indicate bad faith.”
For Marti Townsend, longtime water advocate and former director of the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, the supreme court ruling was just another illustration of why the Water Commission needs the political insulation afforded by HB2690 HD2 SD1. “From the interference of the Attorney General in the Waiāhole case, to the decades-long foot dragging in implementing legally required stream protections in East Maui, to the bald-faced lies about a lack of water for firefighting on Maui, powerful special interests have pulled political strings to override the public interest for far too long,” said Townsend.
Two dozen Maui students, including from Lahaina, have also repeatedly traveled to the state capitol in Honolulu, to ask legislators for their support on the measure.
And in an earlier hearing on HB2690 HD2 SD1, Honolulu Board of Water Supply Chief Engineer Ernest Lau also recognized the need to give the Water Commission the same kind of political independence that had been long established for the Board of Water Supply – a move that “100 years from now, [they’re] gonna look back and say, ‘That was the right decision to make for the good of our community.’”
In his testimony, Lau recognized that his own advocacy around Red Hill was only possible due to the independence of the BWS, reflecting how “I can look back 10 years ago, and if I was not part of a semi autonomous agency that was independent of – as much as possible – politics, that I couldn’t have taken the hard stand I did on Red Hill for our community, to protect our wai.”
Despite this long history of support, legislative insiders have suggested that House conferees are hesitant to pass the bill, citing fears of a Governor veto and the recent League of Women Voters case regarding “gut and replace” legislation.
“Our testimony makes clear that this bill is in a completely different league from the bill in League of Women Voters,” remarked Tanaka. “Nothing has been ‘gutted’ – the original contents are still there – and anyone who says that political interference isn’t germane to ensuring the cleanup of Red Hill or defending our public trust simply hasn’t been paying attention to what’s gone on for the last three decades.”
“If Governor Green in inclined to veto the bill, then let it be on him,” said Janice Toma Shiira of the Shimanchu Wai Protectors, an Okinawan advocacy group that has long advocated for the shutdown of the Red Hill Facility and cleanup of Kapūkakī. “Our representatives need to pass this measure and send a clear message to the community: enough is enough, we will no longer let special interests dictate what happens to our wai and our future.”