Above photo: Keya Rivera/Courthouse News.
Honolulu, Hawai’i – The Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi executive director Wayne Chung Tanaka today issued the following statement regarding the adoption of Honolulu City Council Resolution 24-216, FD1 on Wednesday, September 4:
“The Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi is deeply grateful to the Honolulu City Council for Wednesday’s passage of Resolution 24-216, FD1, urging the Navy to heed the calls of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply and the Red Hill Community Representation Initiative for data needed to help keep our drinking water system safe from potentially catastrophic contamination.
To be clear: the City Councilʻs no-nonsense call for more frequent and reliable data gathering and sharing by the U.S. Navy will be absolutely critical to tracking a contamination plume of approximately 200,000 to 2 million gallons of fuel, forever chemicals, and other hazardous substances that the Red Hill Facility has released since World War II. These contaminants may now pose a threat to Oʻahu’s people and ʻāina for generations into the future, and such data will be critical to mitigating or preventing the devastating harms that could arise, should the plume migrate to yet another municipal well or other water source in the near or distant future.
The Sierra Club also expresses its heartfelt gratitude to the many community members who voiced their support for this resolution, including representatives from the Board of Water Supply (BWS) and the all-volunteer Red Hill Community Representation Initiative (CRI). Special thanks to BWS Chair Nāʻālehu Anthony and Chief Engineer Ernie Lau, as well as CRI members Marti Townsend, Healani Sonoda-Pale, Melodie Aduja, Mialisa Otis, and ʻIlima DeCosta, for their oral presentations to our council members and for their tireless work to protect our people and wai.
We urge the Hawaiʻi Congressional Delegation, Hawaiʻi’s Governor, and the Hawaiʻi Department of Health to demonstrate the same precautionary, proactive, and common-sense leadership as our City elected officials, and to use all authorities and connections at their disposal to hold the Navy accountable for the poisoning of Oʻahu’s life-giving waters – and to prevent even greater harms from befalling our island, our residents, and our ways of life.
E ola i ka wai.”