{"id":202788,"date":"2022-01-10T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=202788"},"modified":"2022-01-08T04:41:16","modified_gmt":"2022-01-08T04:41:16","slug":"the-us-military-is-polluting-hawaiis-water-supply-and-denying-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/01\/the-us-military-is-polluting-hawaiis-water-supply-and-denying-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Military Is Polluting Hawaii\u2019s Water Supply \u2013 and Denying It"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Hawaiian governor issued an emergency order to de-fuel the Red Hill Facility. The US Navy has enlisted top lawyers to make sure its 600m liters of petroleum stay perched above our water supply.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A tunnel inside the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility in Pearl Harbor. The state of Hawaii says a laboratory has detected petroleum product in a water sample from a nearby elementary school.\u00a0 Photograph: Shannon Haney\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

4 Jan 2022 – <\/em>This [fuel facility] is not the eighth wonder of the world. It is Frankenstein\u2019s monster. And we have to kill it before it kills us.\u201d This is the plea from Marti Townsend, one of more than 1,000 Hawai\u2019i residents<\/a> urging the Honolulu City Council to take action to protect our island\u2019s most important resource: fresh, clean water.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frankenstein\u2019s monster is the US Navy\u2019s Red Hill Fuel Storage Facility<\/a>: a massive underground \u201cfarm\u201d of 18-million liter fuel tanks and pipes just 100 feet above metropolitan O\u2019ahu. Its construction began before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Since then, it has leaked<\/a> over 180,000 gallons of petroleum into the groundwater aquifer that provides drinking water for over 400,000 residents and visitors from H\u0101lawa to Hawai\u02bbi Kai.<\/p>\n

Despite its longstanding threat to water systems, this decrepit facility has been in use until operations were \u201cpaused\u201d in late November, after hundreds of military families<\/a> reported rashes, headaches, nausea, vomiting \u2013 symptoms of petroleum poisoning.<\/p>\n

The Navy denied these facts for days. \u201cWe have no immediate indication that the water is unsafe to drink,\u201d their representatives said, even after the Navy had quietly shut down its own drinking water well. Pearl Harbor\u2019s commander even told our community<\/a> \u2013 of sick families, pregnant women and nursing moms \u2013 that \u201cmy staff and I are drinking the water on base.\u201d Hawai\u2018i\u2019s Health Department finally stepped in, advising Navy water system users not to drink their tap water.<\/p>\n

Navy officials still refuse to acknowledge<\/a> that this is a crisis. It views the Governor\u2019s emergency order to de-fuel the Red Hill Facility as a mere \u201crequest,\u201d<\/a> and has enlisted top Navy lawyers to make sure its 600m liters of petroleum stay perched above our water supply.<\/p>\n

A military spouse in our legal proceedings this week sobbed as she described<\/a> the family dog rejecting its water dish for days. Another mother teared up as she remembered her infant child vomiting constantly after the Navy advised that her water was safe (it wasn\u2019t<\/a>); their own beloved and once-healthy dog had to be put down, after thousands of dollars could not diagnose its sudden debilitating illness.<\/p>\n

The Navy\u2019s Assistant Secretary, in his subsequent remote testimony<\/a> from the nation\u2019s capital, even had the gall to complain that he had missed that night\u2019s weekly American football game.<\/p>\n

The injustice of the Red Hill tragedy reflects the impunity of the US military \u2013 not only in its endless wars in the Middle East, but right here in Hawai\u2019i. A fraction of the US\u2019s $768bn defense budget<\/a> could help boost our ailing and inequitable healthcare system<\/a>, provide free college for all<\/a>, or make the investments needed to halve our carbon emissions<\/a> and help keep entire countries from heartbreaking devastation<\/a>. Yet every year our politicians pour ever more taxpayer dollars into the planet\u2019s most expensive, and deadly, machine.<\/p>\n

Not even Hawai\u2018i\u2019s federal delegation has been to stand up to this mighty power. Their long-due request<\/a> to the US federal government has been milquetoast: we need more studies, and we need to fix some pipes. Only Representative Kai Kahele, the only Hawai\u2018i delegate with military experience, has acknowledged that the facility must be defueled<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden, has yet to even acknowledge the situation.<\/p>\n

Frankenstein\u2019s monster is not just the facility: it is the larger US military machine. America\u2019s elected leaders are unable and unwilling to rein in this monster that consumes ever more of the country\u2019s resources as it poisons our atmosphere<\/a> and now, our island\u2019s water. These leaders dare to call themselves representatives of the people while allegedly lying under oath<\/a>, letting military families be poisoned<\/a>, and sacrificing entire islands<\/a> of US citizens.<\/p>\n

While America\u2019s Frankenstein may consume its creator, the people of Hawai\u2018i will resist it. We think about the ones we love<\/a>, our children and grandchildren, and what we would do to protect them from harm. Our weapons are not guns and ships but words, signs, songs, and aloha \u02bb\u0101ina<\/em>, love for our home, for each other. Native Hawaiians, whose ancestors have always understood the importance of <\/a>wai<\/a><\/em>,<\/a> of water, who have fought and died and won against the US Navy before<\/a>, are now leading the fight<\/a> to fix a mess they had no hand in making.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory will remember the people that stood up,\u201d Dr Kamanamaikalani Beamer recently told a crowd of several hundred at the steps of Hawai\u2018i\u2019s capitol, by the statue of Hawai\u2018i\u2019s last queen, herself unlawfully deposed<\/a> by the US Navy. \u201cWe will regain control and authority over our resources to do what is pono (just) because we must preserve them for the generations to come. There are more battles on this issue. We\u2019re not making suggestions to the military. We are making demands.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Wayna Tanaka is Director for the Sierra Club of Hawai\u2019i<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Jan 2022 – The Hawaiian governor issued an emergency order to de-fuel the Red Hill Facility. The US Navy has enlisted top lawyers to make sure its 600m liters of petroleum stay perched above our water supply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":202789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1309,897,112,894,1102,95,2533,70,1685,1192],"class_list":["post-202788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","tag-hawaii","tag-pacific-islands","tag-pentagon","tag-pollution","tag-public-health","tag-us-military","tag-us-navy","tag-usa","tag-water","tag-water-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}