 This is Kaui Lukas here. Kaui is my mainland every week here at 3 p.m. Last night was the first meeting of the Red Hill Fuel Tank public park and they did a different format last night and some people tongue-in-cheek called it a cocktail hour so let's just say that war fuel and water don't mix. With me to talk about it is one of the newer stars in the Sierra Club constellation, Jody Melinoski, who is the leader of the Oahu group. Welcome Jody. Hi Kaui, thanks for having me. So this is an issue that Sierra Club has been amazingly steadfast with. I think this is my fourth show on the Red Hill Fuel Tanks and thank God for Sierra Club. Thanks, I appreciate that. Because you guys are really sounding the alarm in all the right places. So tell us what's new. Well as you mentioned last night there was the public update meeting for Red Hill. This was a meeting that was hosted by the Navy, the Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency and it was a little bit different than the last public meeting that we had in October 2016. It was only this kind of cocktail hour poster board presentation without a formal presentation and group Q&A. So it was a little bit of a different format. I sort of liked the other one where there was a balance of that walk around and talk to the individuals. That was good. I will have some shots of that. But I really missed the more focused, directed and being able to hear other people. Was that sort of the, what did you? Absolutely, kind of disappointing that at a public meeting there wasn't that larger public forum to have that community group share. I think a lot of people have the same questions. So instead of having to go to individuals and talk over other people, it was very noisy last night. Kind of discouraged that kind of group learning and sharing. And my understanding was the Navy said that the reason why they formatted it last night as that sort of cocktail hour for two and a half hours instead of just one was because at the meeting in October 2016 not everybody got a chance to go up and ask their question. But then that makes me wonder why don't we just have more public meetings or allow for a better moderator of those meetings or better, you know, facilitate them so that everybody does have a chance to share because I think it is very valuable for the entire community to hear what other people are thinking in regards to the Red Hill Tang. So for those who aren't really familiar with this issue, I'm Sierra Club, one of your interns made a very nice video. Can you tell us who that was? Caitlin Rogers, she is a university student from the mainland, but she came in January to learn more about the environmental issues here. She was very interested in water, so we gave her a task of creating this wonderful film on Red Hill and we really think she did a great job. Okay, let's have a look at that. Why the water is important to me is because we need to drink water. It's not really rocket science. Aside from that first necessity, I use it to farm. I'm Anthony DeLuz and I'm a mahiay. This place is called Kaonohi. It's an Ili that is a part of a larger Ahupua of Kalawao and it's traditionally was Loikalo and we're keeping it that way. I'm trying to first and foremost restore this Aina in a traditional manner as much as possible. Keep as much of the practice and the production as traditional as possible. Red Hill is an important issue to me because there's tanks that are 200 feet tall sitting on top, one of our most important water resources for the island. A water source that big and important is not something that I'm willing to gamble. While with all the respect and the resource of fuel for our Navy and our Pacific Fleet, one of the largest underground storage facility tanks in the world, it's important that we also be cognizant of our water quality in that area. It's very impressive to see all the steps that they are taking both on technical level as well as a physical level to safeguard the quality of testing that they're doing. The fact that that location is so close to a big chunk of Hawaii's water supply is really a very very serious concern. I feel that 22 years is too long and that we can shorten that gap. 22 years to come up with a plan is a ridiculous proposition. I think it's also ridiculous that we're talking about a 20-year plan to figure out where the fuel has moved. We should take as many years as they built it, which is four years, and fix the problem within that time period. I think we should be doing immediate things right now in a huge way. We should be cleaning up right now. Why wait 20 years to find out, you know, if we should clean it up then? Clean it up now. This is an urgent problem and we need people to get involved now to help our public officials recognize their urgency in this issue. The time to get involved is now. The time to get active is right now. I would not be proud to be part of a generation that just kind of turned a blind eye on the most important resource the state has to follow. I know people are very busy and there's a lot of competing interests and it seems overwhelming sometimes to try to get involved in an issue so important as this. The reality is that if we don't get involved now we're going to have much harder problems to deal with in the future. I totally feel you because I'm busy all day every day with a family of three kids and a full-time farming. I know exactly how hard it is but what would be harder is surviving without water. The Sierra Club works hard to make things accessible including testifying and legislation. You can submit testimony any hour of the day in writing and it can be very very simple. Petitions, learning more about the issue, talking to your neighbors. There are a lot of things that you can do to get involved and to help us build a movement for urgent action to protect a lot of the water resources and it doesn't take a lot of time. We have power but if we stay silent we're not going to get anything changed. Without water there's no life really. It'll like over water's life. It makes it pretty clear why we're here talking about that. Really a good one. So you have some news for us that just came out this month. Would you talk about this letter from the EPA? So let's first frame the administrative order and consent which was signed in 2015 and the parties are the EPA, the Department of Health, the US Navy, the Defense Logistics Agency. They are who own the fuel in the tank so it's the four parties. And then the Board of Water Supply and the State of Hawaii are involved but not signatories on this so they're involved. So we've just had four days of meetings of those parties and the one thing that the facilitator guy who I met there, Joe McMahon, who has the thankless task of bringing everybody together, yes let's go Joe, let's make it happen, was he was talking about that there was a problem with data and you have brought a letter that addresses that exactly. Go for it. So the administrative order on consent is the 22-year plan that these four parties have agreed to as how best to manage and plan for the Red Hill tank. There's two, well there's many sections in that but section six and seven in September 2016 the EPA and DOH rejected the Navy's scope of work for section six and seven and what they did is provide interim goals for the Navy to follow and two of those were an existing data summary that was due in March of this year and a data gap analysis report that was due in April and I have this letter from the EPA and the State Department of Health that's dated June 7th 2017 to the Navy basically saying that and I'll read the letter it says the Navy continues to demonstrate insufficient understanding of the expertise and level of effort necessary to develop technical defensible environmental assessment and modeling deliverables required by the AOC and then it continues by saying the Navy does not appear to have the appropriate personnel directing this work. The Navy has spent almost two years on the environmental investigation and modeling aspects of the Red Hill AOC yet little additional information about the environmental conditions in the area has been collected so basically a slap on the wrist thank you guys need to do better step up your work. So I don't know about the conversations you had but the conversations I had and I spent at least 20 minutes talking to a fellow in the Navy who's an attorney but I didn't know he was a Navy attorney I know him from from paddling so we started off on that lovely ground and then sort of as I began to hear oh you know just the explanations that went on and on and on about these little details about following regulations and how we're going to do this and we have this regulation and that regulation and how this is all going to fit together but in looking at the reality of the situation which is that there's a quarter of a billion gallons of fuel over Oahu's aquifer that doesn't really care about the regulations that there's it's not right so the Sierra Club's main points that the AOC is deficient is one it's 22 years which is a long time by the time this plan is done the tanks will be nearly a hundred years old and they are located only a hundred feet over our primary drinking water aquifer also the AOC doesn't guarantee that the tanks are not going to leak again and there have been over 30 documented leaks since the Red Hill fuel tanks have been constructed so it's not unreasonable to assume that there will be other leaks in the future and the AOC does not guarantee that when there is a future leak that we can clean it up and we've seen from the January 2014 leak of 27,000 gallons that it has been extremely difficult to locate the fuel that leaked and clean it up based on the hydrology and the geology and just so much unknowns about Red Hill which begs the question should we have our tanks storing fuel over our water if we can't clean it up and we can't prevent them from leaking in the future well I can't imagine that there is any way that such a thing could be guaranteed um so uh it just seems like an exercise and rhetoric actually talking about it that way so what can what is is the Sierra Club suggesting that that we do as far as there's this elaborate um you know AOC process they have 22 years to come up with a solution but in the meantime we're not seeing anything so what what is what is the Sierra Club saying that we we can do well there they are evaluating the top six options for the tank upgrades that's going to be due in January 2018 but unfortunately none of these tank upgrades guarantee that there's not going to be any leaks the only way to guarantee that there will be no future leaks is to drain the tanks and not not have fuel there so that would be decommissioning the tanks and relocating the fuel yeah so we're we're going to take a break for a minute but come back and dig a little deeper okay we all play a role in keeping our community safe every day we move in and out of each other's busy lives it's easy to take for granted all the little moments that make up our every day some are good others not so much but that's life it's when something doesn't seem quite right that it's time to pay attention because only you know what's not supposed to be in your every day so protect your every day if you see something suspicious say something to local authorities living in this crazy world so far up in the confusion nothing is making sense welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland i'm kawaii lucas and with me today is jolly melanoski from the oahu group of the seara club so um we've been talking about the meeting last night um that was hosted by the navy the epa and the department state of Hawaii department of health and let's see some of those pictures because um it shows that um you had mentioned how loud it was and it was it was it was strikingly loud um it doesn't look i guess it doesn't really look like it from the picture but there were these huge fans above us that made a lot of noise and then um and this fellow here mark um man freddy man freddy who was the recipient of the letter that you just wrote us so he's the he's the guy he is the man um uh it's his job to uh head up this process so he's a 30 year navy guy um but he's been in Hawaii for for 12 years and he's going to stay here he's no longer in the military so i know that's been a problem then there's been change over so um how's the communication um that this year has the seara club had much communication with him yeah uh we during this past legislative session we did have a meeting um it was it was around the red hill bill which was sp 12 59 but we did have probably a three hour meeting with the navy and of course we do show up to the public meetings they keep tabs on what we're doing too so i'm sure they're watching yes i was yes well it's nice to be it's nice to be well known isn't it well the thing is how do we get beyond this how do we begin to get beyond the the the navy sending spies to seara club meetings they should at least come in in drag or something but to to to really change the the the conversation what do you think it's gonna take well we've seen from other areas and other public issues around water that what it really takes is grassroots activism we need to build a community movement to really create the political will and pressure that's necessary to ensure that we protect our groundwater and drinking water so it starts with just getting educated on the issue sharing this information with your neighbors um canvassing around your community joining us in petition signatures and it really can build up from this grassroots level to really um figure out a solution how do how can we speed up this process a little bit quicker and we have to put the pressure we have to get the pot spoiling to really make the change so uh seara club has been actually pounding the pavement right you guys have been getting out there and not just in the red hill area i've seen some of you you guys made some really nice little door hangers that are breaking this it's it's a ridiculously complicated issue in some sense and then it's really simple and others but um i thought you guys did a a good job in in uh winnowing down the information so where did you guys go hanging these doors the first place that we went to was the kalihi neighborhood where we did canvassing with the door hangers we're going to continue to do more so we need lots of help uh feet on the ground doing this we've uh we've been into many of the communities doing community meetings to educate residents about the issue um the aquifer that's underneath red hill serves residents and visitors from wanahlua to huaikai so a large chunk of the island there's a lot that needs to be explored and a lot of education that can be done within those communities okay so that's the overall game plan and you've also taken some concrete um legal maneuvers right didn't you um that you submitted a petition to the department of health like yeah so we're awaiting to hear a response from the department of health i think they have until monday to respond we uh sent them a formal petition uh basically saying that they need to upgrade their underground storage tank rules in 1992 the state legislature directed the department of health to adopt new rules on underground storage tanks by 1998 and the department of health needs to do that so uh we've submitted that formal petition we're waiting to hear their response are they going to make rules are they not going to make rules how long is it going to take etc since 1990 i just have to repeat that since 1998 that was when the rules were supposed to be made by the department of health yes well that was that well well well statue yeah um but it's still on the books so it's still good okay so uh is there um within that so on monday they have until monday to respond to seara clubs petition okay and um and anything so going out into the neighborhoods and letting people know that the navy is serious they are really serious they have put a lot of time and effort and money into this we see that we see that and i keep thinking how can it be worth it it'd be worth it for them but um we have some pictures of their of those uh uh boards that they had um so this is what you were talking about right the tank upgrades so they have these ideas that if you have a different kind of lining it'll be it'll be better um but that's still an awful lot of uh fuel sitting on top of the aquifer and one of the other things um that they had my favorite place i hung out there just because i like the energy was the alternatives did you have a chance to talk with them at all i did see the alternate site requirements i did ask the navy official who was there what are some of the places that they were considering what the timeline is for this report and of course it's all classified so i don't know how seriously they're considering relocating the fuel i think it's an afterthought their priority is maintaining red hill um they say that it's necessary for our national security and right now it doesn't seem like they're willing to give it up i had a chat with a guy who's with the defense logistics agency over there and actually we had a long chat and um uh he was really a technical guy and and um so he had some really interesting things to say uh one that um they're looking both of the fuel that's actually stored there is is a kind of kerosene evidently and um it's mostly used for it's not something you can put in your car so all these ideas like if we get a bombed or something and we can all use the fuel no no we can't um but it can be used to generate energy if the general at the time thinks that oahu that's a good use for it so there's there's this myth that they've been building that the that we need these right but what he said was interesting he said that they're trying to standardize the fuel in a way so that standard jet fuel that everybody uses um could be stored there and then they uh could be stored but wouldn't have to be stored there just could be stored and then they have these special additives he wouldn't tell me how much it was but i thought so even if i don't understand the chemistry to this somebody there is thinking about other ways of doing this that doesn't really have to do with the tanks up there and how can we support that you know um anyway he said that they weren't they were gonna announce in um august hopefully so that was one of those things right hopefully in august who um who gets to go and do the study so maybe we'll find out a little bit more yeah that would be great yeah so in the meantime i happen to um hear that you guys are also um on the eastern side of oahu um for another reason besides spreading awareness about the fuel tanks you want to talk a little bit about that this is something i've been hearing in neighborhood board meaning so talk about the trail trail work that um seara club is doing well the seara club has started kind of as a hiking organization we've been almost 50 years in we do a lot of service projects in hikes um trail access is a main issue i think we're experiencing now there are nine million tourists annually they are having an impact on our trails and so the seara club is looking into ways that we can better maintain our trails better educate our visitors and our hikers so that they know best practices there are several areas of interest i mean haiku stairs the stairways to heaven uh there's mono willy trail there's kuleo oh so there are several trails that we've seen uh increased in visitors and foot traffic in and it's it's a priority of our club to make sure that we can keep those trails open and keep them beautiful and maintain the native vegetation and the plants and the wildlife that are there but those haven't they've been closed uh is the stairway to heaven the stairway to heaven um currently there is a process going on with the board of water supply they own the stairs and uh hopefully we're not going to get them permanently shut down with the the proposal is to maybe remove the stairs and what we want to do is find a way that we can keep it open maybe transferring management of the stairs to a local nonprofit or someone who could better uh regulate how many people are going giving a permanent permitting system something some solution besides tearing down the stairs that would be so wonderful if we could get in place a system for regulating the number of people going i was at a uh kuleo oh uh neighborhood board meeting and i felt so sorry for the people who live at the at the trailhead they said that they get um uh 1300 visitors on on long weekends and that's that's just that's too much i know something that happened in the past as they closed mariners rich which was a trail that was adjacent to kuleo so there has been a lot of people funneling into kuleo trail and we've seen you know increased in in the amount of people who are going but the residents are concerned because they're taking a parking they're maybe trekking through their lawn leaving their old palla making a lot of noise so it's really about just being courteous when you're hiking being safe and well prepared and you know thinking about the residents and how how you're hiking is affecting other people and and hawaii because the main reason well i like to think that people come visit hawaii is just so beautiful and we want to be able to maintain that yes so um in our last two minutes um is there any other project that sierra club is involved in right now that you'd like to let us know about sure um the sierra club oahu group is very active at the city council level uh the sierra club is unique that we are an environmental nonprofit organization but we do focus on a wide variety of issues so climate change clean energy local food water security at red hill waste reduction so we're pretty active at the city council now focusing on several different bills uh that are circulating we recently just got the office of climate change sustainability and resiliency the first ever in the state fully funded so we're pretty excited about that and we're working on that's the the 100 resilient cities correct yes so you're going to be working somebody from the sierra club is going to be working with the office so um they are currently hiring for this office it's going to be five full-time employees um two of those employees one is going to be a energy project manager to work on getting the city to be more energy efficient and ultimately save the city a lot of money right um and uh also a coastal waterways project manager somebody to manage how we're gonna uh deal with our infrastructure in relations to sea level rise so long-term planning such important crucial work we're very happy hopeful that that some meaningful work will be done in this office and really looking forward to working with them well jody thank you so much for um coming to think tech and having a chat with us and getting us up to speed and and mostly thanks for the time you're not in the studio and are out there pounding the trails aloha thank you