 Welcome to Hawai'i is my mainland. I'm Kaui Lucas. It must be Friday at 3 p.m. Hawai'ian Standard Time. Today for an energetic debrief is the very dynamic director of Hawai'i's Sierra Club, Marty Townsend. And the Sierra Club of Hawai'i worked really hard to raise awareness around a meeting that happened last night. It was great at Moanalua Middle School. And did you go to Moanalua Middle School? I went to Moanalua High School. High School, I am to be it. Okay. Well, you still get bragging rights. Thanks. Gold, mighty many. And it turns out that's actually a really great place to have a meeting. Who would have thought? Yeah. And this is the second one. What I, the first one that that was just a Sierra Club meeting about a month ago. So, so there's been a series of meetings. So there was a, you know, 27,000 gallon leak of fuel in January 2014. Since then there have been a series of public meetings with the Navy Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Health as well as the Board of Water Supply and the Sierra Club. So, let's see, there were meetings in June of 2015 and then in October that were both hosted by the Navy with the EPA and Department of Health. In June of 2016, the Board of Water Supply hosted a meeting. And in August of 2015, 2016 on the Sierra Club hosted a meeting. And all of these were geared towards trying to get more understanding about the agreement that was reached between the Navy, the EPA and the Department of Health for addressing the jet fuel storage facility at Red Hill. This facility is ginormous. It's holding, there are 15 tanks out of 20 are in operation, each holding 12.5 million gallons of fuel. 100 feet above our drinking water aquifer. And while currently our drinking water is not contaminated, the concern is that the history of leaks at this facility are just a warning sign, a signal that we could seriously jeopardize the quality of our water if anything significant and serious happened. So last night we had a meeting that was supposed to be the one-year anniversary check-in of with the Navy, EPA and Department of Health. And yeah, it was a very good turnout. I think people were probably not fully satisfied with the answers to their questions. But I, you know, we as a whole are heartened to see that people are engaged and concerned about this issue. I mean that is a prerequisite to ensuring that our water is protected. We are grateful to have someone like Ernest Lau at the Board of Water Supply to provide, he was wonderful, provide information and context and perspective and expertise in this area. We were grateful to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health. They actually rejected the Navy's current proposal for their their work plan for Red Hill because it's just basically inadequate. And I think that has helped to build some public confidence that we're going to ultimately end up with a plan that protects Red Hill, hopefully, or protects our water supply. But the concern is that it's just taking way too long. I mean here we are where the spill, the last spill happened in 2014. Here we are in October 2016 and we're still talking about scoping at this point. Like we have had very little action if any. They've installed a few new monitoring wells which is great, but there's been no cleanup. They haven't made any effort to identify where the fuel is that spilled. And they don't have any plans for figuring how to clean it up and that's just not acceptable. There is, it used to be a EPA super fund up there that they supposedly handled back in the 80s I guess. But I want to, I loved the analogy that Ernie did on how much fuel this really is. He talked about Aloha Stadium. If you go goal line to goal line, sideline to sideline, that one million gallons is three feet deep and that so that whole facility would be that football field more than 500 feet tall, which is more than the first wine bank building downtown. So that's the fuel sitting above the ground water. Right. I thought that was fabulous because it's just, it's so huge. It's kind of hard to take in. You know, like what is this? Yeah. Yeah. And the concern really is that we don't see the urgency needed to ensure that we aren't on the cusp of a major catastrophe. These tanks are 70 years old. I mean, I mean, they put them in the context. These tanks were installed in 1940s. This is 1940 steel that has been corroding. It has no protection against corrosion. There is no tank with inside of a tank construction, which is what is standard now. And as, you know, one of the speakers representative, Stephen pointed out, if proposed today, these tanks would not be allowed to be built. You can't, you would not be able to do what they did to our Red Hill today. And the fact that they are trying to get this facility to continue indefinitely may not be a reasonable expectation. There were a lot of, in addition to Representative Thelans and Senator Thelans, there were a lot, there were a lot of public officials there. Can you want to do a little? So, it's both Representative Thelans and Senator Laura Thelans. There was also Council Members, Council Member Fukunaga, Council Member Brian Elefante. You had Senators, like Senator Wakai was there, Senator Nishihara, Senator Harimoto. Yeah. And you had representatives there, Representative Ishiama, Representative Erin Johansson. So, the area elected officials as well as elected officials, not from the area, I mean, Gil Riviere was there too. They recognized the importance of this issue. And I really appreciated that a majority of them stayed till the end, like they sat there and listened to all the information that was given. They heard the questions, they were taking notes, they participated in the process and asked their own questions. I think that really demonstrates a commitment to this issue that you don't see in other situations and it was really heartening. And you said that you got, or that also Tulsi Gabbard has expressed her, she wasn't at the meeting, but... Actually, she did come to the meeting for a short period, but we, you know, she tried to, you know, see there's opportunity to ask her own questions, but they had already taken away the sign and it was late in the evening. But she did come in and, you know, look at all the materials and, you know, talk to some of the community leaders who are concerned about this issue. So, yeah, and Representative Gabbard has been an early advocate for, you know, the precautionary principle and taking the most protective approaches to the management of this Red Hill, the Yule facility. So we really appreciate her leadership on this issue. So it felt like there was a really healthy mix of elected officials and area representatives. I'm just taking this kind of from the questions who ask questions. And then, you know, sort of the core activists, environmentalist groups, which are always so wonderful and keep people honest around here or do their best. Yeah. So the issues around the things that don't work, that was section six and seven that they got into, they got into that a little bit. But it was interesting to me that they took, they being the US Navy, took a lot of time to explain what went wrong for that one incident in 2014 that you talked about the tank number five, the infamous tank number five, which had just been fixed and then leaked. And they totally blame it on the contractor that the contractor did poor welding and, you know, the only responsibility of the Navy seems willing to accept is that they didn't look over that contractor's shoulder enough. But, you know, they're, I mean, I question whether this is a doable job. Like you gave the contractor this job to keep the 70 year old tank from leaking. And maybe that's not possible. I mean, you have to think about it like they, you know, when I think back to 2014, and you know, as the information was coming out about this bill, it was like, well, there's five holes. We looked again, there's 15 holes. Okay, now we're finding like 70 anomalies. Like, you know, it came out that there was actually quite a bit wrong with that tank. And there are you know, five other tanks, maybe more that haven't been recently inspected. And I mean, that's the problem is that these small chronic leaks are hard to detect. And we don't you know, the thing and once you detect them, that means they're already in the environment. So it's too late. Like what we really want is a leak proof system. And that's like the basic minimum expectation. So you asked about the the double lining the tanks and you didn't get too, too, too much of a straight answer on that one. Yeah, so if you were to install an underground storage tank for fuel today, the requirement is what's called tank in a tank construction double walling. And the intent behind that is to prevent the fuel being stored from getting out of the environment, which, you know, serves both interests, right. And but these tanks built in the 1940s, built in the field, like field constructed. So I mean, just so people understand what that means, that means they dug a gigantic hole that knows what they pulled it. Yeah, blasted, which means that the rock under the basalt underneath it has as fractured, right? Then they poured concrete in. And then they welded little squares of steel all the way around the inside of it. And surprise, surprise 70 years later, the steel is starting to give corrosion over time. It's irreversible, you can't and you can't stop it. And and that's the situation that that we're confronting. And so yeah, I think it's just we want to make sure that double wall construction is is fully analyzed at this point at this stage in the process, they have not fully analyzed the option of double wall construction. And they haven't analyzed the option of relocating the fuel storage facility to some other place. And they need to look at both of those alternatives to be able to really make an informed decision. The other interesting thing that we learned from last night's meeting was that, according to the Navy, money is no object. It doesn't matter how much it costs, they are going to make it happen. And I think we should hold them to that. I don't want to hear that this is too expensive is the reason why they aren't going to ensure that these tanks don't leak. Where the one place I did hear the money come into play was when and we'll do a video video that later they were asked about. Oh, Gary Gil said, Well, what if you don't use all the tanks? You know, and then they gave that we'll show that clip later. But they said that they're about they're about to spend $35 million on refurbishing the five tanks, the five tanks that haven't been refurbished in a while. They didn't mention that some of them hadn't ever hadn't ever been in 73 years. So anyway, you know, let's just take a little break right now. And then we'll come back and watch that video and talk some more. Hi, I'm Stacy Hayashi, and you can catch me on Mondays at 11 on Think Tech Hawaii. Stacy to the rescue. See you then. Aloha, everybody. My name is Mark Shklav. I'd like you to join me for my program, Law Across the Sea on ThinkTechHawaii.com. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart, Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. Thanks for watching Think Tech this summer. We have a lot of terrific shows of great importance. And I hope you'll watch my show too every Tuesday at noon as we address sustainability issues for Hawaii. They're really pertinent as the World Conservation Congress approaches in September and the World Youth Congress that's focusing on sustainability next year as well. Have a great summer and tune in at noon every Tuesday. Welcome back to Hawaii is my name. I'm Kami Lucas, and with me today is Marty Downsend of Hawaii Sierra Club. And last night we were at the Moanalua Middle School where there was a meeting on the Red Hill fuel tanks. And to give you a taste of what that meeting was like, we have a clip from the question and answer session that happened after the presentation. I think people are here concerned about the risk. Even if we hear that the water it's safe to be able to walk tomorrow, or about this kind of struggle. The only way to reduce that risk to zero is to do away with the Red Hill. Well, so we have a question about the question. Short of reducing that risk to zero, the game here really is how do you reduce it to as much as is feasible or practical? We could cut the risk in half. If we were to reduce the number of tanks currently holding fuel in half. Currently, there are 20 tanks. If I'm wrong, I believe there are 15 that are filled. Going by your own analysis, what I heard that five of those 15 have actually been upgraded. That means 10 tanks are filled now that have not been upgraded. So that's a big risk. Question to reduce the risk, can the Navy reduce the number of tanks that are currently filled with gas? Second time into that timing is timing. One thing people are concerned about is it takes 20 years to get to this end of the AOC system. What about 10 years? If we reduce the number of tanks in service by half, we can cut 20 years to 10. That would be a suggestion like you do. Consider an as to trust. Can we trust the results of all the contractors and oversight transparency is important? Can we as we take these samples from the monitoring wells, take a split sample, have the Navy tested, have the EPA and the DOH testing and let the board of water supply test. Okay, so we've got a triple head over there. So I'm going to take at least one and a half needs to know which is the other one. So the question was simple math. You have cut the capacity of half, you cut the risk of half assuming that the risk to failure ratio is clear failure path. And we won't discuss that piece of the rules to submit. You can do that. It makes sense logically. But the question is, and I talked about this earlier, there is a reason why Red Hill is here, why we have the amount of stuff in there. It is not an arbitrary amount of petroleum. I can't talk to specific because that is classified. But what I can't say is, we do not arbitrarily have fuel in the mountain. I will tell you this, we are certainly not hoarding fuel in the mountain, just to have it there. So yes, we could cut the risk in half. If we cut half of the capacity out mathematically, but the question is, but the concern is, we have to determine from a bigger perspective what we need to have here for Red Hill to exist. Because at some point, the reason for existing and the risk mitigation will counteract each other. So that's why I talked about this earlier. Part of the process here, and this is above, I mean, this is above us here from the native perspective is the wide Red Hill and how much it takes to do that. Okay, so I don't want to confuse anyone here on this. So that there is a reason for it. And we have the amount of fuel in the mountain based on the reasons that I laid out. So we were just to arbitrarily cut that at half. The question would be, would Red Hill still serve the purpose that it's intended to do because it's here? So I wanted to add a little bit to that and give a little more perspective. We're studying the raise proposed by Red Hill. I'm not sure if reducing the number of tanks in half would reduce risk in half. I think the answer is probably not. So as you can see, it was it was a lively bunch in an animated discourse. So at some point, there is a point of diminishing returns for the Navy. But we didn't they were very cagey about what that point was. I'll tell you the point of diminishing return for me as a water drinker is when they leak when the tanks leak again. What we've learned from the Navy's publishing of reports, the historic leak information that since the tanks were built, there have been 40 leaks. And as far as we can tell, none of it has been cleaned up. It's not so much that the 40 leaks are a sign that our waters contaminated, but more that this is a chronic long standing problem, which they did not. They they contradicted. I mean, that they tried to they tried to be transparent and talked much to that subject. But and I was good that they are opening themselves to this process. But the guy said at a one event, I said, there's been two events. And then when I asked him about it, and they said two, and the other one was only six gallons. Yeah, since 1988. But, you know, the entire history of the facility. And this is only reported leaks. You know, there's other evidence like that circumstantial evidence that indicates there could have been other leaks in which we see spikes in monitoring data, for example. So of course, the course samples that show that there have been leaks from every all of the 20 tanks. So I think it's just it's bad public policy to store your fuel 100 feet above your drinking water. And it's in the Nate as much as Navy's interest to ensure that they don't lose fuel, as it is in you know, humanity's interest to ensure that we don't lose water. And if the Navy really considers this place to be strategic and plans to use it into, you know, indefinitely into the future because of the Pacific pivot, then they need to invest in it and make it top notch, you know, 21st century technology. And if they can't afford that, then they need to retire these tanks and store the fuel elsewhere. I just just common sense is you don't you don't do this. And I think it's very gracious of you to give them and out on this. But I actually I think it's unconscionable and that there's there's no there's no reason for this. And I think the rejection letter that the Navy got just further demonstrates that the Navy's approach to Red Hill is is insufficient. And, you know, the unified position that you see coming from regulators, from the community, and from elected officials is that the status quo at Red Hill is not acceptable. You have to fundamentally change what's happening there in order to proceed. And the first thing first on my list is to clean up the spill that's already out there. And then from there, they really need to get very good at understanding the soil around the tanks. They also need to be able to understand the flow of water. We don't know exactly where the water goes underground. And there's no way you can model, you know, what you don't know. Yeah, you can't model what you don't know. The likelihood of contamination is unknown. And the EPA rejection letter basically said that the the Navy's relying on assumptions and speculation to, you know, assess the risk of the jet fuel being stored here. And we need some far more definite than assumptions and speculation. They were pretty good at playing to the audience. In some regards, I thought there was amusing, somebody asked, you know, how many days of fuel would it would that fuel storage facility provide Oahu in the case of a disaster? And I thought, Oh, that's such a sweet question as if they would. Yeah, it's jet fuel. It's not like we're driving our cars with it. It's not going to serve the residents of Oahu. But they didn't mention that. No, they've not mentioned that. Yeah, they told me, Well, you and I could sit down for an hour and we could figure that out. Theoretically. Yeah. Okay. I did hear one positive thing in a private conversation. Man from the Defense Logistics Agency said, I said, I specifically asked about the alternatives they had in the they in this information corral. So when you walked into the cafeteria, there was a large open space and around the space were these poster poster boards. And it was a very interesting way of organizing a meeting. And one of the poster boards was on alternative sites. And so I asked him so so what and that poster board had all these things like it had to be off the grid, gravity fed, and all this stuff. And I said, Well, who made that list? And he said, Well, those are just things that the present facility has that we like, sort of the the the capacity, the fact that they don't have to use energy to access the fuel because it's gravity fed, it can just come down. I said, Yeah, but you got to pump it up there. That takes energy. Detail, detail. Anyway, but I did like the idea that they were talking off the grid. Anyway, so there were all these, these amusing anecdotes. But what he said that was very interesting was that that Board of Water Supply, EPA, Department of Health, other stakeholders are the ones who are invited to make the list of their wish list on alternative sites. And that is one of the steps that step number eight. So we have six and seven have been rejected. But that is in step number eight. And I said, Well, do we have to wait till six and seven have been hashed out? And he said, No, that they're all they're going forward on all of them. So that is a really good thing. Okay, so let's let's be thinking. Let's make our wish list. And one of the things the EPA made a point of saying last night is that they are open to our comments 24 seven and I quote. And so I encourage everyone to email the EPA directly with their wish list for this facility. Their email address is redhill, R-E-D-H-I-L-L at EPA.gov, EPA.gov. And yeah, I think we just need to take them up on the invitation and let them know what our minimum expectations are. For me, and for the Sierra Club, it's that these tanks will never leak again. And that all of that fuel that's been released has cleaned up. If you can't meet those minimum requirements, then we're not even going to be talking about continuing to store fuel there. I mean, this we their strategic necessity and advantage cannot trump the safety of our water. Bottom line. That is the bottom line. Yeah, and it really would make a wonderful World War Two Memorial and historic site. That was my my little contribution last night. I didn't come off quite the way I wanted to. But the the point is that it really could be a win for them, the site. And it is and it's one of the nine engineering marvels of the world. And there's all kinds of wonderful things about it, except it shouldn't be holding fuel. I think, you know, there is a point at which you get diminishing returns on relying on technology. And as amazing of an engineering feat as the Red Hill tanks might be, we saw last night at the meeting what happens when you over rely on technology that isn't fully tested. I mean, the Navy itself had spent all of this time and effort on some kind of propaganda video and really wanted the group to see it. And we wasted a good 10 minutes trying to get them to show it. And the technology between the Wi-Fi connection and the DVD, it just didn't come off at all. And they had to apologize profusely. And, you know, in this situation, it's okay to apologize for wasting our time. But, you know, it's not okay to apologize for contaminating our water. It's a brilliant example, Marty, because they had I'm not sure how many people on their team in the room and the guy said, okay, so who has the disk? Anybody? Thank you so much, Marty. This story will be continuing. Yes. Yes. So we're hoping that the the EPA will transition to quarterly meetings on this issue. I think what we learned last night also is that an annual check-in is definitely not enough. People have a lot to say and they have a lot of questions and we need to have more engagement. All right. Keep on it, Marty. Thank you. Hello.