“Shut down those tanks”: anger grows in Hawaii after U.S. Navy fuel site contaminates water

The United States Navy is facing growing calls to permanently shut down one of their fuel storage facilities in Hawaii after a petroleum leak contaminated the water supply that serves over 90,000 families around the naval base of Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu. The storage site, called the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, has long been protested by environmental activists in part because of its location just 100 feet above the primary groundwater aquifer for Honolulu and the rest of Oahu. We speak with two Native Hawaiian guests: civil rights lawyer Camille Kalama and Kamanamaikalani Beamer, a former commissioner of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management. “This is the most critical threat that we’ve ever had to our groundwater resources,” says Beamer. “The Navy assured us and promised our state Water Resource Management Commission that this would never happen, and yet here we are.”