Aia i hea ka wai a Kāne?

“Three Small Holes”: The 2014 Spill

The recent history of the Red Hill crisis began in January 2014, when twenty-seven thousand gallons of jet fuel leaked from the newly repaired Tank 5. The culprit: three small holes. Despite a history of chronic leaks, this was the first time that a fuel-release incident was publicly reported. It sparked widespread concern from residents.

Grassroots efforts to close Red Hill began in 2014, with the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi leading litigation, education, and organizing efforts on Red Hill. The Sierra Club has a checkered history with racism. Its founder, John Muir, disparaged Black and Indigenous peoples and initiated the preservation model of “wilderness” without people. Many of the organization’s earliest leaders were notorious proponents of eugenics.76 Unlike the national organization, which has only recently begun to confront its racist past, the Sierra Club chapters in Hawaiʻi have been engaged in environmental justice campaigns with Kanaka ʻŌiwi and people of color, such as efforts to protect Mauna a Wākea, water-restoration cases on Maui, and the campaign to shut down Red Hill. Despite a growing chorus demanding that Red Hill be permanently shut down, the navy, the chamber of commerce, and powerful politicians killed numerous attempts to legislate stronger regulations for the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility, according to Marti Townsend, an attorney with Earthjustice and the former executive director of the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi.77

Instead, an administrative order on consent (AOC) was initiated in 2014. The AOC, which includes the navy, the Defense Logistics Agency, the State of Hawaiʻi Department of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency as signatories, is a regulatory agreement that requires the navy to improve inspection and repair procedures, complete a comprehensive study of tank upgrade alternatives, develop better groundwater flow and contaminant models, and produce a risk/vulnerability assessment.78 The AOC gave the navy twenty-two years to implement a secondary containment solution. The crisis became a technical matter for experts to solve without public involvement or transparency.

Senator Brian Schatz praised the AOC as a “pragmatic step forward to protect Oahu’s drinking water.”79 However, it has proven to be a weak instrument for holding the navy accountable. The navy’s tank upgrade alternative plan in 2019 proposed to keep the existing single-wall design with periodic inspections while funding research and development of a new tank liner solution by 2045, completely ignoring the AOC deadline of 2037. The proposed fix would not even satisfy the double-containment design required by regulators. And the technology proposed by the navy was purely speculative. Furthermore, the navy required all parties to the AOC to sign nondisclosure agreements.

In 2014, as a political pressure-release valve, the Hawaiʻi State Legislature established a Red Hill Task Force consisting of representatives of various federal, state, and county entities.80 In 2016, the legislature amended state law and created a Fuel Tank Advisory Committee to succeed the Red Hill Task Force.81 However, both of these entities are merely advisory and lack the power to make decisions or enforce regulations on the navy.

Despite the navy’s intransigence on Red Hill, since the rise of the environmental movement in the 1970s, the U.S. military’s culture of sovereign exceptionalism has come under pressure to change. The military’s environmentalism is more than simply “greenwashing.”82 While the military as a whole has been a bad environmental actor, it would be a mistake to write off military environmentalism as simply cosmetic. At some military sites, such as Mākua and Pōhakuloa, military conservation programs follow a logic of counterinsurgency, which aims to pacify dissent and exercise biopolitical control of “nature and natives alike.”83

These environmental reforms within the government began to produce cracks in the navy’s wall of sovereign exceptionalism at Red Hill. In 1984, the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments Act required federal agencies to comply with state and county regulations on underground storage tanks and delegated some federal regulatory authority to state and county governments. In accordance with federal law, Hawaiʻi Revised Statute Chapter 342L, passed in 1992, required the Hawaiʻi Department of Health (DOH) to regulate the safe operation of underground storage tanks. However, the DOH excluded large field-constructed underground storage tanks from the rule, an exemption designed specifically for the benefit of Red Hill.

In 2018, the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi successfully sued the DOH to compel the agency to amend its rules to include Red Hill within their scope.84 Under the new rules, in May 2019, the navy submitted an application to the DOH for a permit to operate the facility. At that point the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi and the Honolulu Board of Water Supply (BWS) petitioned to intervene in a contested case proceeding.

Through the contested case proceedings, the navy was forced to release documents that revealed shocking facts about the dangerous condition of the facility. We now know that the Red Hill tanks have leaked from the start. In their lifetime, the navy has documented approximately seventy-three leaks, resulting in the release of an estimated two hundred thousand gallons of fuel into the environment. Nineteen of twenty rock cores taken from beneath the tanks were stained with petroleum.85 An invasive examination of the steel plates revealed extensive corrosion on the back side; what was once quarter-inch-thick steel had corroded to the thickness of a dime in some spots.86 The navy’s own 2018 risk analysis study predicted that the probability of a leak of between one thousand and thirty thousand gallons is 80.1 percent over the next five years, and 96 percent over the next ten years.87 Revelations of the shockingly poor condition of the tanks intensified the community opposition. On November 19, 2019, hundreds of people packed a hearing on the navy’s proposed tank upgrade alternative study, with the majority of testimonies calling for complete closure of Red Hill.

A System-of-Systems Failure: The 2021 Disaster

The long-awaited contested case hearing for the navy’s Red Hill permit application took place in February 2021. Around this time, an oil sheen appeared on the water near Hotel Pier in Pearl Harbor, but the navy withheld key information about the spill during the hearing.

A few months later, around May 6–7, 2021, an “operator error” at Red Hill caused a pressure surge to burst a pipeline in the lower access tunnel. The navy initially reported that 1,618 gallons of fuel were released, all of which it claimed to have recovered. But, as Oʻahu residents learned several months later, the fuel spill was much larger than initially reported.

By September 2021, the contested case hearings officer issued a proposed decision and order that the Department of Health should issue a five-year permit to the navy for operation of the Red Hill facility on the condition that the navy inspect and repair all tanks to specified standards by December 31, 2024. It was a controversial half-measure that left no one satisfied.

Emails leaked by a whistleblower and reported in October 2021 revealed that the navy had covered up the Hotel Pier spill during the contested case hearing.88 The navy also withheld other crucial information about tank corrosion studies.89 In light of these new revelations, the state considered reopening the contested case proceedings.

Oʻahu Water Protectors

In addition to the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, another group peripherally involved in the Red Hill issue was Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice, an organization based in Honolulu that engages in research and education, organizing, mobilization, and international solidarity on a range of peace and social justice issues, with a particular concern for the environmental and social impacts of militarization.90 As an organization of settlers and Kānaka ʻŌiwi working in the context of a settler colonial state, Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice practices accompaniment in solidarity with Kanaka ʻŌiwi organizations and struggles. It functions as an activist and organizing center, offering political education and training, supporting local groups engaged in active campaigns, and occasionally initiating and incubating new groups.

On September 25, 2021, Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice and the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi jointly embarked on a more systematic organizing effort to shut down Red Hill. They convened an initial organizing committee of key leaders and activists from different parts of the island, representing different organizations and sectors, including Kanaka ʻŌiwi, environmentalists, labor, interfaith, and peace and social justice groups. This organizing committee became the Oʻahu Water Protectors (OWP), which initially united around three points of unity: water is life; Red Hill is a threat to Oʻahu’s water and must be shut down; and public officials must take urgent actions to protect Oʻahu’s water.91 Centering their politics on the life-giving qualities of water enabled the group to move fluidly between decentralized and flexible tactics without losing focus.

Fluidarities form in the swift currents of social change. The November 2021 accident mentioned in the introduction triggered a chain of events that prompted OWP to step up actions. On November 24, OWP held a press conference and rally at the Board of Water Supply building calling for the shutdown of Red Hill. At the time they did not know that contaminated water was silently coursing through the navy’s water system. The navy had claimed that the November leak was contained and that the drinking water was safe to consume. But by November 28, residents of military housing began complaining on social media that their homes smelled “like a gas station” and that they were experiencing severe rashes, headaches, diarrhea, and vomiting from drinking or bathing in the tap water.92 Some were hospitalized with severe reactions. Pets vomited, and one dog died. Videos on social media showed tap water with an oily sheen or foamy film. In one video, a flame put to the water’s surface sparked and crackled. The contamination threw schools, businesses, and the lives of thousands of families into turmoil as their water turned into poison. For five months, more than four thousand military families were displaced to temporary housing. At a December 6, 2021, press conference on the Red Hill crisis, secretary of the navy Carlos Del Toro set Twitter ablaze with the remark, “It’s not the fuel itself that’s making them sick, it’s the fuel in the water that’s making them sick.”93 The comment epitomized the callousness of top navy officials toward the victims of the water-contamination crisis.

The conflict between the navy and the state over regulatory authority tore apart the normally aligned interests of the state, the military, and businesses. The poisoning of military families changed the political dynamics of the situation, generating a crisis of authority and trust. Suddenly, the hypothetical disaster that water protectors had warned about became a reality, with survivors dramatically confronting officials. The coolly bureaucratic and defensive responses from military leaders came across as gaslighting and stoked public anger. Military family members organized through social networks to share information, solicit aid for those in need, and organize themselves into a political force.

As these families searched for information, they found activist resources from the Sierra Club and the Oʻahu Water Protectors to be more helpful than the navy’s information resources. The impact on affected families was a stark reminder of the fragility of life on these islands and a warning about the much larger catastrophe looming over Oʻahu. Through the realization of our shared vulnerabilities, new fluidarities emerged.

While publicly claiming that its water was safe, the navy had quietly shut down its Red Hill water shaft on November 28 without informing the Board of Water Supply or the public. On December 3, when navy officials finally revealed that after detecting contaminants, it had stopped pumping water from the Red Hill Shaft, the BWS immediately shut down its Hālawa Shaft and two other nearby wells as a precautionary measure to prevent drawing the contaminated groundwater toward its wells. This effectively shut down the largest sources of drinking water for four hundred thousand residents of Honolulu, placing a strain on other aquifers where pumping was increased to compensate for the loss of the Hālawa Shaft and precipitating a water shortage on Oʻahu. At a press conference to announce these actions, BWS chief engineer Ernie Lau choked back tears as he said, “We cannot wait any longer. The water resource is precious. It’s irreplaceable. It’s pure. There is no substitute for pure water.”94 The water in Lau’s eyes and the emotion in his normally measured voice raised the affective intensity of the crisis.95

As the crisis unfolded, the ranks of OWP began to swell. On December 3, 2021, with a day’s notice, several hundred protesters gathered at the Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole Federal Building chanting, “Ola i ka wai! Water is Life! Shut down Red Hill!”

As each day brought horrifying new developments, on December 6, 2021, the Hawaiʻi Department of Health and Governor David Ige issued an emergency order calling on the navy to immediately suspend operation of the Red Hill facility, implement drinking water treatment measures, safely defuel the tanks, and conduct an independent investigation and certification of the system’s integrity before operations may resume.

This emergency order coincided with the eightieth anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro was in Hawaiʻi at the same time to dedicate a new warship and participate in the Pearl Harbor commemorative events. But Pearl Harbor was completely overshadowed by the Red Hill crisis. When asked about the state’s emergency order, Del Toro blithely dismissed the state’s regulatory authority: “It’s not an order. It’s a request that’s being made.”96 Again, the navy’s hubris helped to stoke public anger.

While the navy suspended operations of the tanks and attempted to flush the contaminated water from its water system, it requested a contested case hearing to challenge the Department of Health’s authority to issue the emergency order to suspend operations of the facility. This move may have been calculated to prevent any legal precedent for a state having the authority over military fuel operations. During the contested case hearing on the emergency order, Assistant Secretary of the Navy James Balocki was asked whether he considered the Red Hill situation to be a crisis. He replied, “An urgent and compelling situation perhaps. Not a crisis.”97 The condescension in his response sparked a backlash on social media. The gaffes by Balocki and Del Toro exemplify the arrogance of the navy in its efforts to maintain control of the situation. One can hear echoes of Schofield’s contempt for “valueless” Indigenous land use practices in Del Toro’s and Balocki’s casual disregard for the urgency of the disaster.

On December 27, 2021, the hearings officer for the emergency order contested case issued a scathing proposed order in which he described the tanks as a “ticking time bomb” and an imminent threat to Oʻahu’s water. Based on these findings, the Department of Health affirmed the emergency order, which prompted the navy to appeal in state and federal courts. These cases were later dropped after Austin issued his order to permanently close Red Hill.

The Red Hill crisis exposed a central contradiction of the military’s presence in Hawaiʻi: contrary to the dominant national security discourse that the U.S. military protects Hawaiʻi and the Pacific region, Red Hill epitomizes the military occupation of Hawaiʻi that threatens people and the environment. The crisis also gave the lie to the image of the power and infallibility of the U.S. military. Military power depends in part on a complex assemblage of relations, including environmental relations, social relations with local communities, the support of political and economic elites, and complex and surprisingly fragile logistic and infrastructural systems, all of which can come apart in moments of crisis. Because of the “operational arrogance and lackadaisical management” of the military leadership in Hawaiʻi, a national security writer warned, “the underpinnings of America’s Indo-Pacific strategy are coming apart.”98

Kaʻohewai: The Bamboo Water Carrier

While a number of prominent Kanaka ʻŌiwi activists were visible in the growing Oʻahu Water Protectors movement, Andre Perez, a Kanaka ʻŌiwi cultural practitioner and organizer with the Hawaiʻi Unity and Liberation Institute (HULI), felt that the movement needed stronger leadership and cultural grounding from Kānaka ʻŌiwi.99 He reached out to several key Kanaka ʻŌiwi leaders, “people who got people.”100 After scouting suitable locations and drawing up plans under tight operational security, their first action was a nonviolent direct action to confront military power and reframe the debate through the Kanaka ʻŌiwi ontological politics of wai.

Before dawn on December 12, 2021, a group of approximately eighty kiaʻi, most of them Kānaka ʻŌiwi from different parts of Oʻahu, gathered in a parking lot near the Aloha Stadium. After receiving initial instructions from the organizers, they proceeded by car caravan to the entrance of the Pacific Fleet Command headquarters about a mile away.

Before the military police and security guards knew what was happening, large pickup trucks, loaded with pōhaku (stones), rolled up on the grassy area fronting the base. In a circle of car headlights, the group formed several lines to pass pōhaku, hand to hand, to the designated area. The pōhaku came from all parts of the island, brought by participants from their ʻāina.

Kalehua Krug, a Native Hawaiian public charter school principal, led the construction of the koʻa (a type of shrine) and serves as its main caretaker. Large, well-formed pōhaku were set down first to anchor the structure. Then subsequent pōhaku were fitted to form interlocking stacks. Smaller pebbles and sand were poured into the crevices to stabilize the structure. They erected a kiʻi laʻau (carved wooden image) of the akua Kāne carved by hui Kūpāʻaikeʻe. Pieces of coral and small pebbles finished the paving on top, and a carved stone basin was set on the structure to receive offerings of wai. Koʻa is also the word for “coral,” one of the first forms of life to appear in the cosmogonical creation chant “Kumulipo.” The presence of koʻa on an altar typically signifies the sacred function of the structure. Hinaleimoana Wong Kalu, Mehana Hind, Vicky Holt Takamine, and other kumu hula (hula masters) held vigil and recited Kāne chants during the entire construction process, which took about an hour. A men’s ceremonial group led by Kamanaʻopono Crabbe conducted an ʻawa ceremony, which involved preparing the ʻawa and propitiating Kāne and Kanaloa with their sacred drink. A procession of groups recited oli (chants) and performed hula to consecrate the koʻa. Many brought hoʻokupu (offerings) of wai from different water sources around the islands, which they fed to the koʻa from diagonally cut segments of ʻohe (bamboo).

According to Perez, in a planning meeting days before the action, Krug recommended that the structure be a koʻa instead of a kuahu (religious shrine). A koʻa is a type of shrine with a specific function of attracting resources, such as fish. Krug envisioned this koʻa as an attractor for the clean, healing waters of Kāne. Perez imagined it to be an aggregator for the lāhui (the nation). The structure embodies this “dual connotation, the spiritual and the political side.”101

According to Perez, the core group that planned the action decided that they needed to form an entity. They chose the name Kaʻohewai—the bamboo water carrier—for their new coalition. The choice of ʻohe (bamboo) is significant because bamboo is one of Kāne’s kinolau. Sometimes, young ʻohe stalks may contain wai within their segments. This water is considered especially sacred because it has not yet touched the ground. On the Island of Hawaiʻi, the ahupuaʻa in which Mauna a Wākea is located is named Kaʻohe (the bamboo), which suggests that the mountain is a vessel for water. Importantly, the segmented form of ʻohe suggests the visual motif of moʻo—a succession of connected segments, a lineage or genealogy.102

Kaʻohewai leaders announced that the koʻa would remain as a site for ceremony and other gatherings for as long as it was needed, until the Red Hill tanks were no longer a threat to the wai. While organizers of the action anticipated possible arrests, the police never intervened. In their reconnaissance, organizers had learned that the land where the koʻa was to be built was actually city-owned land. Since the Red Hill crisis was adversely affecting the city and county of Honolulu, Kaʻohewai organizers correctly wagered that the city would be sympathetic, or at least neutral, to the activists.

By the end of the first day, the base commander Admiral Samuel Paparo contacted Perez and asked to meet with Kaʻohewai leaders to open a line of communication. After Kaʻohewai leaders educated the commander about the history of U.S. military abuses in Hawaiʻi, Paparo promised that the navy would not disturb the koʻa and that people could use the parking lot across the street to visit the site. The navy’s outreach to Kanaka ʻŌiwi leaders is quite remarkable and indicates the level of concern the military has about the radical potential of Kānaka ʻŌiwi protest. Kānaka ʻŌiwi have historically been the most militant in confronting militarization in Hawaiʻi, for example in Kahoʻolawe and Mākua.

The koʻa is a concrete cultural statement about Kanaka ʻŌiwi responsibilities to mālama i ka wai (care for the water). As Perez explains, “We have to put the ecosystem before humans. It’s not just about our health and well-being. It’s about the health and well-being of the ʻāina, of the kai, the birds and the bees and the fish, ’cause they’re all going to be impacted too. And that’s the priority.”103 The koʻa also demonstrates the value of militant nonviolent direct action, within a repertoire of tactics, for its ability to expose and disrupt the military’s sovereign power and create kīpuka (openings, oases, islands) of Kanaka ʻŌiwi countersovereignty. Kaʻohewai and Oʻahu Water Protectors began to meet together to strategize. The emergence of Kaʻohewai changed the political dynamics of the struggle. The assertion of Kanaka ʻŌiwi leadership enabled others to realign their strategies in ways that unequivocally supported an ontological politics of wai.

At the ceremony to build and dedicate the koʻa, a reporter asked Kalehua Krug what he would like to say to military families poisoned by the navy’s fuel. Krug’s reply captures the radical relationality that becomes possible with and through kinship with water:

Join us. I feel for them. Our aloha is for everyone and everything. Our teachings from our ancestors is that everything, human and non-human, gets a place in the ecosystem. Everybody has mana. Everybody has spirit. Everybody deserves respect. For them, drinking the water, we’re sad for them. We feel for those ʻohana. Join us. Come be a part of our ʻohana, our family.104

The koʻa has become a gathering place for different groups of water protectors to meet and build pilina.105 On Wednesday afternoons, Kaʻohewai members lead Kanaka ʻŌiwi ceremonial pule (prayers) at the koʻa for anyone interested in learning these cultural protocols. A group of military spouses began to attend these and other activities. Another group of local Okinawan women who call themselves Shimanchu Wai Protectors have participated in nearly every action and outreach activity. Mikey Inouye, an independent filmmaker and member of Oʻahu Water Protectors, reached out to some of the affected military families and civilians. He organized the Shut Down Red Hill Mutual Aid collective to solicit donations and distribute mutual aid to affected communities. Friendships formed between these different communities. Some of the affected military families engaged in acts of solidarity, such as participating in cultural access activities at Mākua Valley and drafting a statement in support of Hawaiian sovereignty and demilitarization.106

From July 1 to 10, 2022, Kaʻohewai organized an action called the Anahulu at the Koʻa to gather the kiaʻi and maintain pressure on the navy. An anahulu is a ten-day period of time, often to focus on a specific purpose. Planned to coincide with the navy’s Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) multinational naval exercises held in Hawaiʻi every two years, the Anahulu at the Koʻa attracted about one thousand participants over the course of the week. There were information tables, arts and crafts activities, workshops and presentations on various topics, films, and concerts by some of the hottest Kanaka ʻŌiwi musical artists. Donations of water were collected at the anahulu and distributed to affected families. Many military personnel and family members attended the anahulu, where they were welcomed, fed, and shown compassion.

In September 2022, a group of affected military families and a delegation of Oʻahu Water Protectors joined a series of actions in Washington, D.C., to demand that the Environmental Protection Agency “do your job!”107 They visited with members of Congress to request more pressure on the navy to expedite the defueling and decommissioning of Red Hill.

Notes

1. 1. Sophie Cocke, “Odor from Red Hill Fuel Release Sparks 911 Calls,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, November 23, 2021, https://www.staradvertiser.com/2021/11/23/hawaii-news/odor-from-red-hill-fuel-release-sparks-911-calls/; Honolulu Fire Department Incident Report 2021–71784, November 20, 2021; 911 Dispatch recording 19:44:10, November 20, 2021; 911 Dispatch recording 19:44:39, November 20, 2021.

2. 2. “About Red Hill Fuel Releases,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed December 10, 2023, https://www.epa.gov/red-hill/about-red-hill-fuel-releases.

3. 3. Christina Jedra, “State Tells Pearl Harbor Navy Families Not to Drink or Use Tap Water,” Honolulu Civil Beat, November 29, 2021, https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/11/navy-investigating-chemical-smell-in-military-housing-drinking-water/.

4. 4. Wyatt Olson, “Complaints of Tainted Tap Water Flow from Residents at Joint Base in Hawaii,” Stars and Stripes, November 30, 2021, https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2021-11-29/water-quality-joint-base-pearl-harbor-hickam-hawaii-3800222.html#.

5. 5. Lloyd J. Austin III, Memorandum to Senior Pentagon Leadership, Commanders of the Combatant Commands, Defense Agency, and DOD Field Activity Directors, “Immediate Actions to Permanently Close the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and to Redistribute Fuel in Accordance with INDOPACOM Plans for Strategic Fuel Storage in the Pacific Region,” March 7, 2022, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/07/2002951821/-1/-1/1/IMMEDIATE-ACTIONS-TO-PERMANENTLY-CLOSE-THE-RED-HILL-BULK-FUEL-STORAGE-FACILITY-AT-JOINT-BASE-PEARL-HARBOR-HICKAM-AND-TO-REDISTRIBUTE-FUEL-IN-ACCORDANCE-WITH-INDOPACOM-PLANS-FOR-STRATEGIC-FUEL-STORAGE-IN-THE-PACIFIC-REGION.PDF.

6. 6. On May 16, 2023, the navy announced that it would move up its timeline to begin defueling operations as soon as October 2023. U.S. Department of Defense, Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, Oahu, Hawaii—Defueling Plan Supplement 2—May 15, 2023, May 15, 2023, https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23814532/dod-red-hill-defueling-plan-supplement-2.pdf.

7. 7. Davianna Pōmaikaʻi McGregor, “Kahoʻolawe: Rebirth of the Sacred,” Amerasia Journal 28, no. 3 (2002): 68–83; Jonathan Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio, “Hawaiian Souls: The Movement to Stop the U.S. Military Bombing of Kahoʻolawe,” in A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty, ed. Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Ikaika Hussey, and Erin Kahunawaikaʻala Wright, 137–60 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014).

8. 8. Sophie Cocke, “Shut Down Red Hill Fuel Facility, Most Hawaii Voters Say,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, February 7, 2022, https://www.staradvertiser.com/2022/02/07/hawaii-news/shut-down-red-hill-fuel-facility-most-hawaii-voters-say/.

9. 9. Kuʻulei Kanahele, “Ka Papakū Makawalu: He Inoa No Hiʻiaka” (PhD diss., University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, 2021), ii.

10. 10. Teresia K. Teaiwa, “Solidarity and Fluidarity: Feminism as Product and Productive Force for Regionalism in the Pacific” (presentation, Gender, Globalization, and Militarism Conference, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, February 5, 2005); Teresia Teaiwa and Claire Slatter, “Samting Nating: Pacific Waves at the Margins of Feminist Security Studies,” International Studies Perspectives 14, no. 4 (November 2013): 447–50; Margaret Jolly, “Epilogue,” Oceania 74, no. 1–2 (September 2003): 134–47.

11. 11. This refrain comes from a Kanaka ʻŌiwi chant, “He Mele no Kāne” (Song of Kāne) as compiled and translated by Nathanial B. Emerson, Unwritten Literature of Hawaii: The Sacred Songs of the Hula (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909), 257–59, available at Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20299/20299-h/20299-h.htm. The chant poetically describes the many forms of wai (fresh water) that are manifestations of Kāne, one of the major akua in Kanaka ʻŌiwi religious traditions. The term helps to evoke the fluid properties of water, which, in the case of Red Hill, helped to connect diverse constituencies into a political force. In the epigraph, I excerpt an alternative orthography and translation by Kealohi Reppun, Runners website, accessed December 10, 2023, https://2027runners.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/3/5/29351789/he_mele_no_kāne.pdf.

12. 12. McKenna Maduli, “Talk Story: Ola i Ka Wai,” posted on Facebook by K5, December 26, 2021, https://fb.watch/oOcoWqhaWr/.

13. 13. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Remembering Our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻāina, and Ea (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021), 10.

14. 14. Melanie Yazzie and Cutcha Risling Baldy, “Introduction: Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Water,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 7, no. 1 (August 31, 2018): 3.

15. 15. Deborah Cowen, The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (New York: Verso, 2014).

16. 16. Neta C. Crawford, The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2022).

17. 17. Nicole J. Wilson and Jody Inkster, “Respecting Water: Indigenous Water Governance, Ontologies, and the Politics of Kinship on the Ground,” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1, no. 4 (December 2018): 517.

18. 18. Glen Coulthard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “Grounded Normativity / Place-Based Solidarity,” American Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2016): 254.

19. 19. Mary Tuti Baker, “Gardens of Political Transformation: Indigenism, Anarchism, and Feminism Embodied,” in Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, ed. J. Kehaulani Kauanui (Victoria, B.C.: First Choice Books, 2021), 153.

20. 20. Candace Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawaiʻi (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2021), 146.

21. 21. Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, 145.

22. 22. Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele et al., Kīhoʻihoʻi Kānāwai: Restoring Kānāwai for Island Stewardship (Hilo, Hawaiʻi: Edith Kanakaʻole Foundation, 2016), 16, available at ʻO Maunakea, He Piko Kamahaʻo, accessed December 10, 2023, http://nomaunakea.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/2/2/102246944/kanahele_kihoihoi_kanawai_final.pdf.

23. 23. David Uahikeaikaleiʻohu Maile, “Shut Down Red Hill, Ola I Ka Wai w/Shelley Muneoka,” December 11, 2021, in Red Nation Podcast, podcast, https://therednation.libsyn.com/website/shut-down-red-hill-ola-i-ka-wai-w-shelley-muneoka.

24. 24. Marie Alohalani Brown, Ka Poʻe Moʻo Akua: Hawaiian Reptilian Water Deities (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2022), 42.

25. 25. Brown, Ka Poʻe Moʻo Akua, 50.

26. 26. Moses Manu, The Legend of Keaomelemele: He moolelo kaao no Keaomelemele, ed. Puakea Nogelmeier, trans. Mary Kawena Pukui (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2002); Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, 1–2.

27. 27. Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, 1–2.

28. 28. Fujikane, 88.

29. 29. J. H. Osorio, Remembering Our Intimacies.

30. 30. Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, 147.

31. 31. Fujikane, 148.

32. 32. Kalei Nuʻuhiwa, “Haumea: Establishing Sacred Space, Female Ceremonies and Heiau,” ʻŌiwi TV, February 13, 2012, https://oiwi.tv/oiwitv/haumea-establishing-sacred-space/.

33. 33. Yazzie and Baldy, “Introduction,” 2.

34. 34. Yazzie and Baldy, 2.

35. 35. Yazzie and Baldy, 2.

36. 36. Yazzie and Baldy, 2.

37. 37. Yazzie and Baldy, 2.

38. 38. Yazzie and Baldy, 2.

39. 39. Annemarie Mol, “Ontological Politics: A Word and Some Questions,” Sociological Review 47, no. 1_suppl (May 1999): 75.

40. 40. For further reading about the evolution of Hawaiian Kingdom law, see Jonathan Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio, Dismembering Lahui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002). For further reading about the Māhele, see Donovan Preza, “The Empirical Writes Back: Re-examining Hawaiian Dispossession Resulting from the Māhele of 1848” (master’s thesis, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2010); Jon M. Van Dyke, Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawaii? (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2008).

41. 41. D. Kapuaʻala Sproat, “A Question of Wai: Seeking Justice through Law for Hawaiʻi’s Streams and Communities,” in A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty, ed. Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Ikaika Hussey, and Erin Kahunawaikaʻala Wright, 199–219 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014).

42. 42. Sproat, “A Question of Wai.”

43. 43. Sproat.

44. 44. McBryde Sugar Company, Ltd. v. Robinson 504 P.2d 1330 (1973).

45. 45. Lawrence H. Miike, Water and the Law in Hawaiʻi (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2004), 127–29.

46. 46. Shelley Muneoka, personal communication, April 20, 2022.

47. 47. Crawford, Pentagon, Climate Change, and War, 9–14.

48. 48. Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, 164; Laurel Mei-Singh, “Accompaniment through Carceral Geographies: Abolitionist Research Partnerships with Indigenous Communities,” Antipode 53, no. 1 (January 2021): 74–94, https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12589.

49. 49. Hawaiʻi State Department of Health, “12/20/21 Part 2 of 2—Evidentiary Hearing, DOH v. Navy, Docket. No. 21-UST-EA-02,” December 22, 2021, YouTube video, 1:35:44, https://youtu.be/IqXYFovQTHA.

50. 50. Cowen, Deadly Life of Logistics.

51. 51. Kelley L. Uyeoka et al., “Hālau o Puʻuloa: The Many Breaths of Puʻuloa—ʻEwa ʻĀina Inventory” (Kamehameha Schools, 2018), 53, available at University of Hawaiʻi System Repository, https://dspace.lib.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/9eb2b2b1-3ada-4cba-84c7-ec16ae8d12b3/content.

52. 52. Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, 160.

53. 53. Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele, Ka Honua Ola: ʻEliʻeli Kau Mai—The Living Earth Descend, Deepen the Revelation (Honolulu: Kamehameha, 2011), 6.

54. 54. Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, 161–62.

55. 55. Fujikane, 163.

56. 56. Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, “Historic American Engineering Record U.S. Naval Base, Pearl Harbor, Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage System,” 2015, available at Library of Congress, https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/pnp/habshaer/hi/hi1000/hi1016/data/hi1016data.pdf.

57. 57. Historic American Engineering Record, “Historic American Engineering Record,” 4.

58. 58. Historic American Engineering Record, 4. See also David O. Woodbury, Builders for Battle: How the Pacific Naval Air Bases Were Constructed (New York: Dutton, 1946).

59. 59. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998).

60. 60. “Navy Takes Red Hill Site to Store Fuel,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, February 14, 1941. The United States has utilized eminent domain to take tens of thousands of acres of land in Hawaiʻi for military purposes. Military landholdings swelled to their greatest extent during World War II.

61. 61. Historic American Engineering Record, “Historic American Engineering Record,” 12.

62. 62. U.S. Fleet Forces Command, “Red Hill Video Referred from Adm. J. C. Harvey’s BLOG,” December 12, 2011, YouTube video, 14:39, https://youtu.be/lIz8IstwnWU?si=drivV-DztoYxcYSL.

63. 63. Kathy E. Ferguson and Phyllis Turnbull, Oh, Say, Can You See? The Semiotics of the Military in Hawaiʻi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

64. 64. “Red Hill Gives T. H. A-Bomb Proof Plant,” Honolulu Advertiser, August 27, 1947.

65. 65. Grace Gibson, “Hawaiʻi’s Red Hill Water Crisis Isn’t Over,” Georgetown Environmental Law Review (blog), April 28, 2022, https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/hawai%ca%bbis-red-hill-water-crisis-isnt-over/.

66. 66. M. John Schofield to William Sherman, February 15, 1873, DSO-11472–49951-Hawaiian Islands (1872–93), Library of Congress.

67. 67. M. John Schofield to William Sherman.

68. 68. Max Liboiron, Pollution Is Colonialism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2021), 6–7.

69. 69. J. K. Osorio, Dismembering Lahui.

70. 70. Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2006).

71. 71. For further reading, see Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).

72. 72. Lena Groeger, Ryann Grochowski Jones, and Abrahm Lustgarten, “Bombs in Your Backyard,” ProPublica, November 30, 2017, https://projects.propublica.org/bombs/.

73. 73. Keoki Stender and Yuko Stender, “Hawaiian Pearl Oyster, Pinctada galtsoffi,” MarinelifePhotography.com, July 28, 2019, https://www.marinelifephotography.com/marine/mollusks/bivalves/pinctada-galtsoffi.htm.

74. 74. Vicki Viotti, “Fuel Feud,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, October 25, 2015, https://www.staradvertiser.com/2015/10/25/editorial/insight/fuel-feud/.

75. 75. Bruce Cumings, Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 420.

76. 76. Michael Brune, “Pulling Down Our Monuments,” Sierra Club, July 22, 2020, https://www.sierraclub.org/michael-brune/2020/07/john-muir-early-history-sierra-club.

77. 77. Marti Townsend, personal communication, September 23, 2022.

78. 78. U.S. EPA Region 9 and Department of Health State of Hawaii, “Administrative Order on Consent in the Matter of Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, Oahu, Hawaii,” EPA DKT NO. RCRA 7003-R9-2015-01, DOH DKT NO. 15-UST-EA-01, September 28, 2015, available at Hawaii State Department of Health, http://health.hawaii.gov/shwb/files/2015/09/Red-Hill-AOC_Final_29SEP151.pdf.

79. 79. Anita Hofschneider, “U.S. Navy Has 20 Years to Fix Leak-Prone Red Hill Fuel Tanks,” Honolulu Civil Beat, October 1, 2015, http://www.civilbeat.com/2015/10/u-s-navy-has-20-years-to-fix-leak-prone-red-hill-fuel-tanks/.

80. 80. Hawaiʻi State Senate, “Requesting the Director of Health to Convene a Task Force to Study the Effects of the January 2014 Fuel Tank Leak at the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility,” S. Con. Res. 73, H.D. 1, 27th Cong. (2014), available at Hawaii State Department of Health, https://health.hawaii.gov/ust/files/2014/08/SCR73_HD1_.pdf.

81. 81. “2016 Hawaiʻi Revised Statutes: Title 19. Health. 342L. Underground Storage Tanks. 342L-61 Fuel Tank Advisory Committee; Established; Composition,” HI Rev. Stat. 342L-61 § (2016), available at Justia: U.S. Law, https://law.justia.com/codes/hawaii/2016/title-19/chapter-342l/section-342l-61/.

82. 82. Robert F. Durant, The Greening of the U.S. Military: Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2007).

83. 83. Kyle Kajihiro, “Kahoʻolawe Is Not an Island: Political-Ecological Assemblages, Spaces of Indigenous (Re)Emergence, and the Logic of Counterinsurgency” (PhD diss., University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2020), ix.

84. 84. Sierra Club v. Department of Health, and Virginia Pressler, Director of Health, Order Granting Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgement, 17-1-1350-08 JPC (Environmental Court Circuit Court of the First Circuit March 23, 2018).

85. 85. Erwin Kawata, “Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility Briefing by the Board of Water Supply, City and County of Honolulu,” April 16, 2015, https://www.boardofwatersupply.com/bws/media/redhill/briefings/red-hill-ocr-briefing-bws-pearlridge-public-meeting-2015-04.pdf.

86. 86. Erwin Kawata, “Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility Update,” September 24, 2018, https://www.boardofwatersupply.com/bws/media/Board/board-meeting-material-2018-09-24_1.pdf.

87. 87. ABS Consulting, “Quantitative Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Phase 1 (Internal Events without Fire and Flooding) – Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility NAVSUP FLC Pearl Harbor, HI (PRL) (INTERNAL REPORT NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE),” Naval Facilities Engineering Command Pacific Division, November 12, 2018, https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019-06/documents/red_hill_risk_assessment_report_redacted-2018-11-12.pdf.

88. 88. Christina Jedra, “Amid ‘Political Concerns,’ Navy Kept Quiet about Red Hill Pipeline Leaking into Pearl Harbor,” Honolulu Civil Beat, October 8, 2021, https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/10/amid-political-concerns-navy-kept-quiet-about-red-hill-pipeline-leaking-into-pearl-harbor/.

89. 89. Christina Jedra, “Whistleblower Says the Navy Gave False Testimony about Red Hill Fuel Facility,” Honolulu Civil Beat, November 10, 2021, https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/11/whistleblower-says-the-navy-gave-false-testimony-about-red-hill-fuel-facility/.

90. 90. The author is a board member of Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice and is active with the Oʻahu Water Protectors.

91. 91. Oʻahu Water Protectors, “Ola I Ka Wai—Water Is Life,” December 8, 2021, in the author’s possession.

92. 92. Sophie Cocke, “Military Families Living near Red Hill Blame Sickness on Tainted Water,” Honolulu Star - Advertiser, November 29, 2021, https://www.staradvertiser.com/2021/11/30/hawaii-news/military-families-living-near-red-hill-blame-sickness-on-tainted-water/.

93. 93. Kevin Knodell (@KJKnodell), “I asked the SecNav if it’s a readiness issue if Red Hill, which fuels planes and warships in the Pacific, is also poisoning the water of troops the who operate them. He replied: ‘It’s not the fuel itself that’s making them sick, it’s the fuel in the water that’s making him sick,’” Twitter, December 6, 2021, 7:11 p.m., https://x.com/KJKnodell/status/1468085806061424645?s=20.

94. 94. Sophie Cocke, “Honolulu Board of Water Supply Shuts Down Halawa Well to Protect against Navy’s Fuel Contamination,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, December 3, 2021, https://www.staradvertiser.com/2021/12/03/breaking-news/honolulu-board-of-water-supply-shuts-down-halawa-well-to-protect-against-navys-fuel-contamination/.

95. 95. Lee Cataluna, “Lee Cataluna: The Red Hill Water Crisis Is a Wake-Up Call for Oahu,” Honolulu Civil Beat, December 8, 2021, https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/12/lee-cataluna-the-red-hill-water-crisis-is-a-wake-up-call-for-oahu/.

96. 96. Christina Jedra, “Navy’s Opposition to Governor’s Red Hill Order Raises Question of State versus Federal Power,” Honolulu Civil Beat, December 8, 2021, https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/12/navys-opposition-to-governors-red-hill-order-raises-questions-of-state-versus-federal-power/.

97. 97. Hawaiʻi State Department of Health, “12/20/21 Part 2 of 2: Evidentiary Hearing, DOH v. Navy, Docket No. 21-UST-EA-02,” December 22, 2021, YouTube video, 5:10:06, https://youtu.be/IqXYFovQTHA.

98. 98. Craig Hooper, “New U.S. Pacific Defense Crisis as Navy Missteps Threaten Hawaii Fuel Depot,” Forbes, December 7, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2021/12/07/new-us-pacific-defense-crisis-as-navy-missteps-threaten-hawaii-fuel-depot/.

99. 99. The acronym HULI means “to turn, reverse, or overturn.” It can refer to revolutionary social change or the overturning of a particular social order. In the 1970s, HULI was the name of another radical Kanaka ʻŌiwi organization that helped to lead the antieviction direct action protests at Kalama Valley, a struggle that has been described as the birth of the modern Hawaiian movement.

100. 100. Interview with Andre Perez, September 23, 2022.

101. 101. Interview with Andre Perez.

102. 102. Nā Puke Wehewehe ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, s.v. “mo‘o,” https://wehewehe.org/gsdl2.85/cgi-bin/hdict?e=q-11000-00---off-0hdict--00-1----0-10-0---0---0direct-10-ED--4--textpukuielbert%2ctextmamaka-----0-1l--11-haw-Zz-1---Zz-1-home-mo%ca%bbo--00-4-1-00-0--4----0-0-11-00-0utfZz-8-00&a=d&d=D13733.

103. 103. Interview with Andre Perez.

104. 104. Mike Prysner, Michael Inouye, and Abby Martin, “Native Hawaiians Fight US Navy for Polluting Island’s Water,” Empire Files, December 30, 2021, YouTube video, 11:35, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mMsGi11F-U.

105. 105. J. H. Osorio, Remembering Our Intimacies.

106. 106. Families Affected by the Navy’s Red Hill Fuel Contamination Crisis, “Statement in Support of the Restoration of Hawaiian Sovereignty,” January 18, 2023, in the author’s possession.

107. 107. “‘Do Your Job’: Families Sickened by Red Hill Fuel Contamination March on DC to Demand Clean Water,” Hawaii News Now, September 20, 2022, https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2022/09/20/dozens-affected-by-red-hill-contamination-crisis-march-dc-calling-clean-water/.

108. 108. Nick Grube, “Red Hill Has Changed the Politics around the Military in Hawaii,” Honolulu Civil Beat, December 9, 2021, https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/12/red-hill-has-changed-the-politics-around-the-military-in-hawaii/.