RED HILL EMERGENCY: TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE - Contact your Congressperson and spread the word!

Over 1,000 gallons of fire-fighting foam (AFFF) concentrate containing "forever chemicals" known to cause cancer, birth defects, thyroid disease, and other serious health issues, have been spilled at the U.S. Navy's Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. Highly toxic, only a few gallons of PFAS "forever chemicals" may be enough to render hundreds of trillions of gallons of water potentially unsafe to drink.

The Red Hill facility sits just 100 feet above our sole-source drinking water aquifer. Rainwater constantly percolates into and through the facility, eventually ending up in the groundwater along with any contaminants that get picked up along the way. The Navy knew this and still used PFAS-containing fire fighting foam in their facility.

We cannot stand idly by and watch these chemicals spread further into the environment and closer to our aquifer, as the Navy desperately tries to contain this latest spill. We must take a stand to save not just ourselves, but our children, grandchildren, and generations yet unborn.

If you have not already, contact your Congressperson, and demand that they use every power and channel of influence they possess to immediately:

Require full removal/remediation of all contaminated soil, water, and infrastructure at and around the Red Hill facility
Establish an on-island, independent, non-DOD water and soil testing facility;
Increase the number of monitoring wells surrounding the facility and require weekly samples;
Build water filtration systems to service the people who may be without safe water if the current or future spills contaminate the water supply;
Require full disclosure of all AFFF systems at military facilities in Hawai‘i and the full history of all AFFF releases; and
Replace the Navy and its contractors from their role in defueling and decommissioning Red Hill with a multi-department, civilian-led task force with experts and community representatives.

In addition, every Congressional delegate must make a clear statement that the U.S. Department of Defense take full responsibility for the contamination of O‘ahu’s water, and for all drinking water sources that have been impacted by its actions throughout the Pacific.

Please share this action alert to every water drinker that you know.

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Just over a year after a fuel leak that poisoned thousands and contaminated our sole-source aquifer, the Navy has allowed yet another disaster at Red Hill to occur—this time spilling over 1,000 gallons of incredibly toxic fire-fighting concentrate, made up of cancerous and detrimental “forever” chemicals into the environment. Unless action is taken NOW, Oʻahu's water supply may be at risk of eventual and permanent contamination, threatening the health and lives of this generation and the many to come. As an elected representative and as a community leader, you have no higher duty than to protect your people. You MUST do your job, and use every power, every channel of influence at your disposal to make clear that Congress and the federal government will not stand for the Navy’s criminal, life-threatening negligence - negligence that now threatens to make our generationʻs legacy one of cancer, poisoned water, and a poisoned environment for centuries to come. We may never know the depth of harm that has already been inflicted on our island and our people. We do know that this can only get far, far worse. Oʻahu needs YOU to act with the utmost urgency to obtain immediate, emergency federal action to 1) fully excavate all contaminated soil and infrastructure from this latest spill event, before any more AFFF concentrate seeps and spreads into the environment; 2) establish an independent, non-Department of Defense on-island laboratory that can test soil and water for PFAS and jet fuel constituents; 3) install multiple additional monitoring wells with weekly testing of water samples; 4) construct municipal-scale water filtration systems that can serve the hundreds of thousands of people who may be left without clean drinking water if and when the water supply becomes contaminated from existing and future spills; 5) obtain full disclosure of ALL AFFF facilities currently and formerly in use at military installations in our islands, and all records of any releases of AFFF whether intentional or not; and 6) remove the Navy and its contractors from their role(s) in defueling and decommissioning the Red HIll Facility, to be replaced by an interdepartmental, civilian-led task force comprised of top government experts and members of the local community. In addition, each and every Congressional delegate must make a clear and unequivocal public demand that the U.S. Department of Defense take full responsibility for the contamination O‘ahu’s water and the deadly threat that we and our descendants now all face - and for all similar harms it has inflicted on communities throughout the Pacific. This includes: investigating and holding all responsible Department of Defense officials and contractors, past and present, fiscally and professionally accountable for the harms their negligence has caused; providing any and all financial support needed to heal all human and environmental harms; and halting any proposed projects or activities that may result in any further contamination of humanity’s most precious resource.

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