The US Marine Corps’ Puʻuloa Range Training Facility (PRTF), located within a densely populated neighborhood in ʻEwa Beach, Oʻahu, poses serious and immediate risks to the health, safety, and quality of life of nearby residents. Situated dangerously close to homes, schools, parks, and a popular community beach, the range has created pressing concerns regarding high levels of lead contamination detected within and adjacent to the open-air facility, intense noise pollution, and the risk of stray bullets and bullet fragments, among other harms.
Despite studies indicating extremely high levels of lead contamination within and outside of the range - including the US Marine Corps’ own recent testing - and years of public outcry, the Marine Corps has yet to take meaningful action to acknowledge these hazards or relocate the range.
In 2023, the Hawaiʻi State House of Representatives and Senate unanimously passed resolutions urging the immediate relocation of PRTF due to the numerous health and safety threats the facility poses to the surrounding community, which legislators concluded cannot be mitigated.
Consistent with the resolutions unanimously passed by the Hawaiʻi State legislature, we call on the Department of Defense and our Congressional Delegation to expeditiously work to identify a new location for the range that is away from residences, begin the process of relocation, and remediate this inherently dangerous facility, including through federal appropriations, to protect current and future residents from further and potentially catastrophic contamination whether through continual erosion, or a storm, tsunami, or other sudden and unexpected event.
We call on the US Marine Corps to implement an immediate moratorium on live fire exercises at the Puʻuloa Range Training Facility until the comprehensive testing, surveys, and actions listed below are completed, evaluated and shared publicly, with data conclusively demonstrating that the facility poses no risk to nearby communities and the environment.
We call on the Hawaiʻi Department of Health (HDOH) and Governor Josh Green’s administration to ensure immediate and comprehensive independent third-party lead testing within the residential and recreational areas surrounding the firing range, to identify and monitor the extent of existing contamination from toxic lead and other heavy metals affecting ʻEwa Beach families, beachgoers, fishers, and others. This includes testing nearby homes for lead dust and establishing ongoing air monitoring downwind of the range, testing of soils in Puʻuloa Beach Park and other neighboring areas outside the range, testing vegetation growing around the range, as well as testing fish and marine vegetation in the ocean area fronting the range.
We call on the US Marine Corps to test for lead in soils along the western perimeter of Alpha Range and install groundwater monitoring wells (both written recommendations by the HDOH), and establish air monitoring on the western side of each firing berm, to quantify lead and other heavy metal contamination that may be exiting the range via leaching or airborne particulates.
We call on the HDOH to conduct public health surveys and other relevant studies to examine hazards and threats of noise pollution from incessant gunfire and other training activities at PRTF.
We call on the US Marine Corps, Federal Aviation Administration, and Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation to enact rules prohibiting live firing at PRTF while aircraft are on final approach to HNL, or anytime an aircraft transits the PRTF Surface Danger Zone, which would ensure those flights are not at risk of being struck by stray bullets.
We call on the US Marine Corps to fully baffle the PRTF range as is standard practice on ranges where projectile escapement could endanger the public.
