Red Hill provides fuel that is essential to our nation’s defense and protecting the flow of commerce to and from Hawaii. It is important to know the facts about the fuel tanks at Red Hill, given the amount of misinformation recently distributed.

We invite you to learn more about this vital facility and about our commitment to protecting the drinking water we all share. We will hold a Red Hill public information workshop this Wednesday at Moanalua Middle School from 6 to 9 p.m.

It has been more than four years since Tank 5 leaked 27,000 gallons of fuel at Red Hill that came about due to contractor errors, poor oversight and a slow response to alarms. The tank itself was not defective. We learned from that event and instituted safeguards, checks and balances, and better procedures that we continue to refine.

Since 2014, and under the Administrative Order on Consent, the Navy and the Defense Logistics Agency have invested tens of millions of dollars to modernize the facility, protect drinking water, and study future options for the strategically important fuel facility that helps power the Navy, Air Force, National Guard and Coast Guard in Hawaii.

The Navy has also provided tours of the Red Hill facility and briefings to more than 300 elected officials and community representatives. This year alone, we gave Red Hill briefings to four neighborhood boards, with two more scheduled for later this month.

At Wednesday’s public workshop at Moanalua Middle School, we will show the community how much work has taken place at Red Hill over the past four years — and how we are moving forward in the months ahead. We will explain the progress we’ve made and outline the unique engineering realities that exist at Red Hill.

At our workshop we will have information stations and subject matter experts who can answer questions about our modernization efforts, show how we monitor and test the water, and discuss the tank upgrade alternatives under consideration at Red Hill, among other topics.

The comprehensive Tank Upgrade Alternative report submitted in December is available on the Environmental Protection Agency’s website at https://www.epa.gov/red-hill. We are also considering alternate tank locations and other possibilities as we move forward, and we continue to invite public comments and questions.

We are committed to transparency and providing the facts about Red Hill. For comprehensive reports, visit EPA’s website. For clean water reports and other accurate drinking water information, visit the state Department of Health website at http://health.hawaii.gov/sdwb/. For photos, video, fact sheets, stakeholder letters and other information from the Navy, visit www.cnic.navy.mil/redhill.