The manager and chief engineer for the Honolulu Board of Water Supply has it right.

“It’s extremely troubling,” said Ernie Lau, after some 175 reports came from military families around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam about fuel odors coming from their tap water.

It’s not only the fuel odors coming from the military water system that’s so disturbing: It’s the way the Navy has handled the whole disclosure of the problems now under investigation.

On Wednesday, preliminary tests of Red Hill Elementary School water samples tested positive for a petroleum product. Further, additional samples were sent to a California lab that can detect contaminants below the state’s 5-parts-per-million limit. Those results are due by week’s end — but that shouldn’t mean that the rest of the state must sit quietly and wait for answers.

Compounding the ongoing concerns about leaks in its system, and the years of controversy over the nearby Red Hill underground fuel storage complex, the Navy has failed to repair its eroded trust with the general public.

That trust has taken repeated blows since 2014, when the Navy’s facility of 20 fuel tanks came to light — worrisome because of the 80-year-old system’s location a mere 100 feet above a major aquifer serving Oahu’s population. That has led to a protracted battle over how the system should be repaired — or whether it should be retained there at all.

In recent weeks, there have been associated problems with the Navy’s systems. While perhaps not directly connected to the subterranean tanks, they underscore a need for more transparency as well as action to protect the drinking water.

First, Foster Village and Aliamanu residents called 911 on Nov. 20 about a fuel smell, later determined likely to have emanated from a leak from a fire suppression drain line. About 14,000 gallons of a fuel-water mixture had leaked but were contained and stored above ground, Navy officials reported.

And now there is this smell from the water taps themselves, incidents occurring since at least Sunday morning. The Navy alerted the state Department of Health about it that day; the Navy and DOH are conducting tests concurrently.

That initial alert to health officials went out on Sunday, but it wasn’t until Tuesday that the Navy told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the neighboring Red Hill well shaft was closed down out of an “abundance of caution.”

Why the delay in notification about taking such an action? The Board of Water Supply’s Lau rightly commented that it raises red flags: “If they think the Red Hill shaft is the source of the problem, then we want to understand why,” he said.

The water board should be put immediately in the loop to receive technical data that is uncovered. That is the agency most directly involved in the distribution of water to Oahu’s residents, and its experts are positioned to assess the risk level.

The congressional delegation also has turned up the heat, urging the Navy to communicate more openly with the community, and have met with the secretary of the Navy to discuss the issue.

That was clearly a necessary step. At a town hall meeting on Tuesday night, angry residents vented their reasonable health worries. Rear Adm. Blake Converse countered that he is still drinking and showering with the water, which does not convey a sense of the situation’s seriousness.

What may send the right message would be firm statements from Mayor Rick Blangiardi and Gov. David Ige, signaling that they, at least, have reached a turning point in this debacle. Local officials still have a say in the future of the Red Hill fuel system, and the Navy has done little here to help its case.