Two years after the Pentagon agreed it would remove fuel from its underground Red Hill fuel storage facility and shut it down, the military task force charged with removing fuel stored in the Navy’s underground Red Hill facility has officially concluded its mission.

On Thursday, Joint Task Force Red Hill handed over authority to the newly formed Navy task force that will ultimately close the facility, in a ceremony aboard the USS Missouri.

Vice Adm. John Wade, JTF-RH’s commander, reflected on both the removal of the fuel and how his time overseeing the mission has changed him. He motioned to the red mountainside that the facility was built in during World War II and called it by its original Hawaiian name — Kapukaki.

“For over 1,000 years, Native Hawaiians came to this area, to get their water, their food, to worship, to bury their dead,” said Wade. “And in the Native Hawaiian culture, there is a spiritual connection between all things people, land, water, vegetation and wildlife, along with the sacred responsibility to be good stewards of the environment.”

In November 2021, fuel from the Red Hill tanks tainted the Navy’s Oahu water system, which serves 93,000 people, prompting a state emergency order to drain the fuel. The Red Hill tanks sit just 100 feet above a critical aquifer that most of Honolulu relies on for drinking water, and for years environmental advocates and Native Hawaiian activists warned the fuel posed a threat, while Navy officials insisted it was safe and well maintained.

In December 2021, the state Department of Health issued an emergency order to the Navy calling for it to drain the tanks. After months of resisting the emergency order, in March 2022 Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the tanks would be drained and the facility permanently closed. Austin appointed Wade to lead the defueling effort, and he took command of JTF-RH in September 2022.

Wade knew it would be a difficult job. But he said it didn’t truly set in until he got started and walked around the sprawling World War II-era facility.

For years, Navy officials had insisted the facility was well maintained, but as military officials who would actually defuel it surveyed it, it became clear that over the years the facility and the pipelines connecting it to Joint Base Pearl Harbor- Hickam had fallen into deep disrepair. The entire system would require significant repairs and upgrades to prevent further spills or leaks before the fuel could be safely removed.

Then came the community meetings, where Wade felt the full force of the anger and pain the crisis had brought to the surface.

“It became very evident to me right from the very beginning at the first (Fuel Tank Advisory Committee meeting), which was an eight- or nine-hour meeting, just how frustrated, angry (and) disappointed the public and our military families and our elected officials were,” Wade told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “I knew that no matter what we said, nothing would change unless it was actions.”

Initially, Wade was working on a deadline to have the fuel removed by summer 2024, but he looked for ways to speed the process and get the fuel — more than 104 million gallons — out from atop the aquifer. He also worked to restore a semblance of trust — a task that frequently saw setbacks.

In November 2022, about 1,300 gallons of toxic fire suppressant leaked at the facility. It occurred shortly after JTF-RH touted the successful “unpacking” of 1 million gallons of fuel from the Red Hill pipelines. Afterward JTF-RH, which had initially been narrowly focused on defueling, expanded its mandate to oversee all operations within the facility.

“Though it was not under my purview, I had to take ownership of it,” said Wade. “It was the right thing to do … but it was clearly a setback for the Department of Defense. It amplified the trust issues, and it really made it clear to all of us that we could not have another misstep. And that made us even work harder and more deliberately.”

The task force ultimately was able to begin draining the fuel in October, loading most of it onto fuel tankers that moved it to new storage facilities across the Pacific region as part of the military’s new “distributed” fueling strategy amid tensions with China.

The last tanker set sail for Subic Bay in the Philippines just before Christmas. JTF-RH then set about removing “residual” fuel from the tanks, which it completed this month. The process finally came to a close when DOH officials inspected the facility and signed off.

“Although we concur that the JTF-RH’s defueling obligations are complete, there is still much work to be done to permanently close the Red Hill facility and remediate the environment,” DOH Deputy Director Kathleen Ho said in a statement released Thursday. “We will hold (Naval Closure Task Force Red Hill) accountable to complete this work and expect that they will execute these tasks with the same diligence and commitment to community involvement exhibited by JTF-RH.”

Wade said that while the removal of the fuel got one major risk out of the way, many more dangers remain before the process is over.

“Defueling had its own challenges and risks, closure and long-term environmental remediation will bring new challenges and new risks,” Wade told the Star- Advertiser. “So it’s critical to the … health of the workers and the community and the environment to focus on safety.”

The Navy closure task force will remove remaining sludge in the tanks and in the pipelines connecting Red Hill to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, a process that will take place in conjunction with the the dismantling of the pipelines themselves. During the February meeting of the Red Hill Community Representation Initiative, the facility’s former fuel director, Shannon Bencs, asked officials how they will approach community safety as they move forward with that process.

“Now that you’ve de­fueled the tanks and the pipelines, now there’s poisonous toxic fumes in those tanks, and the only way to vent them out is through the top of Red Hill and then through the (vents),” Bencs said, warning that it will be “extremely toxic, and it will flow down to Halawa Valley and down to Pearl Harbor.”

During the Thursday ceremony aboard the Missouri, Rear Adm. Stephen Barnett, commander of Navy Region Hawaii and of the NCTF-RH, said “we will continue the long-term environmental remediation of Red Hill and the aquifer to protect Hawaii’s most important resource — the water. Make no mistake about it. This will take a tremendous amount of hard work. It’s going to take a tremendous amount of dedication and just as much commitment. But we’re ready.”