How long does it take to learn a lesson? How is community trust rebuilt? And how much are the purity of our water and the health of Hawaii’s people worth?

These are important questions as we mark the 3rd anniversary of the Red Hill storage facility fuel leak that dumped 19,000 gallons of jet fuel into the Navy’s water system and the state’s most heavily utilized aquifer.

The consequences of the fuel leak have been widespread and severe. Remediation by the Navy has been slow, badly handled and created more mistrust. But we can and must move forward — and that way forward is outlined in a plan created by the Red Hill Water Alliance Initiative (WAI), a working group of state and county leaders dedicated to the active stewardship of clean, pure water. View a PDF of the report at 808ne.ws/water-alliance.

More than 90,000 people, including those who worked at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam, were exposed to fuel-contaminated water.

In the ensuing months, 6,000 were so sickened by the fuel-contaminated water that they sought medical help. Some are still sick today because they unknowingly consumed and were exposed to toxic water in their homes on base.

Now we’ve learned, thanks to a probe by the Department of Defense’s Inspector General, the extent of the military’s failure to safely and properly manage fuel storage operations to prevent or respond to fuel leaks. Some military leaders were so deficient they didn’t know their Red Hill Shaft was co-located with their fuel facility. There have been dozens of leaks at Red Hill since the facility’s construction in the 1940s, a confirmation of the Navy’s systemic inability to safely maintain the facility.

And then, after it claimed that all the work required to bring the water to safe standards for consumption had been done, the Navy failed to accurately test 8,000 water samples, disregarding testing procedures recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency. While the Navy was claiming the water was safe, residents continued to report health problems and poor conditions. External lab analysis confirmed that two full years’ worth of test results were invalid because of the Navy’s failure to follow established and recommended testing protocols.

The past three years have shown, with devastating consequences, that the Navy is incapable of leading long-term work to remediate the damage it has inflicted on our Pearl Harbor aquifer.

The Red Hill WAI is ready to take on the work of protecting one of our most precious resources, the life-giving wai (water) that is essential to our survival. And, after decades of mismanagement and broken trust, it is time for the Navy to right those tremendous wrongs by providing the financial resources required to sustain these efforts.

If we malama the water, the water will malama us. This is a relationship that requires active stewardship by everyone.

The contamination of the land above the aquifer and of the aquifer itself from the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility is an unprecedented threat. We need solutions that transcend generations, and will hold the military accountable for however long it will take to restore our aina and wai. Ola I ka wai!

Na’alehu Anthony, a documentary producer, chairs the Honolulu Board of Water Supply; Ernie Lau is manager/chief engineer of the BWS.