Judge signals six-month delay of Hawaii jet fuel contamination case

Courts previously allowed the Navy a yearlong stay in the case while state and federal agencies handle remediation of the drinking water contamination.

by Jeremy Yurow, Court House News, September 23, 2025

HONOLULU (CN) — The U.S. Navy may get its request for a six-month extension in a lawsuit over jet fuel from a Navy facility contaminating Hawaii’s water system granted, despite objections from environmental activists and Native Hawaiian leaders.

During a Tuesday virtual hearing, Senior U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi, a Barack Obama appointee, said she was “inclined to grant this stay for the next additional six months” — which would allow the Navy a break in legal proceedings until June 2026.

The court had previously granted the Navy a one-year stay, ruling that Navy interference could effect ongoing remediation efforts by the state Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency.

But she noted that the plaintiffs should have adequate access to documents and discovery materials needed to prepare their case.

“I am concerned with regard to the status of discovery and the availability of documents to the plaintiffs in order to analyze and prepare their case,” Kobayashi said during the hearing. She criticized both the Navy’s defueling plan of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility submitted to regulators and recovery monitoring documents as potentially “wanting” and “lacking.”

Navy attorney Bryan Harrison defended the extension request, arguing the military is under strict regulatory oversight and making progress on remediation of the contaminated drinking water serving Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

“We do have an ongoing process, and I don’t think the additional six months is unreasonable with regard to that,” he said.

But attorney Daniel Cooper, representing environmental nonprofit Wai Ola Alliance and other plaintiffs who sued the Navy in 2022 after the 2021 spill, pushed back against the lengthy delay, pointing out that Navy remediation plans extend far into the future.

“It’s 2030, 2035, before anything happens. And so, I don’t see why six months make sense for this stay when real progress, or any demonstration of progress, wouldn’t be made for a decade,” Cooper. of San Francisco-based Sycamore Law, said.

Kobayashi proposed hiring a joint discovery master to handle the complex technical documents.

“I am concerned that when discovery does commence, there’s going to be an issue with regard to confidentiality, and there’s also been indications in terms of the content, with redactions and so forth,” she said.

She also encouraged coordination with other ongoing contamination litigation, including a Honolulu Board of Water Supply case against the Navy.

“I don’t want the Navy to be producing everything twice,” she said.

A key dispute involves Navy groundwater modeling data that the plaintiffs say they need but haven’t received.

“The big thing that we didn’t get from the Navy … is model runs, and the data going into the model,” Cooper said.

Kobayashi scheduled status conferences for early 2026 to monitor progress on discovery issues and the regulatory cleanup process. She said she would issue a written order on the stay extension but indicated the Navy’s request would likely be granted.

She acknowledged the case’s complexity, noting it involves “a lot of documents and there’s a lot of engineering and hydrology” that will require significant judicial resources once proceedings resume.

Citing the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Wai Ola points specifically to the potential decades of fuel leaks from the World War II-era facility that they say have infiltrated nearby groundwaters along with waters in Halawa Stream and Pearl Harbor, affecting the animals living along the shoreline and degrading waters that hold cultural significance to Native Hawaiians.

Following the late November 2021 spill, military medical teams reportedly treated 6,000 people for illnesses and symptoms including rashes and headaches.

The contamination was the latest in a series of spills from the facility, which has a history of leaking despite Navy assurances of security. Previous incidents included 27,000 gallons of fuel in January 2014 and 1,600 gallons in May 2021.

The facility sits above a major aquifer that supplies drinking water to Oahu. State and federal regulators have ordered the Navy to defuel and shut down the Red Hill facility.