Hawaii lawsuit over fuel contamination continues, as does cleanup

A federal judge rejected the Navy's bid to kill a citizen lawsuit over 2021 jet fuel releases at Pearl Harbor's Red Hill facility.

by Jeremy Yurow, Court House News, August 31, 2026

HONOLULU (CN) — The Navy’s 2015 agreement to address petroleum contamination at Pearl Harbor’s Red Hill fuel storage complex doesn’t allow it to escape a citizen lawsuit over fuel released six years later, a federal judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi granted in part and denied in part the Navy’s motion to dismiss a hazardous waste lawsuit brought by Wai Ola Alliance and several of its members, calling the Navy’s central argument for throwing out the case “far too generous” a reading of a decade-old agreement.

The Navy argued that a 2015 agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency and Hawaii’s Department of Health, reached after an earlier fuel leak at Red Hill, already covered the 2021 jet fuel releases at the heart of the case. The Navy said federal law therefore bars citizens from suing over contamination an agency is already actively addressing under that kind of order.

“Defendants miss the mark,” Kobayashi, a Barack Obama appointee wrote, adding that nothing in the 2015 Administrative Order on Consent “expressly states that it governs the response to future fuel releases at Red Hill.”

Kobayashi said it was significant the Navy did not establish the 2015 agreement covered the 2021 releases until 2023 — two years after Wai Ola first asserted its Resource Conservation and Recovery Act claim, in letters exchanged with regulators.

Allowing a preclusion under a section of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act “based on the interpretation of a prior administrative order in documents created after the filing of a citizen suit creates potential for manipulating the administrative process to avoid defending against the citizen suit,” she wrote.

The Navy also asked Kobayashi to reconsider her own 2024 ruling that the claim should be paused, rather than dismissed, while the EPA and Hawaii Department of Health continue overseeing Red Hill’s cleanup under the doctrine of primary jurisdiction, which lets courts defer to agencies with specialized expertise over technical matters. Kobayashi rejected that request, too, noting the Navy waited more than a year past the court’s own 14-day deadline to challenge that earlier decision.

Wai Ola’s underlying Resource Conservation and Recovery Act claim, which argues the Navy’s handling of fuel and waste at Red Hill created an imminent danger to Oahu’s sole-source drinking water aquifer, remains on hold.

Kobayashi extended the stay another year, to Aug. 31, 2027, finding the Navy is still making progress: It completed gravity defueling, has removed roughly 94% of the fuel remaining in connecting pipelines, and expects to finish installing a new groundwater monitoring well next month.

Wai Ola argued the delay was pointless, since regulators aren’t expected to decide on a permanent groundwater cleanup plan until at least 2033. Kobayashi was sympathetic but unconvinced.

“While plaintiffs’ frustration with the remediation timeline and their desire for faster results are understandable, plaintiffs have not identified any evidence suggesting that there has been undue delay,” Kobayashi wrote.

The judge warned the efficiency gained by pausing the lawsuit “must give way” if a long stay ends up hurting Wai Ola’s ability to actually litigate its claim once the pause lifts, and cautioned the Navy against assuming any future extension would be automatic.

In the meantime, the Navy must make a reasonable amount of information available Wai Ola and file status reports on its compliance with the state and federal cleanup orders every three months, on Sept. 30, Dec. 31, March 31 and June 30.

Representatives for the Wai Ola Alliance and Navy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.