[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                   
                         [H.A.S.C. No. 117-60]

                       RED HILL BULK FUEL STORAGE
                  FACILITY: THE CURRENT CRISIS, THE 
                      RESPONSE, AND THE WAY FORWARD

                               __________

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                       SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                              HEARING HELD

                            JANUARY 11, 2022

                                     
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

                               __________

                                
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
48-445                        WASHINGTON : 2023                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------     

                      SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

                  JOHN GARAMENDI, California, Chairman

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut            MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
JACKIE SPEIER, California            JOE WILSON, South Carolina
JASON CROW, Colorado                 AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan, Vice       JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
    Chair                            MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine               MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee
ELAINE G. LURIA, Virginia            LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan
KAIALI'I KAHELE, Hawaii              BLAKE D. MOORE, Utah
MARILYN STRICKLAND, Washington

          Wendell Frank White, Jr., Professional Staff Member
                 Ian Bennitt, Professional Staff Member
                          Naajidah Khan, Clerk
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

              STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Garamendi, Hon. John, a Representative from California, Chairman, 
  Subcommittee on Readiness......................................     3
Waltz, Hon. Michael, a Representative from Florida, Ranking 
  Member, Subcommittee on Readiness..............................     4

                               WITNESSES

Converse, RADM Blake, USN, Deputy Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet..     5
Korka, RADM John W., USN, Commander, Naval Facilities Engineering 
  Systems Command, Chief of Civil Engineers......................     9
Lindsey, VADM Yancy B., USN, Commander, Navy Installations 
  Command........................................................     8
McGinnis, CAPT Michael B., USN, U.S. Pacific Fleet Surgeon, U.S. 
  Pacific Fleet..................................................    11
Stamatopoulos, RADM Peter G., USN, Commander, Naval Supply 
  Systems Command and 49th Chief of Supply Corps.................    10

                                APPENDIX

Prepared Statements:

    Converse, RADM Blake.........................................    48
    Garamendi, Hon. John.........................................    45
    Korka, RADM John W...........................................    61
    Lindsey, VADM Yancy B........................................    55
    McGinnis, CAPT Michael B.....................................    73
    Stamatopoulos, RADM Peter G..................................    67

Documents Submitted for the Record:

    [The information was not available at the time of printing.]

Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

    [The information was not available at the time of printing.]

Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

    Mr. Kahele...................................................    81
    Ms. Strickland...............................................    81
      

                  RED HILL BULK FUEL STORAGE FACILITY:

         THE CURRENT CRISIS, THE RESPONSE, AND THE WAY FORWARD

                              ----------                              

                  House of Representatives,
                       Committee on Armed Services,
                                 Subcommittee on Readiness,
                         Washington, DC, Tuesday, January 11, 2022.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., via 
Webex, Hon. John Garamendi (chairman of the subcommittee) 
presiding.
    Mr. Garamendi. Good morning, all. It is now 10:01 in 
Washington, DC, and the hearing of the Readiness Committee is 
called to order.
    First some administrative and technical notes. Members are 
reminded that they must be visible on screen within the 
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Members must continue to use the software platform's video 
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experience technical difficulties, please contact the committee 
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    If I experience technical difficulties during the hearing, 
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    Please remember to keep the software platform's video 
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    Be advised that I have designated a committee staff member 
to mute unrecognized member's microphones if necessary. We 
understand background noises such as children, and this will be 
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    Finally, you will see a 5-minute countdown clock on the 
software platform's display. Please pay attention to it. But if 
necessary I will remind you as appropriate.
    I also ask all of you for unanimous consent that non-
committee members, if any, will be allowed to participate in 
today's hearing after all committee members have had an 
opportunity to seek and to ask questions. Is there any 
objection?
    Hearing none, so ordered.
    Now, with that in mind, a few opening remarks. I am still 
looking out on the screen here and I don't see it, but I am 
going to go ahead and move forward. For all of you we have a 
new ranking member for the Subcommittee on Readiness. Mr. Mike 
Waltz from Florida will be joining the committee. He has had an 
extraordinary event over the weekend, the birth of a child. And 
so--okay.
    You won the lottery, Mr. Green.
    Mr. Waltz. John, no, I am on here.
    Mr. Garamendi. Oh, good. Thank you. And congratulations on 
the birth of the child and congratulations on becoming ranking 
member.
    Before I turn to you for whatever very, very short 
statement you would like to say about joining the committee, I 
am going to talk basically to Mr. Lamborn.
    Doug, you have been with this committee a long time. I am 
not sure whether you will continue on the committee, but you 
have been an extraordinary fellow to work with. And I have 
enjoyed the opportunity to do that over these last 3 years.
    Hopefully, you as a member of the Readiness--I know that 
you're also moving over to ranking member on Strategic Forces. 
So with that, Doug, if you have some quick remarks, the floor 
is yours.
    Mr. Lamborn. Well John, first of all, I want to thank you. 
You have been great to work with. I have been a colleague of 
yours on this committee for more than 10 years and I have seen 
time and time again here in Washington, DC, in committee, in 
full committee, on the floor and all over the world as we have 
had briefings military related, you really have a heart to 
support the military, to make sure that our men and women are 
the best equipped and trained in the world. And I just really 
commend your patriotism. And it has been a pleasure to work 
with you every step of the way--well, almost every step of the 
way, I should say. We have had a few disagreements.
    Mr. Garamendi. Doug, the same to you. And really have 
enjoyed the time we headed up this committee.
    Mr. Lamborn. And John, if I could also just real quickly. I 
want to thank my staff, Ian, Whitney, and all of the 
professional staff for the great work they have done. I want to 
welcome Mike Waltz onto the committee. And as ranking member, I 
know he will do a fantastic job. And I look forward to being a 
colleague of his as I move over as ranking member, like you 
said, on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee.
    And lastly, Readiness Committee is a wonderful 
subcommittee. It has almost a $300 billion portfolio. And that 
is just critical in this day and age as we look at the need for 
our military to continue to be the best in the world. And so, 
it is a wonderful assignment. I am happy to have participated.
    John, back to you.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Doug.
    Mike, you will have an opening statement in a few moments, 
but if you would like to address the committee briefly about 
your new assignment, please do so.
    Mr. Waltz. Well, as I have talked to many of you, being on 
this committee is one of the primary reasons I ran for 
Congress, being on Armed Services. I think the number one job 
of the Federal Government, in my personal opinion, is to keep 
the country safe. And I can't think of any more noble calling 
than to make sure the men and women down range right now as we 
speak who are dependent on us to make the right decisions and 
conduct the appropriate oversight, to make sure they have the 
training, equipment, and the resources that they need. So just 
really truly my honor in every sense of the word.
    Mr. Garamendi. Well, welcome, Mike. Thank you very much for 
joining us and for taking on this task. I look forward to 
working with you.
    With that, we best move on to my opening statement and then 
we will follow, Mike, with your opening statement.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN GARAMENDI, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
        CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

    Mr. Garamendi. Today we are here to talk about the Red Hill 
Fuel Storage Facility at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Not only will we 
delve into the recent fuel releases from this facility, the 
subsequent contamination of drinking water that sickened 
thousands of people, displaced thousands more, and the Navy's 
response to all of this. But we will also discuss the broader 
issues of whether it is possible to make Red Hill safe enough 
for continued operation.
    In addition, we will begin the conversation about whether 
long-term continued operations is the best use of taxpayer 
resources. Before we get into the recent event, it is worth 
stating from a common--it is worth starting from a common 
framework of reference. Well, why does Red Hill exist in the 
first place? Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United 
States had growing concern about the vulnerability of 
aboveground fuel storage tanks.
    In 1940, the construction began on the Red Hill Bulk Fuel 
Storage Facility, a one-of-a-kind engineering innovation that 
would secure the fuel from enemy aerial attack. The facility 
holds 250 million gallons of fuel in 20 steel-lined underground 
tanks encased in concrete. These tanks are connected to three 
gravity-fed pipelines running 2\1/2\ miles to Pearl Harbor fuel 
piers. However, a statistic less commonly quoted by the DOD 
[U.S. Department of Defense] is that the facility is also 100 
feet above the groundwater aquifer that provides water to the 
residents of Oahu. Thus, it has always been the responsibility 
of the military to ensure that these tanks are maintained in a 
manner that not only protects the wartime fuel supply, but the 
people of Oahu's water supply.
    In January 2014, 27,000 gallons of fuel were released from 
one of the 12.5 million gallon storage tanks due to an operator 
error during routine operations. Since then, the Navy has been 
under an order by the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] and 
the Hawaii Department of Health to modernize and to make safe 
the 80-year-old facility. The Department of Defense has spent 
hundreds of millions of dollars to update the facility, the 
technologies, and operating procedures at Red Hill.
    During the time between the 2014 release and the most 
recent releases last year, the Navy repeatedly stated that 
these investments would ensure, would ensure that Oahu's 
drinking water was safe. Unfortunately, as we have watched this 
crisis unfold over the last 3 months, it is apparent that that 
was not the case.
    While the Red Hill facility was an astounding feat of 
engineering in the 1940s, is it still the right solution for 
near-peer contest in the mid 2000s? Can billions of dollars of 
United States taxpayer money be asked to invest in this 
facility? Could it be better used in finding a new innovative 
engineering feat for this millennium, suitable for modern 
warfare? Many of these questions are best answered by the 
combatant commanders and the Pentagon when we have followup, 
classified hearings.
    So, gentlemen. We are not going to go into the solutions in 
great detail today, other than making sure that we talk 
specifically about Red Hill and its operations. Beyond that, it 
will be rather general. Today our focus is on the immediate 
crisis. What went wrong? What are we doing to fix the trust 
that the Navy has broken with the people of Hawaii? How have 
you, the Navy, addressed the needs of the sickened and 
displaced military families? How are you, the Navy, conducting 
cleanup? And is there a pathway to bring Red Hill operations 
back online in the near term?
    In addition to answering the current crisis, we will also 
be laying the groundwork for our follow-on discussions about 
Red Hill's long-term future. Specifically, is it possible to 
operate Red Hill safely? What will it cost? The answers to 
these questions will be critical in determining the answer to 
the ultimate question.
    Given the likely multibillion dollar price tag that will be 
associated with making the Red Hill facility safe for long-term 
continued operation, is there a better use of taxpayer funds 
that will more closely align with the contested logistics 
challenges of the Pacific.
    With that, I would like to turn to our new ranking member, 
Mr. Waltz of Florida, for your remarks.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Garamendi can be found in 
the Appendix on page 45.]

STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL WALTZ, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM FLORIDA, 
           RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

    Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again, thanks for 
having this important hearing on the recent fuels release in 
the military's drinking water system in Hawaii. I understand 
that many of our witnesses are participating remotely from 
Hawaii. I certainly want to thank them for getting up at zero 
dark thirty as we call it, participating in this important 
event.
    As the chairman rightly stated, the Red Hill fuels depot 
has been at the center of our bulk fuels logistics effort in 
INDOPACOM [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command]. Since World War II, it 
has been the source of repeated, however, repeated fuels 
incidents and is lacking a secondary containment system. It is 
particularly problematic considering that it sits 100 feet over 
an aquifer that provides over 77 percent of the island of 
Oahu's drinking water. I believe the existing Red Hill fuel 
situation is unacceptable. And a significant change to our bulk 
fuels laydown and the overall management system in INDOPACOM 
needs to occur.
    In response to the Red Hill disaster, I understand that the 
Hawaii delegation has asked the Secretary of the Navy to 
entirely defuel the Red Hill fuels depot. I am somewhat 
concerned that any long-term effort to entirely defuel Red Hill 
will have some significant national security consequences. But 
I am supportive of initially defueling Red Hill to a level that 
supports our surge requirements. Additionally, the defueling of 
this depot at a future point should be aggressively pursued 
when a better positioned fuel strategy is developed and 
implemented. One that is better aligned with our overall 
combatant commander's war plans.
    Finally, I want to express my concern [with] the initial 
reporting associated with the Red Hill fuel spill. It is 
incredibly important to take care of our service members and 
their families. I think that is the least we can do, frankly, 
given their sacrifices. And while I do think that the Navy 
recovered in providing some much needed transparency, the 
initial response to the ongoing tragedy needs to be 
significantly more responsive or any type of tragedy like this 
needs to be more responsive and forthright, frankly, as to the 
magnitude of the environmental disaster. Again, we owe no less 
to the service members and their families.
    In closing, I do again want to thank the chairman for this 
hearing. It is obvious we have much work to do on this issue. I 
look forward to further discussion. I certainly look forward to 
the classified briefing and discussion around that briefing as 
we work towards the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] 
for fiscal year 2023.
    Mr. Chairman, with that, I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, Mr. Waltz.
    We will now turn to the witnesses. I will introduce them 
all at once. And then I believe Rear Admiral Converse will 
conduct the participation of the five witnesses.
    First we have Rear Admiral Blake Converse, Deputy Commander 
of the U.S. Pacific Fleet; Vice Admiral Yancy Lindsey, 
Commander of the Navy Installation Command; Rear Admiral John 
Korka, Commander, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command; 
and Rear Admiral Peter Stamatopolous, Commander of the Navy 
Supply Systems Command. And Captain--hang on Captain, I have 
got to change pages here--Captain Michael McGinnis, Pacific 
Fleet Surgeon, U.S. Pacific Fleet.
    Gentlemen, your formal testimony will be put into the 
hearing record. And I would commend to all of the members that 
they read the full written testimony when they have a chance to 
do that, if they have not already done so.
    With that, Admiral Converse, the floor is yours.

 STATEMENT OF RADM BLAKE CONVERSE, USN, DEPUTY COMMANDER, U.S. 
                         PACIFIC FLEET

    Admiral Converse. Thank you, sir.
    Good morning. I am Blake Converse. I am the Deputy 
Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. And I was the commander of 
the joint crisis action team that was stood up to combat this 
crisis.
    Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Waltz, and distinguished 
members of the HASC [House Armed Services Committee] 
Subcommittee on Readiness, thank you for the opportunity to be 
here before you today.
    Your strong support for the work we do ensures our Navy has 
the capability to carry out vital missions around the world to 
protect and advance the national security interests of the 
United States. This support of Congress is vitally important 
today as the Navy takes action to resolve the contamination of 
the Navy's drinking water system on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-
Hickam. I want to start by saying that the Navy caused this 
problem. We own it. And we are going to fix it. Nothing is more 
important than the health, the safety, and the well-being of 
our families, our military residents, our neighbors, and the 
communities that we call home.
    I am keenly aware of how this has impacted the military 
families, as well as the local citizens of Hawaii, including my 
own. I have lived in Hawaii on and off for over 8 years. My 
father called Hawaii home. In fact, he worked for and 
eventually retired from the University of Hawaii. And my 
brother grew up on these islands. So I understand the deep 
connection that the people of Hawaii, particularly the Native 
Hawaiian community, have with the lands and the waters of 
Hawaii. We owe it to them to be good stewards of the land that 
has been entrusted to us.
    I would like to quickly recount the events associated with 
the water contamination incident. Beginning on November 28, 
residents of certain neighborhoods on our Joint Base Pearl 
Harbor-Hickam here in Hawaii in the military housing began 
reporting vapors, discoloration, and contamination of the water 
provided by the Navy.
    The Red Hill Shaft well which sits near the Navy's Red Hill 
Bulk Fuel Storage Facility was immediately suspected to be the 
source of this contamination as that was the source of the 
drinking water for those affected neighborhoods. So it was shut 
down that evening, November 28. And it has remained isolated 
since that day.
    Later, samples from the Red Hill Shaft well would confirm 
the presence of petroleum contaminants. As an immediate 
response to that crisis, Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral 
Samuel Paparo, my boss, convened a joint crisis action team on 
November 29, the very next day, and he appointed me the deputy 
commander to lead that team, and directed me to focus on 
meeting the immediate needs of our impacted residents, 
restoring safe drinking water, and remediating the Red Hill 
Shaft well.
    Once the joint crisis action team had completed immediate 
actions to isolate the source of contamination, and provide 
public health guidance, drinking water, and lodging support to 
the affected residents, Admiral Paparo revised that order, 
expanded our recovery effort to a whole-of-Navy and DOD effort 
by bringing in appropriate Echelon II Navy commands and those 
are the members sitting here with me to testify.
    And assigning each of those commanders clear lines of 
operation to direct their actions. We also formalized a joint 
and interagency response effort, together with the EPA, the 
Hawaii Department of Health, and senior representatives for 
each of the military services that were affected.
    The Commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet as the senior officer 
present retains command of the overall recovery effort across 
all the lines of operation with support of the designated 
Echelon II commands with me today and the interagency team that 
we formed. Among the witnesses today are the commanders of 
those Echelon II commands that we directed to assume overall 
lead for both planning and execution.
    Further, as the Navy senior office present, my boss, 
Admiral Paparo, was best postured to direct and supervise an 
independent and comprehensive investigation into Red Hill. U.S. 
Pacific Fleet commander is not in the chain of command that 
operates or maintains Red Hill. So immediately after the 
November 20 fuel spill at the fuel facility, Admiral Paparo 
directed a nuclear-trained admiral to conduct a joint--
correction, a judge advocate general's investigation of that 
spill. And to look for any linkage to the earlier 6 May fuel 
spill at Red Hill.
    After residents on the Navy's water system began reporting 
contamination shortly after we had directed that investigation, 
Admiral Paparo expanded the scope of that investigation to 
determine whether those recent fuel spills had contributed to 
or had caused the water contamination in the Navy's water 
supply system. So that holistic investigation of the fuel 
spills and the water contamination will be submitted to PACFLT 
[U.S. Pacific Fleet] on or about the 14th of January, later 
this week.
    Recently the Pacific Fleet commander on the 7th of January 
issued a tasking order directing actions to fully comply with 
the Hawaii Department of Health emergency order associated with 
Red Hill. This includes developing plans and taking actions to 
remediate and restore the Red Hill Shaft well, contracting for 
independent third-party assessments to restore Red Hill to 
operation, and making preparations to defuel the facility. All 
of those efforts are in progress.
    The water contamination at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam 
has required an intense and collaborative effort between the 
Navy; our other military service partners on the island who are 
also residents of our base housing; the Hawaii Department of 
Health and Department of Land and Natural Resources; the U.S. 
EPA; and the many local, State, and Federal legislators that 
have stepped in to provide assistance and guidance in our 
process. This teamwork has produced a comprehensive water 
system recovery plan that is currently in execution. We are 
grateful for the partnership, the expertise, and the 
perspective [of] Federal, State, and local government 
officials, and our Native Hawaiian leaders. They are tremendous 
advocates for the community.
    So I want to thank the subcommittee, I want to thank 
Hawaii's congressional delegation for their support and ongoing 
commitment to resolve the Navy's drinking water contamination. 
We recognize how much these events impacted the lives of so 
many. And we are firmly committed to restoring safe drinking 
water in a manner that builds trust and protects the land and 
the waters of Hawaii.
    Our joint team will not rest until everyone in the Navy's 
drinking water system has access to safe drinking water, and 
the Red Hill Shaft well has been cleaned up and restored.
    I look forward to your questions. And I am going to turn it 
over to Vice Admiral Lindsey now.
    [The prepared statement of Admiral Converse can be found in 
the Appendix on page 48.]

   STATEMENT OF VADM YANCY B. LINDSEY, USN, COMMANDER, NAVY 
                     INSTALLATIONS COMMAND

    Admiral Lindsey. Good morning, Chairman Garamendi, Ranking 
Member Waltz, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. 
Thank you for the opportunity to join my fellow Navy colleagues 
here today.
    It is my distinct honor to represent the U.S. Navy, as well 
as the sailors and civilians who directly support the mission 
of Commander, Navy Installations Command. Fulfilling the 
mission of the Navy shore enterprise would not be possible 
without your continued support.
    While most of our discussion today will focus on the 
drinking water contamination at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam 
and the steps being taken to restore to drinkable standards, I 
want to assure you that your Navy in cooperation with our 
sister services and Federal and State agencies is addressing 
this issue with utmost urgency. It is our collective goal to 
restore the drinking water system, ensure environmental 
compliance, and coordinate regulatory actions, and respond 
appropriately and expeditiously to the concerns and needs of 
our impacted residents and families while continuing to support 
and execute the Navy's mission. The Navy will continue to 
dedicate significant funding and personnel to these efforts.
    We recognize this unfortunate event has negatively impacted 
the day-to-day lives of many families who rely on the Navy's 
drinking water system and has caused them much distress and 
heartache.
    While in Hawaii over these past 4 weeks, working the Navy's 
response, I spoke to many of our sailors, soldiers, and their 
families. I listened to their concerns and we responded to 
their needs. I, along with my fellow colleagues here, will not 
relent until all personnel and their families are back in their 
homes and we have restored safe drinking water across the 
Navy's water system.
    A few of the immediate actions that were taken with our 
sister services and non-Federal entities to support affected 
personnel and their families include enabling temporary lodging 
for those in need, including a number of contracted local 
hotels. Continued to distribute bottled water and bulk water on 
a daily basis. Stood up an emergency family assistance center 
and call center.
    Established alternate shower and laundry services in 
several housing areas. Provided bottled and/or bulk water to 
off-base residents, schools, et cetera on the Navy's drinking 
water system. And facilitated support to personnel and their 
families through the Navy-Marine Corps Release Society, Armed 
Services YMCA, USO, and Navy League among others, including 
local businesses and community groups looking to help.
    These are only a few of the resources and services that 
have been provided to the 9,000-plus households affected by the 
drinking water contamination. There is nothing more important 
than the health and safety of the people in the community that 
relies on our drinking water system. Therefore, we will 
continue to move forward aggressively and deliberately, make 
adjustments, and apply other services as appropriate to help 
address their needs.
    It is also our goal to ensure environmental compliance 
every step of the way. Therefore, we remain committed to 
working closely with our partners at the Hawaii Department of 
Health, Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency, and other State and Federal 
agencies alongside our sister services as we restore the Navy's 
water system and conduct Red Hill well remediation efforts.
    We understand the importance of being good stewards of the 
environment. And it is our goal to restore the people's trust 
and confidence in our ability and commitment to protect the 
environment, including the vital sources of drinking water we 
all depend upon.
    Before I close, I would like to thank the hundreds of 
military members, civilians, and contractors who have been 
working literally around the clock to help the Navy address and 
resolve this issue, and the nonprofit organizations and members 
of the community who have supported those in need. I want to 
also thank this committee for their continued support. And I 
look forward to answering your questions.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Admiral Lindsey can be found in 
the Appendix on page 55.]
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you. I think we are going to pass it 
off to Admiral Korka. Are you next?

    STATEMENT OF RADM JOHN W. KORKA, USN, COMMANDER, NAVAL 
    FACILITIES ENGINEERING SYSTEMS COMMAND, CHIEF OF CIVIL 
                           ENGINEERS

    Admiral Korka. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Waltz, and distinguished 
members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 
join you today.
    As Commander of U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Systems 
Command, or NAVFAC, I am responsible for providing engineering, 
design and construction, acquisition, and expeditionary 
expertise and support across the Department of the Navy. NAVFAC 
is also responsible and accountable for the operations and 
maintenance of the Navy's drinking water system on Oahu. I want 
to assure you that I fully recognize the severity of the 
current water crisis, and its impact to the residents of 
Hawaii, some who are dear friends of my family and I.
    From 2015 to 2018, my family and I lived on the Makalapa 
Compound in Navy housing. We are grateful to have built 
lifelong connections in the community through our children's 
attendance at Damien Memorial School and as parishioners at 
Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church in Aiea. To this day, we 
cherish our Ohana experience. Since returning to Hawaii on 
December 7, I have reconnected with friends and understand the 
concerns they have voiced about the Red Hill incident. This is 
a personal issue for me and I am sorry.
    As an immediate response to the crisis, Commander, U.S. 
Pacific Fleet, Admiral Paparo, charged me with the specific 
responsibilities to restore the water distribution system, 
remediate the Red Hill well, and protect the aquifer. 
[Inaudible] these lines of operations the entire Navy 
[inaudible] has responded with a sense of urgency.
    However, we are not doing this alone. Our efforts are being 
performed in collaboration and coordination with State, 
Federal, and DOD partners, including the Hawaii Department of 
Health, and EPA Region 9. Their expertise has been instrumental 
in the response and recovery. And I commend their dedicated 
mutual commitment to our ongoing actions. I fully envision this 
collaborative partnership will continue into the future.
    The Navy has a comprehensive and transparent recovery plan 
and we are executing our mission. My written testimony provides 
specific actions taken today. And I am prepared to discuss them 
in greater detail during this hearing. The importance of 
restoring safe drinking water is absolute. Our service members, 
civilian workforce families, and the local community who 
support the military, are our greatest assets. I pledge my 
commitment to continue to work alongside other service 
counterparts and our regulatory partners to deliver safe 
drinking water, return our families to their homes, remediate 
the Red Hill well, and protect the aquifer.
    I thank the leadership and membership of this committee for 
your continued commitment, interest, and support. It a high 
honor to work with each of you. And I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Admiral Korka can be found in 
the Appendix on page 61.]
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Admiral.
    I think we are now going to hear from Admiral 
Stamatopoulos.

STATEMENT OF RADM PETER G. STAMATOPOULOS, USN, COMMANDER, NAVAL 
     SUPPLY SYSTEMS COMMAND AND 49TH CHIEF OF SUPPLY CORPS

    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Good morning, Chairman Garamendi, 
Ranking Member Waltz, and members of the Readiness 
Subcommittee. I am Rear Admiral Peter Stamatopoulos, and I am 
the Commander of the Naval Supply Systems Command located in 
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. I appreciate the opportunity to 
appear before you to discuss the Red Hill water contamination 
in Hawaii. And thank you for your continued support of our 
military and their families.
    By way of background, the mission of the Naval Supply 
Systems Command, or NAVSUP, is to conduct and enable supply 
chain, acquisition, and operational logistics to generate 
readiness and sustain naval forces worldwide. NAVSUP oversees 
11 subordinate commands.
    Through one of its subordinate commands, NAVSUP Fleet 
Logistics Center Pearl Harbor, it directs and manages the day-
to-day fueling operations within the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage 
Facility. This is done in coordination with other commands to 
include Commander, Naval Installations Command, or CNIC, and 
the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, NAVFAC, as well as 
with the Defense Logistics Agency, or DLA. It is a team effort 
to safely run this critical infrastructure facility and to 
illustrate in our various responsibilities in the most 
simplistic way, it can be likened to a very, very large and 
complex industrial petroleum plant.
    DLA is the parent company, CNIC owns the property, NAVSUP 
moves the petroleum, and NAVFAC, along with the U.S. Army Corps 
of Engineers, performs maintenance and repairs of the plant. In 
response to the water crisis at Red Hill, NAVSUP deployed its 
Enterprise Logistics Response Team to assist efforts providing 
support to affected families and residents, restoring the water 
distribution system with safe drinking water and remediating 
the Red Hill water well.
    We delivered over 800,000 gallons of bottled and bulk water 
to 44 distribution sites. We contracted for hygiene stations, 
laundry services, and hotel rooms. And we are progressing 
towards fulfilling the SECNAV [Secretary of the Navy] and 
congressional requirements to include conducting an outside, 
third-party assessment of the facility.
    To ensure we are leveraging the appropriate industry 
experts, we consulted with oil and gas executives and the U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency, and will be awarding a 
contract for an independent assessment of the operations and 
systems integrity at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Facility.
    As you are aware, Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, has 
appointed an investigation into the operations, maintenance, 
safety, and oversight at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage 
Facility. Additionally, in coordination with Navy leadership in 
front of you today, I convened a safety investigation board to 
identify causes for the incident and to develop appropriate 
corrective actions in order to reduce unnecessary risks to 
people and our resources.
    The results of the Navy's investigations, coupled with the 
outside assessment, will provide us with a multidimensional 
view of how the Navy can operate the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage 
Facility to a higher standard. My number one priority is 
ensuring that operations at Red Hill are conducted in the 
safest possible manner. I will remain transparent with the 
people of Hawaii and Congress. I will continue supporting all 
investigations and assessments, and am committed to protect and 
preserve the Hawaiian environment. Additionally, I am committed 
to a culture of get real, get better, and in pursuing a culture 
that is self-assessing, self-correcting, and learning.
    Thank you for the opportunity to discuss these issues with 
you today. And I look forward to fielding your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Admiral Stamatopoulos can be 
found in the Appendix on page 67.]
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, Admiral.
    In your testimony you laid out who is responsible for the 
various activities. I would like you, your staff, and our staff 
to get that down clearly so that we know how to deal with 
accountability.
    I now turn to Captain Michael McGinnis, Pacific Fleet 
Surgeon, U.S. Pacific Fleet. Captain.

   STATEMENT OF CAPT MICHAEL B. McGINNIS, USN, PACIFIC FLEET 
                  SURGEON, U.S. PACIFIC FLEET

    Captain McGinnis. Good morning, Chairman Garamendi, Ranking 
Member Waltz, and members of the Readiness Subcommittee. It is 
an honor for me to appear before you. I am Captain Michael 
McGinnis, the U.S. Pacific Fleet Surgeon and senior medical 
adviser.
    I was born and raised in a Navy family, attended medical 
school at the University of Virginia, and received a master in 
public health from the University of North Carolina. I trained 
in the Navy in internal medicine. I have served in a diverse 
range of assignments globally, including as senior medical 
officer aboard the USS Nimitz, as commanding officer of the 
U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, and as the Naval Forces 
Europe/Naval Forces Africa and 6th Fleet Surgeon.
    I am the head of the joint health services working group in 
support of the PACFLT crisis action team. Our priority is the 
safety and well-being of all served by the Navy water 
distribution system.
    The joint health services working group understands we need 
to get this right for our families and the people of Hawaii. We 
have a robust joint and interagency response to this crisis. 
Senior leaders and experts from the Military Health System, 
together with the Hawaii Department of Health, are providing 
evidenced-based comprehensive medical support for all of our 
families.
    At the outset of the public health emergency, our joint 
military medical team established medical outreach locations 
within our neighborhoods to provide medical screening and 
counseling. We received over 130 medical subject matter experts 
and experienced personnel from the joint medical force. Navy 
Medicine deployed teams within 12 hours of notification to 
enhance our medical support to our community. Included were 
environmental health, public health, toxicology, and water 
quality experts. Our medical teams have screened over 5,900 
patients during this event. The vast majority were conducted 
within the first 2 weeks of our response.
    Patient symptoms were consistent with an acute 
environmental exposure event. Patient symptoms consistent with 
the following: nausea, vomiting, headache, diarrhea, skin or 
eye irritation. Once patients were removed from the water 
source, the symptoms rapidly resolved. We are committed to 
working tirelessly to assist every person that has been 
impacted by this issue, understand their concerns, and provide 
the appropriate medical care that they deserve.
    I appreciate and thank you for your commitment and enduring 
support to our service members and our families. I am standing 
by for your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Captain McGinnis can be found in 
the Appendix on page 73.]
    Mr. Garamendi. I thank you. And for all of the witnesses, 
thank you for your testimony.
    I am going to read the gavel order so that the members can 
be prepared for their turn at questions. I will start, followed 
by Mr. Waltz, Mr. Courtney, and Mr. Scott. We will then move 
forward and I will update as we go.
    First, there is absolutely no doubt that this is a very 
serious crisis. A crisis of health, the impact on the 
personnel, the families, is extraordinary as just testified by 
Captain McGinnis. And it is also a repeat of previous problems 
at Red Hill. I am determined that this--that the Navy be held 
accountable for what has happened, and that they move 
expeditiously to resolve, and to avoid any future problems. I 
already asked that we get a clear understanding of the areas of 
responsibility and the overall responsibility, which is now 
pretty clear. It lies with the Commander of the Pacific Fleet. 
And so, we will have a discussion with the commander of the 
fleet at some point in the future.
    With regard to the issues at hand, Admiral Converse, do you 
know why this recent spill occurred? And if not, what you are 
doing to determine how it happened and why it happened?
    Admiral Converse. Our best information is that this recent 
spill was due to operator error. There is an investigation 
going on that I mentioned earlier that will investigate this 
specific spill on November 20, the recent spill of JP-5 jet 
fuel. It will look at any relationship to the 6 May spill that 
our indications and the investigation concluded was also 
operator error.
    And it will look at how they are linked to this recent 
water contamination issue. And I can tell you that this is 
being done by an officer that is independent of the chain of 
command, of the operations, the maintenance, and the resourcing 
of the Red Hill facility. It is being done by a commander and 
with a team that has a high degree of technical expertise.
    And we are bringing in outside activities to support this 
investigation from several levels of expertise, and local 
hydrologists, and folks that are experienced in fuel 
distribution in a commercial area and in safety so that we can 
get this right. And once we have done that, we will report out 
and tell you what we find.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Garamendi. As I have discussed with you yesterday when 
we briefly met, I intend that this issue be taken up in the 
next year's NDAA, the work we are now commencing. So we will 
need information along the way here from all of you. Keep that 
in mind. I am not going to allow deadlines to be waived. We are 
going to hold you to the deadlines that are presently laid out. 
I do not want another year to go by without the NDAA providing 
the specific authorities and money necessary to resolve this 
issue.
    With that, I am going to turn to Mr. Kahele for 2\1/2\ 
minutes. And then we will come back to Mr. Waltz--excuse me, I 
am not going to do that now.
    I am going to turn to Mr. Waltz for his opening questions 
and I will come back to Mr. Kahele. Mr. Waltz, please excuse me 
for my brief absence of proper----
    Mr. Waltz. No problem, Mr. Chair.
    So I am not sure. I will just throw this out to the panel, 
who is best position to answer it. But my understanding is the 
Pacific Fleet commander has indicated his intent to comply with 
the administrative order to defuel the Red Hill complex. I 
guess my question is to verify that understanding. But too, 
secondly, is the Navy considering further options to contest 
the administrative order?
    Admiral Converse. I will take that, sir.
    So yes, we are in receipt of the emergency order issued by 
the Hawaii Department of Health. And we are taking action, 
because that is a lawful order to comply with that. So on the 
7th of January Admiral Paparo issued a directive to subordinate 
commands and within his staff to start initiating efforts. And 
in fact, we had already begun taking efforts as early as the 
beginning of December on many [inaudible] based on an order by 
the Secretary of the Navy and just some prudent practices 
associated with it that would have gone even without an order 
along way towards complying with the ultimate elements of the 
order. So yes, we are complying with the order.
    And then I--I am not a part of the decisionmaking apparatus 
on whether or not the Navy is going to contest that order. I 
don't have any information on that at this point.
    Mr. Waltz. Okay. So to be clear, the Navy is going to 
proceed with defueling, in compliance with the order. But to 
your knowledge, as the Deputy Commander of PACFLT, you don't 
know whether the Navy will take any steps that contest the 
order, either in the very near term or some time in the near 
future?
    Admiral Converse. So the decision on whether to contest the 
order has to take into account the strategic importance of Red 
Hill, the alternatives, and a number of factors that are 
associated with the combatant commander's responsibilities, and 
ultimately the Secretary of the Navy and OSD [Office of the 
Secretary of Defense] will have to make a decision on that. I 
am not a part of that decisionmaking. I don't have any 
information right now.
    Mr. Waltz. Sure, sure, sure.
    Just in the interest of time, I certainly share the 
chairman's concern on really getting to the bottom of who is in 
charge, who is accountable. By my count, Admiral, forgive me, 
but Stamatopoulos listed five organizations that have, you 
know, somehow their hand in this jar. I think that is something 
we need to take a hard look at. The other piece, Admiral 
Converse, I appreciate everybody on the panel saying they are 
not--the Navy's not going to rest until the well is remediated 
and our families have safe drinking water. But it seems to me 
that the approach here was that this was a one-off crisis, 
rather than a systemic issue. And I realize we are going to 
have a follow-on classified brief.
    But understanding that this may be an opportunity to 
address systemic issues with the fuels laydown across 
INDOPACOM. That this may be an installation issue rather than 
an operator issue. If it is just an operator issue, do we have 
a training, and operations and maintenance problem? I think we 
really--so far I am coming away from this with more questions 
than answers.
    I will just follow up with one more in the interest of 
time. I am concerned, however, you are proceeding with the 
defueling of Red Hill. To the extent you could talk about it 
here, what will that impact have in the near term? What impact 
is that going to have on immediate INDOPACOM operations?
    Admiral Converse. There will be no immediate impacts as we 
proceed over the next several months with the assessments and 
the development of the schedules and the work plans, because 
any decision as we move forward to take corrective actions 
based on the investigation that we do, complete the third-party 
assessments that are required to identify the corrective 
actions in operations and maintenance in the facilities before 
we do any fuel operations will take some time.
    And we are working with the Defense Logistics Agency who 
owns the fuel and the distribution of the fuel to support our 
military to provide more fidelity to the combatant commander on 
long-term risks. In the short term, we can manage it with our 
local fuel stocks and with alternate distribution methods.
    And then the long-term decision on the ultimate disposition 
of Red Hill and the distribution of the fuel will be made at 
the combatant commander and above level in consultation with 
the Defense Logistics Agency and the military services to which 
that fuel is provided.
    Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Admiral.
    And I would certainly share the chairman's, you know, 
sentiment that I think it would be preferable for the Navy, for 
DLA, for OSD, to very transparently and expeditiously come to 
the committee with your plans and drive that process rather 
than the committee driving the process for you. But I mean, one 
way or another this is going to move forward and the current 
situation is unacceptable.
    Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And I yield my time.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Waltz.
    As I said a moment ago, the current gavel order is 
Courtney, Scott, and then we will move beyond that.
    Mr. Courtney, you are up.
    Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to all 
the witnesses. I appreciate the sincerity of all your remarks 
here this morning, DC time.
    I would like to just note that the chairman I think has 
really had the committee on this issue for really a good month 
or so. And I also, as John knows, Mr. Kahele joined us in 
California with Navy leadership back on December 5th, who I 
just have to say publicly is just doing an outstanding job 
along with his colleagues in the Hawaii delegation, Senator 
Hirano, Senator Schatz, Mr. Case, who is with us here today. 
And honestly, I think the urgency and the acceleration of 
efforts, which the Navy has done in December, is in my opinion 
a large part due to their advocacy on behalf of their 
constituents.
    You know, I just would like to ask a couple of questions. 
Admiral Converse, again, you listed a pretty impressive list of 
response in terms of taking care of lodging, water 
distribution, family assistance center, showers, laundry.
    Admiral Korka, again you described what is been being done 
in terms of just securing the actual fueling and water 
distribution system.
    Admiral Converse, how much has this cost to date? Do we 
have a tally in terms of just where we stand in terms of 
expenditures?
    Admiral Converse. We do have a process that is estimating 
the cost and then ultimately we will have a cost estimate. I 
can tell you that the running costs when you consider the 
temporary lodging, and the transportation, and the leasing of 
all the filtering assemblies, and all the other things that we 
have had to do to clean up the well and the water distribution 
system, right now the tally is well over $250 million.
    Mr. Courtney. Yeah, I have heard that number already being 
discussed. Mr. Lamborn talked about the rather large size of 
the defense budget, which the Readiness Subcommittee has, but 
it is not infinite. Okay? And when you take a $250 million 
expenditure, which is really just an emergency expenditure, and 
the Navy has to eat that. That is a repair of a surface ship. 
That is, you know, could have been a good down payment for 
SIOPs [Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program] in terms 
of getting our dry docks repaired.
    And thank you for the answer, by the way. I mean, that 
transparency I think is really important right now. But 
projecting forward, I mean, obviously, the meter is going to be 
running for a while. And as we try to balance as a 
subcommittee, you know, what are our next steps--and, you know, 
obviously the status quo is costing us a fortune. As aside from 
just the human cost in terms of our Navy, and Army, and Air 
Force personnel and their families. So that is something 
hopefully, Mr. Chairman, moving forward we are going to 
continue to get updates, you know, as this process continues.
    One other question again, Admiral Converse, if it is 
operation error--let's just sort of hypothetically say that 
that is the case. On a given day, on a given shift at Red Hill, 
what is the number of personnel that are there? How many Navy 
supervisors are there? How many civilian defense personnel are 
there? I mean, this is an incredibly sensitive fueling 
capacity, which Mr. Waltz, I think really powerfully described. 
And obviously, it is exposed and vulnerable to water drinking. 
What are we doing there in terms of manning on any given day?
    Admiral Converse. So the overall manning of the Red Hill 
Bulk Fuel Storage Facility sits at about 33 Active Duty 
military and about 27 civilian employees. And on any given 
shift--and they operate 24/7, 8-hour shifts--it's 4 civilians 
on watch.
    And I am going to turn to Admiral Pete Stamatopoulos, 
NAVSUP, who owns the operations and maintenance of that 
facility, to make sure I got these numbers correct.
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Very close, sir. The numbers at Red 
Hill to be specific, sir, the Red Hill is currently billeted 
for about 40 personnel. Of that 40 personnel, there are 12 
watch standers, divided into 3 watch sections. So at any 24/7 
hours a day, a week, a year, there are four watch standers, 
regardless of whether there are operations.
    The balance of the employees are conducting operator-level 
maintenance, visual inspections, and are in the Red Hill 
facility, along with numerous others to include from the Naval 
Facilities Engineering [Systems] Command, contractors. So any 
given day, there are quite a few people, sir. I hope that 
answers your question.
    Mr. Courtney. It does. I would just say as a layman, that 
doesn't seem enough to me. But again, that is obviously 
something we are going to obviously process in the coming 
weeks.
    Thank you to the witnesses. And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Courtney.
    We now turn to Mr. Scott.
    Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I think my question will start with Admiral Korka. If I 
am wrong about who can answer this, then I apologize. But we 
have got two issues here. One is we have got the contamination 
that is obviously got to be addressed and what happened there. 
And the other is the drinking water. And my question is, the 
southern Oahu basal aquifer, is there another aquifer that we 
could use for the drinking water for the base?
    Admiral Korka. The system for the Navy is comprised of 
about 250 miles of distribution. We actually have 7 storage 
tanks. And we actually have three pumping wells that we use. So 
two of our three pumping wells have been secured. And so right 
now we are supplying our demand through one pumping well that 
we are using today. So it has--our demand is 20 million gallons 
a day. And so, that one that is in line represents about 10 on 
80 percent of our load right now. So that is how we are 
operating right now.
    Mr. Scott. Okay. So two of the three then have been 
contaminated and one is not contaminated. Is that correct?
    Admiral Korka. We have contamination level in one of the 
wells and that is at the Red Hill, is what we are discussing 
right now. There is another well that is in close proximity, 
but in the abundance of caution and in discussion with the 
Board of Water Supply we made a decision to close that well, 
just to make sure that it didn't become vulnerable.
    Mr. Scott. Is it in a separate aquifer?
    Admiral Korka. Yes, sir. It is in a separate--yes, sir.
    Mr. Scott. Okay. But it would be possible then to use the 
two wells, assuming that they were not contaminated, if Hawaii 
agrees and our testing shows that those two wells are safe for 
our people, is it possible then to use those wells to supply 
the water that our men and women need on base?
    Admiral Korka. We can supply it, sir, but we would probably 
have to work with some restrictions in our demand so we may 
not--irrigation may have to be secured. So we would have to 
monitor that very closely.
    Mr. Scott. Okay. All right.
    So there are 20 tanks on the facility. At any given time as 
I understand it about five of those tanks would be empty. When 
those tanks are empty, do we do regular inspections on those 
tanks?
    Admiral Korka. Sir, I would like to have Admiral 
Stamatopoulos address that one since he's the operator of that 
facility.
    Mr. Scott. Okay.
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Thank you for the question, 
Congressman. Yes, sir, you are correct. There are 20 tanks. 
There are 2 tanks that are permanently out of service, tank 1 
and 19. Tank 1, I believe, is being used as a potential 
prototype for a second containment lining in the future.
    There are two that are currently undergoing what are 
calling cleaning, inspection, and repair. There are eight that 
are outside the recommended API [American Petroleum Institute] 
periodicity, and there are eight tanks which are currently 
certified.
    Now, when a tank goes offline and is drained, it is my 
understanding that they become in compliance at that time also.
    Mr. Scott. So they are in compliant, but if we refilled 
them with fuel then they would no longer be compliant?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. And this isn't my technical 
expertise area, but the American Petroleum Institute has a 
recommended, if you will, recommended periodicity for tanks, 
which is about 20 years.
    And so in addition to that, that doesn't necessarily mean, 
sir, my understanding is is that the tanks are unsafe, but 
there are other mitigations that can be used to assure the 
tightness of the tank and the integrity of the fuel system.
    Mr. Scott. And a tank is approximately the same size as a 
large tanker with the actual capacity volume. Is that correct? 
Ten million gallons?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. It is quite a few, sir. I would have 
to take that as a lookup and get back to you. But yes, they are 
quite large tanks, yes, sir.
    Mr. Scott. So on this operator error, do we know how much 
fuel was spilled?
    Admiral Converse. If I could, I will take that. Sir, this 
is Admiral Blake Converse.
    So we don't have the specific quantity on the November 20th 
event of the amount of fuel spilled, yet. We expect that to be 
a part of the investigation that will conclude this week. And 
once we have that information, we will share it.
    Mr. Scott. Admiral, my time is expired, but it seems to 
me--did the operator overfill the tank? Is that what--did they 
get above the steel liner in the tank?
    Admiral Converse. So the tank, sir, about 12\1/2\ million 
gallons. We fill them up to about 10 million gallons. This, the 
most recent event and, in fact, the 6 May event weren't 
associated with the integrity of the tanks. They were 
associated with improper operation of the piping systems or 
auxiliary systems associated with the bulk fuel storage 
facility, not the integrity of any of the 20 tanks themselves.
    Mr. Scott. Okay. I think that is an important part of this. 
And I look forward to further discussions.
    Mr. Chairman, thank you for your patience. I know that I am 
30 seconds over. I yield.
    Mr. Garamendi. I will hold you accountable, Mr. Scott.
    We shall move on now. The gavel order going forward is 
Luria, Green, Kahele.
    Mrs. Luria, you are up.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to reflect back on one of the comments that Ranking 
Member Waltz made. And I think his observation that this 
doesn't appear to be a one-off crisis but, rather, a systemic 
issue I think is very accurate. And I think those of us on this 
committee and other committees on Armed Services have had the 
opportunity to discuss a lot of incidents that the Navy has had 
over recent years, the most recent, of course, being the 
Connecticut, the Bonhomme Richard, the McCain, Fitzgerald, a 
lot of other things, which, you know, really, if we are talking 
about this as an operator error, reflect back to some of the 
same systemic issues that we continue to see over and over 
again within the Navy.
    And, you know, as we are talking about defueling the tanks, 
I am really quite confused. If this was related to operator 
error and the particular incident that happened most recently 
does not have to do with the integrity, structural integrity or 
condition of the tanks, what purpose does defueling the tanks 
at this point serve?
    And my second question on that is, in defueling the tanks, 
although it may happen during routine operations to defuel in 
order to inspect, it appears like it is an operation that is 
not a routine operation. And this happened because of operator 
error.
    What additional supervision, additional procedural measures 
are being put in place during these nonroutine operations 
during this tank draining to ensure that we have, you know, 
extra eyes on and extra measures in place to make sure that we 
don't have additional incidents?
    Admiral Converse. Okay, ma'am, I will take that. So first, 
I think that the insight that Representative Waltz and you have 
identified that, hey, there seems to be some systemic 
operational issues, that is precisely why Admiral Paparo pulled 
this recent November 20th fuel spill up to his level, even 
though he is not in the chain of command on the management, 
operations, or maintenance of this Red Hill facility, and 
directed the investigation, as the senior officer present, 
because he was concerned that we had a 6 May event. There is a 
possible relationship to this November 20th event.
    This is a strategic fuel facility for the entire military, 
not just the Navy. So we need to understand and not treat these 
as individual isolated incidents and take minor corrective 
actions, but treat these as potential systemic issues, get to 
the root causes, and fix those problems. And that is precisely 
why he directed this investigation even before we had the water 
contamination issue.
    The second piece to that is, is there risks of operating 
these tanks and defueling them if we haven't identified the 
causes of these recent fuel spills and corrected them? I think 
that is also a concern. It is part of our investigation.
    It is also part of the third-party assessments that we are 
conducting that were directed by the emergency order and were 
actually directed by the Secretary of the Navy. And those are 
focused on the operations and maintenance of the facility. And 
it is going to bring in a third party.
    We have gone through the work of soliciting bids for that 
third-party assessment, and we are going to place them under 
contract shortly. And they are going to come in with expertise, 
hopefully, depending on the vendor we select from the oil and 
natural gas community, from commercial practices in fuel 
distribution, and provide a separate assessment of our 
operations and maintenance to inform the corrective actions 
that we need to take in manpower, in our operating procedures, 
in our training, and then the safety features and the design 
and the environmental protective measures we take of the 
facility itself, to make sure before we start defueling 
operations or any operations at Red Hill that we can do it 
safely.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you. And I look forward to further more 
in-depth conversations about the operational impacts and 
specifically discussing the strategic importance of having this 
fuel available in Hawaii for our operations.
    So thank you to our witnesses today. And I do think that 
this is part of a much larger systemic issue that we have been 
seeing repeated occurrences of over recent years in the Navy. 
So I am hopeful that this will provide some additional insight, 
but we also really need to provide not just recommendations, 
but take action on those corrective actions recommended by 
investigation after investigation after investigation that has, 
you know, pointed out these shortfalls in our operating 
procedures, compliance, and training. So thank you again.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mrs. Luria.
    We now turn to Dr. Green.
    Dr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for putting 
this committee hearing together.
    I want to echo your congratulations to my colleague Mike 
Waltz for the new member of his family and, of course, for 
being selected to be the ranking member of this committee. I 
think it is an excellent choice.
    Mike, as a former--or as a Green Beret--I guess you are 
never a former Green Beret, Mike, just like you are never a 
former Ranger or Marine--understands that readiness is a--so a 
five-component to readiness: Right people with the right health 
and abilities to do the mission; the right equipment; the right 
training; the right doctrine; and almost probably more 
importantly, the right leadership.
    And this issue here at Red Hill hits on many of those 
components to readiness and, thus, readiness. And I think the 
most burning question to me--and I throw it out to any of the 
members of the panel--you know, right now this challenge, 
confronting this challenge, what impact to INDOPACOM's ability 
to do its mission? What is the impact? Are we deterred in any 
way in our ability to meet the challenge from China in the 
Indo-Pacific?
    Admiral Converse. In the short term, there is no immediate 
impact to our ability to do our mission. Our day-to-day 
peacetime operations are supplied by our tank farm that is on 
the waterfront, not associated with the underground tanks for 
the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. There is going to be a 
separate brief to the members, and it is going to be at the 
classified level, that is going to address the strategic 
importance of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility and its 
place within the more broad military fuel distribution system. 
And I will defer to that to talk about the long-term impact of 
ceasing operations of Red Hill and of potentially defueling it 
or shifting the fuel elsewhere.
    Dr. Green. I would assume then that perhaps discussing the 
various courses of action that can be taken that are being 
considered probably could be deferred or punted to that 
classified briefing.
    But what I am very interested in are what are each of the 
courses of action that you are presenting the decisionmaker to 
make. I know earlier you said it was above your--or someone 
else was making the decision on what to ultimately do. Perhaps 
in that classified setting, understanding all of the courses of 
action that you guys are considering, if you guys wouldn't mind 
making sure we talk about that then, that would be helpful.
    One last question. The Army alerted its soldiers several 
days ahead of the Navy to stop drinking water, movement of 
personnel, et cetera. And I wonder why it took the Navy a few 
days to echo that or to also initiate that, and who is 
responsible for that delay?
    Admiral Converse. I will say also is the--so on the day of 
the event, the 28th of November, we began to receive initial 
reports within the Navy of individual residents that were 
affected by some water contamination issue. And the Joint Base 
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, base commanding officer sent teams out to 
each one of those sites to check on it.
    And then, unfortunately, at some point, with a small amount 
of information and not the full scope of an understanding of 
the impact, he determined that the majority of the distribution 
system was safe and it was impacting only a small number of 
residents, and he made that statement that evening. That was 
incorrect. He subsequently formally apologized for that 
assessment that he made on the ground, based on the limited 
information he had.
    I will tell you that the very next day, once I was directed 
and stood up the joint crisis action team, my first step was to 
work directly with the Department of Health and our other 
service components, and that evening we put out public health 
guidance that was aligned with the Department of Health and it 
was aligned with inputs from our service components.
    So, you know, we were all working aggressively to get the 
right information out. Were there miscues in communications? 
Yes. And was it impactful to our residents? Yes. And we are 
going to fix those in our TTPs [tactics, techniques, and 
procedures]. It was based on poor information and, frankly, 
poor judgment.
    Dr. Green. Okay. Well, that is an admission then. I 
appreciate that. Thank you for saying that.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Dr. Green.
    Mr. Kahele, you are next up. I note that a couple of other 
members have joined us, and we will pick them up in the 
appropriate gavel call.
    Mr. Kahele, you are on.
    Mr. Kahele. Aloha, Chairman Garamendi and Ranking Member 
Waltz, for organizing this important hearing about Kapukaki, 
otherwise known as Red Hill, and the ongoing water crisis on 
the island of Oahu.
    I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before this 
committee. The last time the Readiness Subcommittee met on 
December 2, 2021, I alerted this committee that the Navy was 
experiencing a crisis of astronomical proportions in Hawaii.
    Mr. Chairman, this is not an exaggeration and has proven to 
be 100 percent true. Thousands of families have been displaced. 
Those who unknowingly consumed the contaminated water are 
worried about potential long-term health consequences that they 
may face.
    The fuel leak threatens Oahu's federally designated sole 
source aquifer, which the ranking member correctly stated 
provides 77 percent of Oahu's drinking water. Let me be clear: 
Clean drinking water is national security and cannot be 
compromised for anything.
    The facts speak for themselves, and we in Congress must 
understand the gravity of this situation. We must bring the 
full power of congressional oversight to bear on the Department 
of Defense, to ensure that the Navy is doing its job of taking 
care of our service members and civilians, protecting the 
island's precious water resources, and determining proper 
management of this strategic asset.
    I have several important questions to ask our witnesses 
today, but my first question is directed to Admiral Converse. 
After it was definitively confirmed that the Red Hill well was 
contaminated with petroleum, the State of Hawaii Department of 
Health issued an emergency order on December 6 to the United 
States Navy to suspend operations and defuel the Red Hill Bulk 
Fuel Storage Facility. That emergency order was resisted and 
contested by the United States Navy in late December, and on 
January 3rd it was reaffirmed by the State of Hawaii Department 
of Health in its final decision and order.
    This order has witnessed broad support from the communities 
of Oahu, the Governor, the Department of Health, the State 
Commission on Water Resource Management, the City and County 
Board of Water Supply, City Council members, State legislators. 
In short, Mr. Chairman, the whole of government in Hawaii 
believes that the Navy should comply with this order.
    Admiral Converse, I would like you to reaffirm what you 
stated in your opening statement. On behalf of the entire State 
of Hawaii and a united congressional delegation, is the United 
States Navy going to fully comply with the State of Hawaii's 
legal order to plan and execute the defueling of the Red Hill 
Bulk Fuel Storage Facility?
    Admiral Converse. Sir, thank you. Speaking for my boss, 
Admiral Paparo, whom I know you know, and immediately upon 
receiving the order that was finalized on the 3rd of January, 
Admiral Paparo directed and we issued a tasking order that 
directs our subordinate commands in our headquarters to take 
all measures to implement the Department of Health emergency 
order.
    The well has been isolated and it will remain isolated 
until we have taken corrective actions. We are taking actions 
to establish a filtering system for the Red Hill shaft well. We 
are aggressively pursuing the third-party assessments directed 
in the emergency order that will enable us first to identify 
and fix the problems associated with the operations and 
maintenance of the facility that caused the spills and the 
contamination and that will allow us then to conduct further 
fueling and defueling operations. And that will set the 
conditions for the ability to defuel the plant.
    We are also conducting a broader third-party assessment in 
the overall operations and maintenance of the Red Hill Facility 
and the environmental compliance associated with it. All of 
those actions are in progress in some manner, including the 
contracts for the third-party assessments.
    Mr. Kahele. Well, I appreciate your affirmative answer, 
Admiral Converse. That is great news, and I am sure the people 
of Hawaii greatly appreciate the Navy's commitment to fully 
comply with that order.
    Admiral Stamatopoulos, per the January 7 task force and the 
Commander of the Pacific Fleet, has NAVSUP identified an 
independent third party to assess the system integrity, to 
develop a work plan and implementation schedule?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Congressman, the technical 
evaluation process has just completed today. The Department of 
Health of Hawaii will receive notification of the highest 
technically rated vendor in that, and then we will seek 
awarding that contract here shortly after.
    Mr. Kahele. Admiral, just a last followup to that question. 
Per the task force then, that work and implementation schedule 
is due in 23 days, by February 3rd. Do you believe that tasking 
can be met?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Sir, I believe--and, sir, you are 
very familiar, you know, with the Red Hill location there. It 
is going to be done. A high-level implementation plan and work 
schedule is going to be delivered within that timeframe. But, 
as you are aware, the complexities of it may require more 
detailed engineering analysis if that comes to pass within that 
assessment. But there will be a high-level implementation plan 
and work plan, if you will, to move forward. I hope that 
answers your question, sir.
    Mr. Kahele. Yes, it does. Thank you. And mahalo, Mr. 
Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Before I move on to the gavel order, I want 
to thank you, Mr. Kahele. You brought this to the attention of 
the committee early on. It was at the Reagan Defense Forum that 
we did set up a meeting with the Secretary of the Navy and the 
Chief of Naval Operations, at your request and your leadership 
for the people of Hawaii and your very serious and appropriate 
concerns for them. I hope that we will be having time to come 
back to you after we finish the gavel order.
    There seems to be a few changes in the gavel order. Let me 
see here. Mr. Moore, you are back, so you are next up.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you, Chairman.
    First I want to thank the witnesses for being here. Any of 
the questions I have can be directed to any of the witnesses. I 
will defer to you all for who you feel is best to respond.
    You know, military families, and I see this a lot. I have a 
very important--Hill Air Force Base in my district. And as I 
interact with the community, it is apparent, you know, military 
families, they don't necessarily take the oath of office, but 
they often are--and the spouses and children, they are forced 
to confront the hardships of military life.
    And I share the frustration and outrage of my colleagues 
that any military family lacked clean drinking water, the most 
basic necessities. And I hope my colleagues share my desire to 
identify solutions over sensationalism. And while immediate 
action, compensation, and remediation may all be necessary in 
response to this crisis, I would caution us against 
overreactions that may harm military readiness.
    So it is long recognized that Hawaii's remote location 
makes the State particularly susceptible to high commodity 
prices and supply chain disruptions. This became more clear 
throughout this pandemic. While much is needed to improve Red 
Hill's fuel storage capability, what alternatives are available 
for storing said fuel at a location that is not Red Hill?
    Admiral Converse. I can take that. So I can't prescribe the 
specific locations. What I can tell you, sir, is there is NDAA 
language that directs us to conduct an alternative study. And 
that study, as I recall, directs us to look at sites off of 
Oahu and off of the islands of Hawaii as well as within Hawaii. 
So that is a part of the assessment.
    And I can also tell you that INDOPACOM, whose combatant 
commander and responsible for this area of operation, has 
directed the Defense Logistics Agency, who owns fuel 
distribution across the globe, to evaluate alternatives for 
dispersing this fuel and alternative sites for storing, 
alternative methods for storage, whether it be in a fixed site 
or within tankers that are globally distributed.
    So there are a range of efforts to support that question, 
and they are in progress or they are being considered, and 
third-party assessments will be done to execute those 
assessments.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you. You know, while there is always room 
to improve, but there's efforts to confront, say, the military 
family housing crisis, PFAS [per- and polyfluoroalkyl 
substances] contamination, [which] have shown that the military 
is ready and capable of meeting challenges in response to 
crisis and oftentimes public outrage.
    Do you feel that closing Red Hill is an overreaction to a 
very legitimate issue that the military is capable of solving 
themselves?
    Admiral Converse. My perception is that we need to complete 
our investigation. We need to complete these third-party 
assessments directed by the Secretary of the Navy and in 
compliance with the emergency order, and that will allow us to 
understand the full scope of the issue we have with the current 
operations of Red Hill. It will allow us to assess the 
facilities. And some of these studies on alternative options 
will allow us to understand the risk to national security.
    And with all of that information, we will be well placed to 
make a long-term decision on any subsequent dispersion of the 
fuel to other sites or decisions associated with the Red Hill 
facility itself in the long term.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you. And as we kind of started this 
hearing, you know, and I believe our chairman and both ranking 
member are committed to it, to being a part of a solution going 
forward on whatever issues sort of come up. I have enjoyed that 
part of my experience on this committee, on this subcommittee 
and HASC in general.
    The last question that I would pose, in solidarity with my 
very good friend Rep. Kahele from Hawaii, is what is the Navy 
doing? Please just articulate a little bit more on how to 
reestablish trust with the Oahu community and reassure the 
public that the water system is being properly cleaned and 
treated in going forward.
    Admiral Converse. So, you know what, I think that that is a 
broad question. The first step is that we have to demonstrate 
sincerity and transparency and a commitment to fully 
investigate broadly the recent fuel spills; to identify linkage 
to events that have happened over the last 5 or 10 years at Red 
Hill to understand any systemic issues that are involved with 
that; and to take aggressive efforts going forward to fully fix 
those issues.
    And we need to do that in coordination with our Federal 
regulators, our State regulators, the State and local 
communities, and the Native Hawaiians, and we need to bring 
them in as a part of that recovery effort. And the first step 
are these assessments and investigations, identify the 
corrective actions.
    And the next step to build that confidence is to apply and 
commit the resources, the manpower, and the leadership 
bandwidth to take long-term permanent corrective actions to fix 
the problems that we identify.
    And then the last step is, as we have completed these 
assessments and developed the plans and the environmental 
remediation, we need to do all of that in very close 
coordination with the State of Hawaii, the local communities, 
as well as our Federal regulators.
    And I think if we follow that pattern and that template, we 
will begin to rebuild confidence that the Navy is here, that we 
care about the community, we care about the environment, and we 
care about the people of Hawaii.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you, Admiral. And thank you, other 
witnesses. Thanks, Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you for your question.
    And, Admiral, I gave you a little more time to lay that 
out. I know that is a fundamental question that Mr. Kahele and 
Mr. Case wanted to get to and may come back to that.
    The gavel order has moved around a little bit here, so let 
me tell you the way it presently appears: Ms. Strickland, 
Johnson, and Speier, in that order.
    So, Ms. Strickland, you are up. I don't see you on the 
screen, but if you are there, your turn.
    Ms. Strickland. I am here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I would like to enter the article from Task and Purpose 
titled ``The Navy told this military family they were safe from 
toxic water. Then both their children ended up in the ER'' into 
the record.
    Mr. Garamendi. Without objection, so ordered.
    [The information referred to was not available at the time 
of printing.]
    Ms. Strickland. In this article, one family was told to 
submit a Freedom of Information Act request for the water test 
results when trying to get answers.
    Vice Admiral Lindsey, thank you for your testimony. And we 
all know that we are here because we are fighting for a Nation 
that is safe, just, and secure for those who serve in the 
military and for our civilian families.
    Can you please tell us, Vice Admiral, how you are 
communicating with those who have been affected, and how will 
you ensure that service members and their families will have 
full and complete answers for their questions?
    Admiral Lindsey. Yes, ma'am. We are communicating and have 
been communicating over many different venues. Social media, 
through press releases. I have had multiple town hall meetings 
in housing areas, and then have a very robust website that 
people can go on and can see a wealth of information, to 
include the test results. Any test results that have been 
validated by the Department of Health and by the EPA and by the 
Navy and our sister services are posted on that website and 
readily available to all the members of the community.
    And so that is the transparency that we are pursuing. As 
has been previously mentioned, that is the trust and the 
confidence that we are working to rebuild with our families. We 
understand that we impinged on that, and we take that seriously 
and we are working diligently to restore it.
    Ms. Strickland. Great. Well, thank you for your response.
    And I would like to yield any remaining time I have to my 
colleague, Representative Kahele.
    Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Kahele.
    Mr. Kahele. Aloha, Representative Strickland, and I really 
appreciate the extra time. And I will stay on the subject that 
you started on in terms of readiness, because this is a 
readiness hearing and it is important that we talk about those 
thousands of military families who have been displaced over the 
holidays.
    My question is directed to Admiral Lindsey. Since November 
29th, our service members who have been living, frankly, a 
nightmare. They were told that they could return home by 
Christmas. That is what the Navy initially said. That never 
happened. Then the new year passed.
    And so I am asking for the thousands of military families 
and also civilian families, some of them who are living in 
homes without running water, others who have been displaced to 
alternate lodging, and many who are either staying down in 
Waikiki or in area hotels: When can those civilian and military 
families expect to go back to their homes, to have a home that 
is safe to be in that has clean running water, and they can 
have the full confidence that it is safe to move back? Do you 
have an idea of when that is, Admiral Lindsey?
    Admiral Lindsey. Yes, sir. We want to make sure that the 
homes have drinkable water. And so we are working diligently 
with our partners at the Hawaii Department of Health and the 
EPA and our fellow services to once we attain this drinkable 
water and it is safe to use, then that those families that have 
chosen to displace will be able to return to their homes.
    We expect that to begin occurring here in late January and 
proceed through the middle of February. Original estimates were 
not accurate, because of the scope and scale with which we had 
to address the water system, again, in conjunction with our 
partners.
    And so that is the current timeline, late January to early 
February. And that schedule is posted on our website so folks 
can see it and be well aware of it, and we communicate that 
through the various venues we have been using to communicate.
    Mr. Kahele. Alright. Thank you for that question.
    And, Chairman, I can't see the time. So when I do hit the 
remaining time left from my colleague from Washington State, 
can you please let me know?
    Mr. Garamendi. You have 2 minutes.
    Mr. Kahele. Two minutes. All right. Thank you, sir.
    I will go to a follow-on question for Admiral 
Stamatopoulos, and this talks about the structural integrity of 
the Red Hill tanks.
    In your earlier answer, you discussed the 20 Red Hill 
tanks. And it is important for my colleagues to know that there 
are two tanks that have not been in operation for many, many 
years, tanks number 1 and tanks number 19. Tank number 1 is the 
proposed prototype if there were to be a secondary containment 
type of prototype to be done. But when looking at the other 18 
tanks that are or could be potentially put into operation, 
tanks number 3, number 4, and number 11 have not been inspected 
for approximately 40 years.
    So my question to NAVSUP is, or Naval Supply Systems 
Command is, why are these tanks still in operation, and how can 
you assure this committee and the people of Hawaii that tanks 
3, 4, and 11, that have not even been looked at in the last 40 
years, are safe to use and meet current API 653 guidelines for 
bulk fuel storage underground facilities?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Yes, sir. Thank you for the 
question. Yes, you are correct. There are tanks, as you 
mentioned, that have been out of periodicity for quite a long 
time.
    I am not an expert within the API area. However, the API 
563, of course, is a recommendation, best commercial practice. 
And after an inspection is completed, that can be then the next 
inspection 20 years, as you are aware. In these cases, all of 
these tanks are on a schedule, which is put throughout the 
ecosystem, all the way up into DLA Energy, NAVFAC, CNIC, 
NAVSUP, the geographic combatant commanders around the globe 
through their Joint Petroleum Offices, and they are aware of 
this.
    As you know, sir, there are certain requirements for 
baseline activities, current operations, and then there are 
also war reserve requirements. So through that process, there 
are, if you will, shared risks, if you will, to determine which 
tanks will be up next in the clean, inspect, and repair cycle. 
And all that has to be balanced, if you will, with the 
geographic combatant commander's risk comfort, if you will.
    Mr. Kahele. Great. Well, I would recommend that tanks 7 and 
8 be the next on those lists, because those tanks are 4 years 
overdue from their last clean, inspect, repair that was done 
back in 1998. And there is a series of tanks, several of them 
that were all done, clean, inspect, repair, in the late 1990s. 
And I don't know if that inspection, repair process done well 
over 20 years ago complies with current API 653 or Department 
of Defense Unified Facilities Criteria for underground bulk 
fuel storage facilities, nor do I think that any of those tanks 
have the required or the suggested polysulfide modified novolac 
epoxy solution that has been applied to the interior of those 
tanks. So that would be my humble suggestion.
    Thank you, and I will yield back my time.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Kahele. We are going to turn 
now to Ms.--hang on just a second. The gavel order keeps 
changing on me here. We are going to turn to Speier and Case. 
But before I go there, there are going to be a whole series of 
specific requirements, information, questions like you have 
just raised, Mr. Kahele.
    The committee will continue to work directly with the Navy 
on all of the details, the engineering details, the issues of 
inspections as well as the questioning of operators. And we 
will work on that on a daily/weekly basis, and we will come 
back at this in a classified hearing. Probably in about a 
month, we will deal with that.
    Ms. Speier, you are up next. The floor is yours.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    My first question can be addressed to whomever is 
appropriately to answer. We have heard from families that they 
are receiving notices from TRICARE, from the TRICARE contractor 
asking beneficiaries to submit third-party claims for the care 
they were provided after exposure. Is the Navy prepared to 
address the follow-on costs associated with this disaster?
    Admiral Converse. So I will take that. So, in terms of have 
we budgeted for the cost of this event? Clearly, we have not. 
What is going to be the impact of any third-party claims? I 
don't have that information, but I would be happy to take that 
for the record and get back to you on the details of both what 
we expect or estimate to be the cost, how we are adjudicating 
them, and how we are going to pay for them. I don't have that 
information to pass to you right now.
    [The information referred to was not available at the time 
of printing.]
    Ms. Speier. All right. If you would do that and provide it 
to the committee. But I also want clarification that all the 
follow-on care will be paid for by the Navy for any exposure 
that people sustained.
    Admiral Converse. So I think that we can talk about the--
Admiral Lindsey can talk very quickly about the claims process 
associated with that, and our Doc McGinnis can talk about the 
medical care for our Active Duty service members who are being 
treated. So first I will go to Admiral Lindsey.
    Ms. Speier. Well, actually, I don't necessarily want to 
hear that. I just want confirmation that any aftercare third-
party claims will be paid for by the Federal Government, 
specifically the Navy.
    Admiral Lindsey. Yes. Yes, ma'am. The claims are open. 
People can come and file claims, and they will be paid for by 
the U.S. Navy.
    Ms. Speier. And how are you communicating with the families 
that this claims process is available?
    Admiral Lindsey. Through our website, through town halls, 
through social media, and also, for those in housing, directly 
through the management companies that talk to them on a regular 
basis.
    Ms. Speier. I am sure my good colleague Mr. Kahele is also 
putting it on his website, because that is a good way to make 
sure they are aware of it.
    My next questions are to Admiral Stamatopoulos. In regard 
to the Red Hill fuel operation, were there any formal 
complaints preceding the leaks filed between May 2021 and 
November 2021, warning about the safety or any other 
preexisting hazardous conditions?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Ma'am, I am aware that there is an 
ongoing investigation, which I am not privy to--this is 
separate and apart from the Commander of the Pacific Fleet's 
investigation--which addresses I think the topic that you are 
raising.
    So the answer to you is yes, there is what I understand an 
OGC [Office of the General Counsel] investigation or IG 
[Inspector General] investigation directly looking into that.
    Ms. Speier. So the committee now is aware that there were 
complaints and warnings filed before the leak was finally 
addressed. Is that correct?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Ma'am, I don't know the specifics of 
what the claims were. Again, I am not privy to that. All I know 
is that there is an investigation and legal matter which is 
outside my field of view that involves employees of the Red 
Hill complex.
    Ms. Speier. All right. Maybe, Mr. Chairman, there might be 
a way for us to have some kind of briefing from the IG.
    My next question, have you reviewed the command climate 
surveys for Red Hill?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. No, ma'am, I have not seen the most 
recent command climate survey. I would have to go back and look 
and see. I do get briefings when the change of commands occur, 
and they go through surveys, but I am not familiar with the 
most recent one. I will have to go back and look and refresh my 
memory.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you. I would ask that you review the 
command climate surveys and report back to the committee on 
what you found.
    Do you have any awareness of a toxic work environment at 
Red Hill, including harassment, discrimination, or any other 
behavior which employees reported were unable to carry out 
their daily operations of Red Hill safely and per the 
procedures?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Again, ma'am, what I know I have 
just shared with you and the committee. That is under 
investigation and is outside my immediate field of view, as I 
may be called in to be a disposition authority there. So I just 
do not have that detailed information that you are seeking at 
this point.
    Ms. Speier. All right. I think we would all appreciate your 
follow-through with those questions and respond to the 
committee.
    Thank you. My time is expired and I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Ms. Speier, as chair of the Personnel 
Subcommittee, if you need additional time with an additional 
question, you have it now.
    Ms. Speier. I guess my followup question then, Mr. 
Chairman, would be: What are the qualifications for the roles 
of senior Navy officer leadership at the facility? Are the 
commanding officers and/or executive officers that are assigned 
to Red Hill trained in petroleum management?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. I will take that question, ma'am. 
The answer is no. Commanding officers and executive officers do 
not undergo specific detailed training in petroleum management. 
They do receive briefings and some basic training for that, but 
I would not consider them to be petroleum experts.
    That said, the current commanding officer of Fleet 
Logistics Center does happen to be the most experienced Supply 
Corps officer, in my professional estimation, to have fuels 
experience.
    Ms. Speier. So, moving forward, is there a recognition that 
having that kind of expertise would be appropriate, that kind 
of training?
    Admiral Stamatopoulos. Yes, ma'am, I would say that is--
while I don't have insight into the PACFLT investigation, but I 
can assure you that it is highly likely that the team is 
looking into all aspects, to include the training, as will the 
safety and investigation board which was convened yesterday.
    And as some of the members previously pointed out in their 
observations with regard to operations and maintenance and 
training, it really calls for a detailed look of doctrine, 
organization, training, material solutions, leader development, 
which is your specific concern there, personnel, facilities.
    There is quite a bit, that we have to take a hard look at 
that, we have to get real, and we have to understand, through 
these investigations, through the third-party assessments, 
where we need to get better and then move out aggressively, 
with humility, to make that happen.
    I hope that answers your questions, but we owe that to the 
entire Department of Defense across all field facilities.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. Needless to say, Ms. Speier, we will follow 
up on all of those questions as well as the other questions 
raised by the members.
    Having completed the round of members of the committee, we 
now turn to Mr. Case. It is your turn. Thank you very much for 
joining the hearing. I know that you, together with Mr. Kahele, 
have been on this issue from the very outset. You have been 
outspoken. You have provided all of us with information as well 
as motivation. Mr. Case, the floor is yours.
    Mr. Case. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and Ranking 
Member, for allowing me to participate in the subcommittee's 
critical hearing here.
    This issue is one of the most single important issues for 
our delegation, for the people of Hawaii, for our leaders, of 
any that we face in Hawaii today. And the fact that this 
subcommittee takes it that seriously is of great comfort to us 
in Hawaii.
    And I would say this is not only a matter of the health and 
safety of hundreds of thousands of residents of Hawaii and 
visitors to Hawaii, but it is critical to the support, 
confidence, and trust of the people of Hawaii in the U.S. 
military and in our mission in the Indo-Pacific. And this is 
certainly an important ingredient in this subcommittee's focus 
on the readiness of our military. There must be an alternative 
to Red Hill, and this subcommittee is very deeply involved in 
what the best alternative to that is.
    Admiral Converse, thank you for your confirmation to 
Representative Kahele, my partner, and the delegation on this, 
that the Navy will comply with the emergency order. And he 
asked you that direct question and you went on at some length, 
but I just want a yes-or-no answer.
    Am I correct in assuming from your answer, which 
Congressman Kahele also assumed, that the Navy will comply with 
the emergency order?
    Admiral Converse. Sir, yes, we are complying with the 
emergency order and we have already begun taking steps along 
every one of the lines directed in the order.
    Mr. Case. Thank you very much, Admiral. Does the Navy 
acknowledge and agree that the State of Hawaii has the legal 
authority to regulate Red Hill under both Federal and State 
law?
    Admiral Converse. So I am not--I don't think I am in a 
position to make a decision on whether--who has the authority 
between the Federal and State regulators.
    What I can tell you is that we recognize that the 
Department of Health emergency order directing specific 
elements associated with Red Hill is a legal order and we are 
complying.
    Mr. Case. Admiral, I know that you perhaps are not in a 
position to answer the question fully, but certainly this 
hearing is being closely monitored by the Department of 
Defense's personnel as well as lawyers, and I would ask for a 
specific confirmation from them that the State of Hawaii has 
the legal authority to implement and enforce its emergency 
order.
    And I think that is important for this reason, Admiral. I 
appreciate and commend the Navy on agreeing to comply with the 
emergency order, but this is coming off as a voluntary 
compliance. And a voluntary compliance can at some point in the 
future be reversed, and that is the fear of the State of 
Hawaii.
    And so I would strongly urge the Navy and the Department of 
Defense, as you analyze your clear legal options in terms of 
the emergency order, to confirm that the State of Hawaii does, 
in fact, have this authority. It is my strong advice to you. 
That is my request to you.
    Let me move on to the actual implementation of the 
emergency order. The emergency order requires the Navy, as 
Congressman Kahele stated, to within 23 days come up with an 
implementation schedule, including a plan of defueling, 
following which the Department of Health and also the EPA and 
others will evaluate that plan.
    And once that plan is approved, you are required under the 
emergency order, which you say you are going to comply with, to 
defuel, defuel within 30 days after that.
    Do you have an estimate of how long it will take for you to 
implement a defueling order, first of all? And second, are you 
intimately involved right now, you collectively, in the actual 
funding requests that it is going to take to implement that 
order?
    And I say this with great concern that, to my knowledge, 
with the exception of one request to Congress in my 
Appropriations Committee for some emergency funding for some of 
your initial actions, to my knowledge, there has been no formal 
request to Congress beyond that.
    And I have no idea where exactly the Department of Defense 
stands right now in terms of the President's own budget request 
for fiscal year 2023, and I believe that there should be a very 
significant request in the President's budget to implement the 
emergency order.
    Admiral Converse. So, Congressman Case, first up, I want to 
thank you for your advocacy and understanding of the timing. 
Yes. Are we concerned that this is a very aggressive timeline 
to conduct this third-party assessment and develop the schedule 
and the work plan? Yes.
    We are pursuing the issuing of this contract soonest. And 
as soon as that contract is issued, we will get the right folks 
in touch with the vendors and we will make immediate decisions 
on what is the timeline, how do we get a short-term work 
schedule and a scope of the work that needs to be done to 
correct any deficiencies associated with the operations, 
maintenance, facility safety, to be able to defuel.
    And as soon as we have that scoping work done, we 
understand the importance of getting that to the right people 
so we can start budgeting for that, for making decisions in the 
current year's budget. And I don't have any more information on 
that other than that we recognize that the timelines are short 
and we recognize the linkage to the budgeting cycle and that we 
need to get those inputs to you soonest. And I thank you for 
your advocacy.
    Mr. Case. Thank you, Admiral.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Case.
    I would point out to all the committee that we have not yet 
completed the appropriation process for the current year, let 
alone for the coming year. And the NDAA, while completed, is 
not an appropriation. So we are going to undoubtedly in the 
days ahead as we approach February 18th, this issue may occur 
for all of us to deal with in the next month and a half.
    Mr. Waltz, I see that Mr. Bergman is back, and the 
opportunity is his to ask questions for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Bergman.
    Mr. Bergman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    You know, I have been listening the entire time. I may not 
have been on camera. My apologies for not being visible. But I 
do not have any questions at this time other than to say, in 
our role as the Readiness Subcommittee, if your service men and 
women and your families are not ready, we are not ready as a 
country. So I know that, through the collaboration of our 
oversight and the services' desire and understanding of their 
mission to be ready, you know, you will do the right thing.
    With that, I will yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Bergman.
    Mr. Waltz, you laid out at your opening five points that 
determine readiness. I suspect that that will be printed and on 
my desk the next time we do a hearing so that I am constantly 
reminded of where you are going with this.
    We now have a second round available. That would start with 
me. I am not going to ask another question. I want to 
compliment the members of the committee and Mr. Case for the 
questions that you've put forth. I will simply state that the 
committee staff, both sides of the aisle, will be following 
this very closely. And we will be looking for very specific 
answers to the questions that have been raised, and we will be 
following the timeline that have been laid out by the Navy and 
by the State of Hawaii.
    There is a question of legal responsibility here that will 
become part of the future hearings and part of the work of this 
committee. Since there are the issue of State authority versus 
Federal authority and the military itself, this will be a 
fundamental question, the resolution of which will be unknown, 
but it is of intense interest by all of the States and 
territories as well as to the Department of Defense.
    Also, I want to put on the record that the classified 
hearing will be taking place as soon as we get some clarity 
from the Navy and from the Department of Defense, all of the 
services, as to how to deal with the logistics associated with 
Red Hill. I would expect that hearing to take place within the 
next month to month and a half. That will be classified.
    The second point is that the past NDAAs lay out clarity in 
what was known as the OATH [Service Member's Occupational and 
Environmental Transparency Health] Act that exposure to toxics 
will be part of the military record for all the military 
personnel. It does not include families, although there are 
issues before this committee as well as Ms. Speier's committee 
having to do with families that have been exposed to toxics in 
the past.
    I would alert the members of the committee that those 
issues are alive, they will be part of the next NDAA, and we 
will be debating that going forward. There are several 
facilities that have a history of exposure to families, and 
that will be taken up going forward.
    With that, I now turn to Mr. Waltz. You have a second round 
of questions.
    Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will reserve--I have 
a number of questions, and I am really looking forward to that 
classified session. I just will state as we head into that, 
head towards that session, I am incredibly concerned that the 
Navy--we all know that Red Hill was established and has been in 
operation since World War II. And I am incredibly concerned 
that the Navy is using the World War II era logistics strategy 
for use in a future conflict in an A2AD [anti-access/area 
denial] environment.
    And I am particularly concerned that the Defense Department 
has malpositioned its fuels laydown across INDOPACOM, most 
notably with this incredibly high concentration of bulk fuels 
at Red Hill.
    So I will be looking forward to hearing what steps the 
Navy, DLA, the Department writ large is taking to better align 
this laydown to deal with future conflict and with the 
INDOPACOM commander's requirements.
    And with that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield.
    Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Waltz, welcome to the committee. We have 
been spending a great deal of time of the committee and staff 
looking at those questions as we pivot to the Pacific. So your 
interest is going to help us along the way.
    We are beginning a second round. The hearing I believe was 
scheduled for 3 hours. At the top of the hour, maybe 5 minutes 
after the top of the hour, I will have to leave for a few 
moments. I am looking for the most senior member on the 
Democratic side to take over sometime around 5 minutes to 10 
minutes after the hour.
    In the meantime--Jeannie just told me that we are actually 
a 2-hour hearing, not a 3-hour hearing.
    So we have up on the second round Luria, Kahele, and Case. 
I think, Mr. Bergman, unless you have questions, you have opted 
out of questions.
    Mrs. Luria, you are up.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And after listening to some of the follow-on testimony, 
especially my colleagues from Hawaii, I understand the 
incredible importance of securing the safety of the water 
supply and absolutely believe that everything must be done to 
clean up the contamination that has happened and to mitigate 
something like this from happening again.
    But I am a little bit concerned with the timeline that was 
laid out, specifically as described by Mr. Case. And, you know, 
when Admiral Converse was speaking earlier and he talked about 
having a third party do a full analysis as part of the 
investigation, a contract hasn't even been let for that. And, 
you know, that could take months in and of itself to let that 
contract, have this analysis done, these recommendations. And 
it seems like the timeline that Mr. Case was describing was 
much more aggressive.
    So I would really like to understand, you know, although 
the Navy has said that they will comply with this order, is the 
timeline that was described actually realistic? To me, it looks 
like it would be at least 6 months before you would get to the 
point where you could have these recommendations, another 6 
months before you might start looking at the fuel tanks, then, 
you know, the amount of time it takes for that, 250 or so 
million gallons of fuel. That we could be looking at a year, 
much more than a year even potentially that the operations of 
Red Hill are impacted.
    And earlier on, you said that there is no immediate impact. 
Can you quantify at what point in time there will actually be 
an impact to operations? And I am glad that Admiral Converse is 
here, because although this is not in the chain of command of 
PACFLT, the operational impact side of it is definitely within 
your purview, Admiral.
    And if you could just talk a little bit about the 
realistic-ness--and that might be NAVFAC or NAVSUP on that 
side--of the timeline for this, but then, Admiral Converse, the 
operational impact of that timeline if it, in fact, is more 
protracted than what we have been talking about.
    Admiral Converse. Yes, ma'am. So the initial assessment I 
saw back in early December was that up through January-February 
timeframe, the operational impact of not operating the Red Hill 
fuel facility other than for sustenance and safety 
environmental monitoring was minimal.
    Beyond that, there does start--we do start incurring costs 
at the Defense Logistics Agency associated with the inability 
to use that facility to manage the global distribution of fuel 
in conjunction with all the other fuel points. I don't have 
details at my fingertips on what those costs are and what the 
risks to national security associated with continued 
nonoperation of the Red Hill fuel facility beyond January-
February.
    I do know that that assessment is undergoing, and the 
Defense Logistics Agency is conducting that in support of the 
commander of INDOPACOM, and he is being briefed on that. And my 
understanding was that that will be a part of any discussion 
that comes up in a classified forum.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
    And I am still unclear on this particular aspect of it, 
because we repeatedly said through the hearing that the recent 
spill contamination and then the one that happened earlier were 
due to operator error. So I am not quite understanding the 
necessity to empty the tanks in order to have the corrective 
actions necessary to, you know, ensure safe operation for--use 
of the tanks for operational needs of the Navy. They don't seem 
to go together. And can you explain why there is a necessity to 
empty the tanks in order to have sufficient corrective actions 
to minimize operational impact?
    Admiral Converse. So I can't speculate on the Department of 
Health's determination as to the necessity to empty the tanks 
by secure operations. But I suspect it was just due to a 
general concern that hey, there's fuel over the aquifer. But 
any--I'd be speculating on the Department of Health's 
determination that drove development of the emergency order. 
And I don't have that insight.
    What I do know is that in compliance with that emergency 
order, you know, the timeline is very aggressive to conduct 
this work plan and schedule. My--our goal is to get the vendor 
together, consult with the Department of Health, understand in 
detail that they need within 30 days vice the long-term 
assessment that this third-party activity will do. Because 
clearly, whatever steps we take moving forward associated with 
Red Hill, the first step needs to be to identify and to 
validate the problems that led to these two spills and to fix 
them fully before we do any fuel transfer operations or 
defueling operations. And I think we would all agree that that 
needs to be done. And it needs to be airtight before we move to 
the next step of continuing operations, whether it be for 
defueling or----
    Mr. Garamendi. Ms. Luria, you have got 13 seconds.
    Mrs. Luria. Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you.
    I am going to hold tight to the 5-minute rule here for the 
remainder of this, the second round.
    Mr. Kahele, you are up.
    Mr. Kahele. Mahalo, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Chair, I would like to ask a question that I think is 
on the minds of many, many people in the community, especially 
on the island of Oahu, and that talks about the current Red 
Hill well recovery and remediation plan. Last Thursday, I led a 
Red Hill tour with area legislators and saw the eight very 
large, granulated activated carbon filtration tanks that are 
set up right outside the Red Hill well. For the committee's 
awareness, Mr. Chairman, these tanks can filter up to 5 million 
gallons of water per day. And it is my understanding that if 
this plan is approved, that the Navy will begin drawing and 
filtering millions of gallons of water and subsequently 
discharging that water into the nearby Halawa Stream. They will 
commence this as early as the 20th of January. I have serious 
reservations about releasing such a high volume of treated 
water into the stream due to the possible unintended 
consequences and downstream effects.
    I understand that this final plan must be approved by all 
parties, signatories, as part of the interagency drinking water 
system team, that includes the Hawaii Department of Health, the 
EPA's Region 9, the Navy and the Army will all need to sign 
this plan. In addition, a national pollutant discharge 
elimination system permit will also need to be issued. I would 
highly suggest that whenever those four very important 
signatories come to an agreement on how to remediate and 
recover this well, that before any water is pulled out of the 
Red Hill well to be filtered that they fully brief the people 
of Hawaii, the residents of island of Oahu, before commencing 
so that they can instill what my colleague, Representative 
Case, highlighted, which is confidence and trust that this is 
the best plan available.
    So I guess my question would be directed to Admiral 
Converse or Admiral Korka. What are the alternatives to 
discharging millions of gallons of treated water into the 
Halawa Stream?
    Admiral Korka. Yes, sir. I can take that question. And 
first and foremost, thanks for visiting the site. It went a 
very long way. And I hope you had a good appreciation that we 
are working this together. And hopefully the feedback that you 
got is that we are not doing this alone. And as you mentioned, 
before we execute anything, we want to make sure that everyone 
is aware and supportive of our way ahead. And our remediation 
efforts right now is the immediate solution, the immediate 
solution. So we actually are taking the tradeoffs of risk very 
seriously. Controlling the plume or discharging the water in 
the Halawa Stream.
    And so, that is why we have been in such close coordination 
with all the agencies you mentioned, as well as the University 
of Hawaii, because we are actually contracting with them to 
study the ecology on the aquatic life of the stream before, 
during, and after so we can make sure we are very mindful of 
that.
    And presently, at this time we are actually in the process 
of awarding a contract to a local firm here to get an 
appreciation on what can we do. What are the options available 
for that water? Because as you highlighted, water is a 
commodity, it is something very precious. And we don't want to 
waste that discharge.
    And so today, I don't have the best answer for you, sir. 
But I will tell you that we will brief you as you requested on 
our plan. And we hope to have some other options available.
    Mr. Kahele. Thank you for that answer.
    You know, I will also add that the Halawa Stream discharges 
near Hotel Pier into Pearl Harbor. And between where the Navy 
proposes to discharge that water into the stream and where it 
actually flows into Pearl Harbor, there are people that fish in 
that stream, there are people that crab in that stream. And 
that is why I think the Navy should make sure the public is 
well aware before that discharge commences.
    Now, I will just take the last 30 seconds, Mr. Chairman, to 
thank all the witnesses for being here today. I want to impress 
on you, like we have been doing for the last 2 months as a 
united delegation, that we are at an inflection point for the 
Hawaii's and the State of Hawaii's public trust and 
relationship with the United States military moving forward. 
And up until now, you know, that credibility and trust has been 
put to the test.
    So I really appreciate your attendance today and thank you 
for answering our questions. I look forward to working with you 
and the Department of Defense in the future.
    Mahalo. And I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Kahele, thank for your leadership, your 
intense interest in this, and your determination to protect 
your citizens and all in Hawaii.
    We now turn to Mr. Case for the final 5 minutes; then the 
meeting will adjourn.
    Mr. Case. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    First of all, I could not have said it better what 
Congressman Kahele said in the last 30 seconds. I completely 
endorse what he said. I also thank you again for allowing me to 
participate and for your interest in this issue.
    There is a little confusion, I think, based on the 
discussion in the hearing as to what the emergency order 
requires and does not require. And I want to take the time to 
make sure everybody's on the same page on that. I am just 
reading from the emergency order here.
    Within 30 days of receipt of this emergency order, the Navy 
shall submit a work plan and implementation schedule prepared 
by a qualified independent third party approved by the 
Department to assess the facility operations and system 
integrity to safely defuel above fuel storage tanks. Upon the 
Department's approval--that's the Department of Health--of the 
assessment work plan and implementation schedule, conduct the 
necessary repairs and make the necessary changes in operations 
to address any deficiencies identified in the assessment and 
work plan. And then within 30 days of completion of required 
corrective actions, defuel the bulk fuel storage tanks at the 
facility.
    So the timeframe here is within 30 days after the emergency 
order, which Admiral Converse has confirmed twice now the Navy 
will comply with. That date is February 2. They are to submit a 
work plan and implementation schedule. That is ambitious, but 
it must be met. It is part of the order. It is critical.
    And I know that the Navy is going to do its very best to 
achieve that. If there are any questions that need to be 
addressed in terms of things that were not fully considered 
within that timeframe, they can easily be addressed afterwards 
in discussions with the Department of Health.
    The timeframe for the Department of Health to review and 
consider that work plan and implementation schedule is not set 
forth with specificity in the order. But we all expect that it 
will be done as soon as possible and as diligently as possible. 
But once that work plan is approved, then the Navy shall defuel 
within 30 days. That is what the order says and that is what we 
all need to focus on. So that is what is involved here.
    I want to use my remaining time to make three points. The 
first point, besides thanking the witnesses and the Navy, it 
has been a very, very good and transparent process with the 
Navy over the last weeks and months as the Navy and we all 
faced this crisis.
    We appreciate, Admiral Converse, your efforts. I want to 
say from that perspective, you started off by saying, and I 
credit you for this, the Navy caused this problem. The Navy 
owns it. And the Navy will fix it. I have no doubt about the 
sincerity of the Navy in saying that it will fix it. And the 
belief of the Navy that it can fix it. However, I do at this 
point have to ask the question whether the Navy has the 
necessary objectivity to fix it.
    And so therefore, the request of the congressional 
delegation and others for qualified independent people to look 
over the Navy's shoulder to determine that the Navy's proposal 
to fix this is critical all around, not only to getting the fix 
right but to earning the trust and confidence that Congressman 
Kahele spoke to. That is number one.
    Number two, I would strongly urge you not to focus 
exclusively on operator error. I have said this to the 
Secretary of the Navy. I have said it to other folks during the 
course of this discussion. There may well have been errors by 
the operators at Red Hill, but to confine the explanation 
simply to operator error is to ignore what is clearly issues 
with respect to the operation and maintenance, and perhaps even 
the direct design of Red Hill.
    Operator error can be avoided by adequate design, by 
adequate maintenance, and by--so to focus only on operator 
error I'd strongly suggest to you is the wrong way to go about 
this.
    Number three, I want to go back to my point on adequate 
funding, because we've had a great discussion this morning and 
I have no doubt of the sincerity of the Navy to address Red 
Hill. However, the ultimate test of the sincerity of the 
military is adequate funding requests in the Department of 
Defense's budget that the Department of Defense will fight for 
in the Office of Management and Budget and in the President's 
overall allocation of resources and not at the expense of 
critical needs in the Indo-Pacific.
    We just finished in the NDAA an increase in the Pacific 
Deterrence Initiative of $5 billion to $7.1 billion. And I do 
not believe that the fixes to Red Hill should be taken out of 
overall readiness in the Indo-Pacific.
    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My time has expired.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Case. Your final point, I see 
Mr. Waltz with a big smile on his face going, amen.
    Mr. Waltz, do you want to take a few moments and wrap and 
then I will shut this down.
    Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to our 
witnesses and the member interest. I said it a couple of times, 
I'll say it again. I think this needs to be nested in a broader 
strategy that I think is long overdue, and that you have been 
working on for some time. And very much looking forward to that 
discussion. And I think Representative Case is absolutely 
right, where the rubber meets the road is where the money to 
implement that strategy is going to come from.
    So thank you so much. I yield.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Waltz.
    This committee will pursue this issue aggressively and 
timely. We will have a classified hearing hopefully within 
about a month. And that will be--excuse me, classified 
briefing, it will not be a formal hearing. And we will have the 
information necessary to answer many of the questions. That 
part of the information that can be made public will be made 
public. Between now and that classified briefing we will also 
make sure that the ongoing work of the Navy is transparent to 
the public in Hawaii and importantly to the members of this 
committee. And so staff will be following very, very closely. 
And we will be receiving timely updates as this progresses.
    I consider this to be a major problem for all the reasons 
stated by the members. And we will pursue it vigorously through 
all of the various questions and concerns that have been 
raised.
    I do want to thank the witnesses. We had four fleet flag 
officers here. That is not normal. So we know that the Navy is 
serious about it. So for Admiral Converse, Lindsey, Korka, and 
Stamatopoulos--excuse me, I mispronounced that again--and for 
Captain McGinnis, thank you so very much for participating and 
for getting up at a very early hour. I didn't see too many 
coffee cups on the table as you were testifying. Perhaps you 
did that off camera. In any case, thank you so very much.
    With that, this hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
    [Whereupon, at 12:17 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
      
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                            A P P E N D I X

                            January 11, 2022

      
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              PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

                            January 11, 2022

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              QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING

                            January 11, 2022

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                   QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. KAHELE

    Mr. Kahele. Red Hill was designed with WWII enemy capabilities in 
mind. If the site is upgraded or relocated, can you contrast what new 
defensive features the Navy might pursue and provide a cost estimate 
for those features?
    Admiral Converse. [No answer was available at the time of 
printing.]
    Mr. Kahele. During my last visit to Red Hill, I noticed that there 
are security cameras located throughout the lower access tunnel system. 
Yet, when I asked operators in the control room to show me the live 
feed from the camera and the security camera footage from May 6th and 
November 20th, I was told that the cameras have been offline for a 
while. Specifically, camera footage is missing from Camera # 70 on May 
6th (Tank 20 Skin Valves) and Cameras # 75-81 (ADIT 3Y Fuel Door, ADIT 
3Y Iso Door, ADIT 3Y HT and RH Vent) from Nov 20th through Nov 22nd. 
After my visit, I submitted this question to the Department of the 
Navy, Legislative Affairs, but have not received an answer. If there is 
no camera footage available, can you please explain the reason for the 
cameras' in-operability, when the cameras became inoperable, who is the 
subcontractor responsible for the camera system and when was the last 
time the cameras were operable?
    Admiral Korka. [No answer was available at the time of printing.
    Mr. Kahele. I understand that the source of the November release 
was from a broken Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) fire suppression 
return line. This line was designed to collect wastewater and fuel from 
firefighting events and transport the waste to above ground storage 
tanks. Can you confirm that the release from the broken AFFF line 
contained a mixture of water and petroleum product, but did not contain 
any type of fire retardant, such as PFAS?
    Captain McGinnis. [No answer was available at the time of printing.
                                 ______
                                 
                  QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. STRICKLAND
    Ms. Strickland. I was particularly troubled to note that on the 
same day Navy affirmed to their families that the water was safe to 
drink that Navy closed the Red Hill drinking well. It appears that Navy 
knew it had a drinking water intrusion several days before going 
public. While Navy has since apologized for this delay, can you provide 
me what lessons learned Navy has implemented to be more transparent 
with servicemembers and their families as to future incidents?
    Admiral Converse. [No answer was available at the time of 
printing.]

                                  [all]