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The Navy’s Red Hill fuel complex has been drained of 99% of the 100 million-plus gallons it used to hold, but the mission to close the facility isn’t over. 

Teams must still remove residual fuel and sludge, clean the tanks and remove miles of pipeline to assure the public the facility will never again be used to store hazardous substances. The secretary of defense ordered the facility shut down after Red Hill fuel contaminated Pearl Harbor residents’ drinking water in 2021. 

It is now Rear Adm. Marc Williams’ duty to make sure the facility’s decommissioning happens without incident. Williams, the deputy commander of the Navy’s Red Hill Closure Task Force, said in an interview it’s an inherently dangerous job that he takes seriously.

“We’re here to do what a lot of people are asking us to do, which is close Red Hill,” he said. “All we can do is go about our business in a transparent way that represents our core values of honor, courage and commitment.”

Williams, in charge of the day-to-day work of Red Hill’s closure, reports to Rear Adm. Stephen Barnett, commander of both the closure task force and Navy Region Hawaii. A Navy reservist, Williams is on a three-year assignment at Red Hill that could be extended to up to five years. 

In that time, he will be responsible for shuttering the World War II-era complex by June 2027. The work will involve cutting large pieces of pipe in an enclosed underground space and manually removing sludge from the bottom of Red Hill’s 250-foot-tall tanks.

The facility, located directly above Oahu’s primary drinking water aquifer, also holds toxic firefighting chemicals in its fire suppression system. The Aqueous Film Forming Form, or AFFF, contains toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS that are dangerous to consume and don’t break down in the environment.

Williams’ team will be responsible for ensuring none of those chemicals leak, as they did in 2022.

Beyond closure activities, Williams will also help explore new ways to use the facility in a beneficial way. To that end, the Navy via a survey, and the Rand Corp. analyzed the possibility of turning Red Hill into a hydropower plant, according to Williams.

Reports on those findings will be submitted to Congress this month, he said. A study by the University of Hawaii, funded by the Office of Naval Research, will also examine options for non-fossil fuel uses of the facility.

Any future use of Red Hill would undergo environmental impact studies that would be subject to public comment, and converting the facility to some other use would involve work well past 2027, he said. 

Ultimately, the decision on Red Hill’s future will be made by “policymakers and state of Hawaii officials,” Williams said, noting that whatever is done will require Congressional approval and funding.  

“Whatever decision is made, the things we’re doing – cleaning the tanks, removing the pipes – have to happen regardless of the final disposition of the facility,” he said.

Born and raised in San Diego, Williams is the son of a civil servant who worked in naval aviation. After graduating from high school, Williams attended California Polytechnic State University before transferring to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he majored in ocean engineering. 

“I looked at it as a challenge, an opportunity to be part of something bigger than myself,” he said of joining the military.  

A licensed civil engineer, Williams served on active duty for more than seven years, with deployments to Albania, Kosovo, Spain and Guam, he said. He then became a reservist, working in the private sector much of the time while juggling Navy jobs and military training. 

In his civilian life, Williams served as an executive of a health care company called eviCore. 

Williams, who only recently moved to the islands, had visited Hawaii previously on vacation, but his current assignment is his first time being stationed here.

He acknowledged part of his job will be engaging with community members who feel betrayed by the Navy’s actions before, during and after the water was contaminated.

“I have a responsibility to be transparent with people and explain why and how we’re doing things, and what we’re doing, recognizing that may lead to dissatisfaction or folks who are not happy that we’re not going fast enough, or just generally still angry towards the Navy,” he said. “Some folks, they may never trust us again.” 

That sentiment is clear at meetings of the Red Hill Community Representation Initiative, an independent group formed via a voluntary regulatory agreement between the Navy and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

The CRI is made up of environmental advocates and community members, including some former military housing residents who drank fuel-tainted water and continue to suffer health impacts. At monthly meetings, they get to question officials from the Navy, EPA and Hawaii Department of Health. 

After an acrimonious meeting in December, Navy officials skipped the January meeting. Williams said that wasn’t his call but rather a decision “directed by D.C.” However, Navy leadership returned for the February meeting.

“We’re looking at operating procedures to ensure a respectful dialogue,” he said. “How do you have disagreement without hatred?” 

Marti Townsend, chair of the CRI, said all community advocates are only asking for honesty, and they don’t feel they’ve gotten it. Many of the CRI’s questions have gone unanswered.

“They – the beings that make up the U.S. Navy – will be gone,” she said. “None of them are going to live here very long. Their bones aren’t going to be in this soil.”

Healani Sonoda-Pale, who represents the Native Hawaiian community on the CRI, said the Navy needs to share more information and also allow for community input.

“We cannot go back to when nobody knew what was going on at Red Hill – who was in charge, what was the plan, how much fuel was being held there. Too much is at stake. Too much damage has been done to families,” she said.

“Adm. Williams should know he’s stepping into this position, and we are going to hold him accountable. We are going to ask the hard questions and continue to put pressure on them to do the right thing for the community.”