Thread by @oahuWP

One of the worst actors in the Red Hill crisis has been the Hawai‘i Chamber of Commerce (@cochawaii). Over the past 172 years they have played a pivotal role in building and safeguarding the unsustainable outpost of American Empire in the illegally occupied Nation of Hawai‘i.

The following is a brief recent history of how @cochawaii used their money and influence to funnel billions in federal dollars to the very Military, defense contractors, and corporate plunderers who polluted and paved over what was once a 100% sustainable Indigenous way of life.

Every year, the Hawai‘i Chamber of Commerce’s Military Affairs Council hosts a “Partnership Conference” with Military officials to better inform how private interests can most effectively advocate for imperialist projects.

The Chamber of Commerce is so inextricably intertwined with local government that officials in high office regularly participate in these Chamber-hosted conferences as well as in various @cochawaii media and PR opportunities.

In the @cochawaii Military Affairs Council Partnership Conference held in January 2021, Captain "Gordie" Meyer claimed that the Navy conducts frequent, comprehensive tests that show the Red Hill well water is safe to drink, and that "the Navy is committed to keeping it that way”.

Later that year, @CivilBeat reported on documents sent by a Navy whistleblower indicating that there was an active leak from a pipeline near Pearl Harbor fed by the Red Hill Facility likely WHILE Captain Meyer was delivering his January presentation to @cochawaii.

Worse still, the whistleblower documents suggest that the Navy was engaged in an active coverup to ensure that news of the leak didn’t reach the "anti-Red Hill" public during a crucial fuel facility operation permit hearing with the Department of Health. civilbeat.org/2021/10/amid-p…

Captain Meyer also claimed in the MAC 2021 Conference that “in the VERY unlikely chance a release does occur we have established mechanisms to quickly detect a problem and then mitigate any such issue to prevent or minimize any impact”.

In the same MONTH that Captain "Gordie" Meyer made this claim, a defuel line failed two back-to-back leak detection tests - the likely cause of the highly visible oil sheen spreading on the surface of the water at Hotel Pier.

The @USNavy also withheld months of water test results from July-Oct that weren’t delivered to @HawaiiDOH until late Nov. The results revealed petroleum contamination in the Red Hill shaft months before many reported becoming violently ill after drinking from Navy water lines.

In May 2021, the “established mechanisms" in place to address vulnerabilities also failed after a pipeline leaked what the Navy initially claimed was 1,618 but now admit is closer to 19,000 gallons of Red Hill fuel, which they think could be the cause of the well contamination.

That all of these lies were happily received by lead members of the Hawai‘i Chamber of Commerce comes as no surprise: through their Military Affairs Council, @cochawaii has been advocating on behalf of imperialist interests long before the MAC's formation in 1985.

One of the top priorities for @cochawaii's Military Affairs Council was to do everything they could to make sure that the Red Hill facility remained operational right up to the present day crisis.

After the 27,000 gallon fuel leak in Jan. 2014, @cochawaii under newly-appointed CEO @sherry4lg hired a DC lobbying firm to push Congress to appropriate even more Defense dollars while also working to stonewall any legislative action on the growing threat of the Red Hill tanks.

In one of her first acts as the new CEO of @cochawaii, Sherry Menor-McNamara radically restructured the Military Affairs Council to become a powerful force in the state legislature. She also opened MAC to non-Chamber members - for a substantial corporate admission fee, of course.

With this newly empowered lobbying arm of @cochawaii’s MAC, McNamara and the Military successfully pressure legislators on multiple occasions to punt on shutting down - and in some cases even marginally improving - the Red Hill Fuel Facility.

The @cochawaii and their private defense contractor members are happy to extract several hundred million more dollars out of the last gasps of the dying Red Hill fuel facility, no matter the cost to our lives and the life of the land and water.

The @cochawaii will gleefully slap overpriced band-aids on a gaping neck wound if they can squeeze out just a few more drops of liquid capital from the ongoing crisis, right up until the inevitable catastrophic leak that would contaminate our sole source aquifer forever.

This is why you haven’t heard a peep from the Hawai‘i Chamber of Commerce, despite many of their rank and file members standing to lose not just their small businesses but even access to clean drinking water in the event of a catastrophic leak from the Red Hill Fuel Tanks.

Sherry Menor-McNamara (@sherry4lg), who some might argue is one of the chief architects of the Red Hill fuel contamination crisis, is officially running for Lieutenant Governor of Hawai‘i.

In the same way water flows from the mountain into the sea, capital flows from ruling class interests into local government.

#ShutDownRedHill #Olaikawai #Pilautician