Commander, Navy Region Hawaii issued a fourth Red Hill Fuel Facility "stakeholder letter" to local community leaders, neighborhood board members and elected officials, and posted the letter Sept. 28 to the Red Hill website: www.cnic.navy.mil/redhill.

The letter, signed by Rear Adm. John Fuller, commander, Navy Region Hawaii and Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific, updated the community about the Navy's ongoing modernization upgrades at the facility and continued efforts to protect drinking water in the area.

"As in the past, testing and independent lab results clearly indicate that all drinking water near Red Hill -- including neighboring drinking water used by the Honolulu Board of Water Supply -- remains safe and meets all federal and state safe drinking water standards," Fuller said.

Since the previous stakeholder letter in June, Navy engineers and contractors installed two more groundwater monitoring wells. That brings the number of monitoring sites to 12, with two more wells planned for installation in early 2017. The wells are expected to provide subject matter experts with additional data.

From 2006 to present, more than $200 million has been invested in the Red Hill facility, which is considered a strategic national asset.

Fuller outlined steps the Navy and Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) are taking in close coordination with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and State of Hawaii Department of Health (DOH).

"We continued our routine facility inspections and maintenance to ensure our equipment works properly, and we continued training our teams to ensure they remain proficient at safely operating the facility," Fuller noted. "Concurrently, we continued our planning and investing to keep the facility modern, which also enhances safety and operational proficiency."

Recently, the Navy participated in a series of meetings with the EPA and DOH to track various inspections, maintenance procedures and assessments at the Red Hill facility.

Navy leaders and subject matter experts will participate in DOH-hosted scoping meetings on Oahu Oct. 3-5 and in the first Hawaii state fuel tank advisory committee meeting Oct. 6.

Then, on the evening of Oct. 6, senior leaders at Navy Region Hawaii will join with representatives of the EPA, DOH and DLA to jointly host a Red Hill public meeting at Moanalua Middle School.

"We look forward to giving updates and sharing our progress with the public at this event," Fuller said. "Red Hill remains a strategic national asset that cannot be replicated. I want to assure you that your Navy fully understands that our national security interests and continued prosperity in the Pacific depend, in part, on our ability to operate the facility, and that those operations must be both safe within the facility and for the environment."

The first three stakeholder letters from Fuller, along with other information and photos, are available at www.cnic.navy.mil/redhill.

For more information, visit www.navy.mil, www.facebook.com/usnavy, or www.twitter.com/usnavy.

For more news from Commander, Navy Region Hawaii, visit www.navy.mil/.