Eight months ago, the Navy declared that it doesn’t expect its push to increase target practice on the uninhabited Hawaiian islet of Kaʻula will have any major environmental repercussions. 

It still hasn’t answered a host of fundamental follow-up questions from local conservation groups and members of Congress on those plans.

That lack of responsiveness has prompted all four members of Hawaiʻi’s congressional delegation to demand that the Navy carry out a more rigorous environmental review. They also want the Navy to provide justification for why the bombing is needed for national security. 

Specifically, they’re pressing Navy officials to conduct an environmental impact statement to more closely examine how ramping up the non-explosive bombing and gunfire on Kaʻula might affect the scores of nesting seabirds, monk seals and other abundant marine animals found there.

“Too many pressing questions concerning the use of Ka‘ula remain unanswered,” Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono, along with Reps. Ed Case and Jill Tokuda, wrote to Secretary of the Navy Jon Phelan last week. “As part of a comprehensive EIS, the Navy must assure the public that it has an effective plan.”

An EIS, they added, would also unlock resources to help clean up the islet, some 23 miles southwest of Niʻihau. Kaʻula also serves as a state seabird sanctuary, and it’s supposed to help protect the wildlife there. 

Both explosive and inert, or non-explosive, bombs have been dropped on Kaʻula as part of military training exercises since the early 1950s.

The Navy in September released a draft environmental assessment on Kaʻula. That report, which is more limited in scope than an EIS, proposed to more than double the current number of annual aerial bombing runs there, from 12 to as many as 31.

It concluded the increase in exercises would not generate any significant environmental impacts, but it didn’t go into a lot of detail.

More: Navy Plans To Double Bombing Of This Tiny Hawaiian Island

Pressing Questions

Hawaiʻi’s congressional delegation wants to know just how vital the training exercises at Kaʻula are to national security, and whether those inert bombing runs could be replicated somewhere else. 

They’re pressing the Navy for details on how reducing or even stopping the bombing altogether at Kaʻula might affect the readiness of units in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. They want to know whether the Navy plans to set aside money for environmental remediation at Kaʻula, and for the cleanup of both existing and future munitions on the islet.

The delegation also wants to know what steps the Navy plans to take to keep the waters off of Kaʻula open to Kauaʻi-based fishermen.

“Kauaʻi fishermen have a right to be able to access the waters around Kaʻula  on a reasonable basis,” the delegation wrote to Phelan. “The ongoing inert bombing activity limits fishing, which would only become more difficult with the Navy’s proposed increase in training.”

It’s not clear yet whether the Navy will agree to step up its analysis with an EIS.

Capt. Hayley Sims, a U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesperson, said in an email Thursday that the Navy is “aware of continued congressional interest in this matter and will continue to communicate directly with government leaders.”

It’s also consulting with the state’s Historic Preservation Division and Native Hawaiian groups as it moves through the federal environmental-review process, Sims added. She didn’t say whether the Navy would eventually launch an EIS.

Hawaiʻi’s congressional members say that’s what’s needed to provide the full picture of what’s happening at Kaʻula.

“The public deserves a clear, comprehensive, and evidence-based EIS,” they wrote to Phelan, “to demonstrate that the Navy has done its due diligence on the environmental impacts of these trainings.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change and the environment is supported by The Healy Foundation, the Marisla Fund of the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.