EWA BEACH, Hawai‘i — The Marine Corps Pu‘uloa Range Training Facility in Ewa Beach has been in continuous operation for more than a century. But in recent years complaints about noise and concerns about environmental effects of the shooting range have put it under increasing scrutiny from the surrounding community.
In particular, residents are especially concerned about lead contamination in the soil and in the ocean reefs nearby, which have been plentiful fishing grounds for generations. Now a group of community members and government officials is getting to work on addressing residents’ grievances at the Marines’ Pu‘uloa Range Training Facility in Ewa Beach.
State Rep. Rose Martinez, one of the group’s members, said last week during a news conference at the Capitol that “with the formation of this working group, we will be able to oversee independent testing to further explore these issues.”
The group was formed based on a resolution in the most recent state legislative session. Its members also include City Council member Augie Tulba; Marine Corps Base Hawai‘i Commander Col. Jeremy Beaven; University of Hawai‘i at Manoa professors Kathy Van Alstyne and Celia Smith; and Dean Sensui, executive producer of the TV show “Hawai‘i Goes Fishing.”
“Our commitment to the community and to our mission is unwavering,” said MCBH spokesman Maj. Jordan Fox. “And that all starts with being good neighbors at home. Working with and supporting the community is a part of who we are as Marines, is a part of everything that we represent.”
Originally a Navy small-arms range set up in the early 1900s, the Marine Corps took it over for pistol and rifle practice before expanding it further in 1934 and then periodically making additions. But the installation of a new public address system riled residents.
John Clark, vice chair of the Ewa Neighborhood Board and a member of the working group, said, “A new PA system may seem small; it’s a great addition to the military. When they put in a new PA system, at the range it was good — it was louder, it was better. But for the community it was too loud, and the announcements were actually made too early.”
When residents began looking more closely into operations at the range, information emerged about plans for a “shore stabilization” seawall project that would protect the range from coastal erosion but that environmental scientists said would actually hasten the erosion of the beach itself. Local pushback eventually prompted the Corps to abandon the seawall project, and the Marines also have begun looking for ways to make operations at the range quieter.
“Since that time the conversations have continued,” Clark said. “The neighborhood board and the community have, shall we say, grown bolder and expect more.”
In 2022 when members of the Surfrider Foundation were investigating how the proposed stabilization wall would affect the beach, they took several soil samples on the makai side of the facility and submitted them to the Hawai‘i Analytical Laboratory. In the first batch of eight samples, three were above the state’s safety threshold for a residential area. In the second batch of 16 samples, 10 were above that limit, according to a report released by Surfrider.
The report prompted calls for further testing and study. In April the state House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution introduced by Martinez urging the Marine Corps to relocate the firing range due to noise, safety and possible lead exposure to nearby homes, the shoreline and sea.
In February the Marine Corps collected 2,400 samples across a 3,000-foot stretch of Pu‘uloa and sent them to Honolulu-based FQLabs for testing. The Marines received initial results in March but requested more information from the lab to clarify data. Marine officials say they are still crunching the numbers from the samples and trying to put together the official report.
“Our focus is on being as thorough, complete, accurate and precise as possible,” Fox said. “So while it has been a couple of months, (and) we certainly appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this, the focus is getting it right. Once the assessment report, or multiple reports, are complete, those will be made available to the public in full form.”
Fox said that in crafting the report, the Corps hopes to “make it as easily understandable for the community, legislators (and) for the Marine Corps — internal to us — as possible.” He added that “it’s a starting point for progress. It’s not out of the question to do further analysis, depending on what the data tells us.”
Working group member Daniel DeMartini, chief scientific officer for Kuleana Coral Restoration, said testing of fish and limu in the surrounding reefs for heavy metals is slated to begin this summer.
“Our target timeline to collect the samples is going to be in August, when we have conditions and dive teams ready to go and collect the samples we need to, as well as lining up the right scientists and protocols and equipment we need to do thorough and rigorous testing,” he said.
DeMartini said he hoped to have results from the tests available soon after but said he wasn’t in a position to promise how quickly it would get finished.
He explained that “a lot of the analytical labs are pretty backlogged across the country, the ones that are accredited — and you can’t just use any machine you need to choose an accredited lab so you can then inform the public. A lot of those labs are backed up. Once it goes to the lab, we will wait for their timeline to get those processed, we hope, by early next year; or even before the end of this year, that can happen. … It seems like from TV shows it’s a push of a button, but the process is quite intensive.”
In statement to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Surfrider’s regional manager for Hawai‘i, Lauren Blickley, said the organization is “thankful that our initial coastal sampling for lead contamination has furthered the conversation and concerns that both our organization and the surrounding ‘Ewa Beach Community have with the Pu‘uloa Range Training Facility.”
“We were also glad to see MCBH undertake their own sampling and we hope that this continued sampling and vigilance will continue into the future,” Blickley said. “Hopefully (this) will hold these organizations (MCBH and the state representatives) to ensuring that MCBH impacts on the coastal environment and surrounding community are minimized.”
But Alexander Gaos, a member of the Ewa Neighborhood Board, called the formation of the group a “step backward” from Martinez’s 2023 resolution calling to move the range altogether and said that “any working group should be focused on PRTF relocation as the primary goal.”
“The actual working group itself absolutely does not have enough community representation,” Gaos said. “Nobody on the proposed working group is directly impacted by the range. In other words, the group doesn’t include anyone that lives near the range. I am part of a coalition of people that live near the range and that have publicly expressed concerns with its synergistic impacts, yet none of us have been invited to participate in the working group.”
Fox said that he’s not aware of any plans by the Marine Corps to look at new locations for firing training. He noted that in the meantime the military has been making a move toward lead-free ammunition to reduce potential environmental contamination, and that as of this year Marine units in Hawai‘i are the first in the Corps to have made the transition. They continue to train at Pu‘uloa.
“It is the only facility on the island where Marines can conduct their annual rifle qualification,” Fox said. “So while there are training ranges — you know, Schofield Barracks or various Navy facilities — the training standards aren’t the same. The range of build-out is not the same. So you have to work to build a new facility, and we’re looking at a decade-or-more time period to get that. So in the interim we’re going to continue to train Marines to win our nation’s battles.”
