Contractors with Navy Closure Task Force-Red Hill collect water samples from the Navy Aiea-Halawa Shaft in Honolulu, April 14, 2025. (Glenn Slaughter/U.S. Navy)

A Hawaii-based Army officer faced command retaliation for communicating with Congress about the Navy’s jet-fuel tainted tap water in 2021, according to a Defense Department watchdog.

The “preponderance of the evidence” substantiated claims by Maj. Amanda Feindt that she was restricted from “lawfully communicating” with members of Congress or the Defense Department Office of Inspector General, according to an IG report released Monday.

Feindt in November 2021 was living with her husband and two children in a military housing community on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor when a spill from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility leaked into the aquifer and contaminated the Navy’s water distribution system.

Thousands of residents of military communities on and near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam were temporarily relocated for months as the Navy flushed the system.

Many affected residents complained of health problems and inaction by the Navy.

Feindt and her family subsequently relocated to the mainland.

Feindt filed a reprisal complaint with the IG in February 2022 after advocating for affected residents by contacting military and elected officials.

At the time of the spill, she was assigned to Special Operations Command Pacific at Camp H.M. Smith a few miles northeast of the joint base.

Her whistleblower complaint claimed that Col. Kenneth McAdams, the command’s chief of staff, turned on her after she began speaking out.

McAdams was Feindt’s senior rater, the individual who provides an overall assessment of a subordinate’s job performance.

“He made my life a living hell,” Feindt told Stars and Stripes in a text message Monday.

“He berated me, denied me access to my attorney during behind closed door conversations, wrote terrible performance evaluations ahead of my [lieutenant colonel] Board, launched a security clearance violation against me, and denied me a [permanent change of station] award when I left the unit on a medical compassion reassignment after my family was sickened at Red Hill,” she wrote.

Feindt took extended leave beginning in late January 2022 through much of the following month, using the time to call and meet with members of Congress regarding the aftermath of the water contamination.

Her activities did not sit well with McAdams, who pressed her to end her leave and her advocacy because, he said, no one asked her to be “a self-professed superhero,” according to the IG report.

In response, Feindt asked McAdams what he would do if in her shoes.

“I would drop my kids off at a daycare and I would get my ass back to work,” he said, according to the IG report.

Feindt described the exchange to IG investigators as a “verbal reprimand” and a “negative, hostile conversation.”

The report concluded that a “preponderance of the evidence establishes that [McAdam’s] words or actions would have restricted a reasonable Service member from lawfully communicating with a Member of Congress or an IG.”

For that reason, the IG concluded that Feindt was unlawfully restricted in those communications.

McAdams, who has since retired from the Air Force, declined to provide testimony or participate in the investigation. Investigators were unable to reach him by phone or email in May and June to solicit his input on their conclusion.

The report states that “no action can remedy the fact” that Feindt’s communication had been restricted.

The report, however, did recommend that the secretary of the Air Force consider appropriate action against McAdams for his actions.

Feindt said in a text message that she had reported the retaliation to Joshua Rudd, the Special Operations Pacific commander, who “did nothing to protect me.”

Rudd is now a lieutenant general and deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Feindt’s husband, Patrick, and their two children were “bellwether,” or lead, plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit seeking damages for pain and suffering due to the water contamination.

A federal judge in May awarded the family about $61,000.

Amanda Feindt has joined a separate lawsuit filed on behalf of active-duty service members that has not yet gone to trial.