What the Federal Government Charged, and Who Got Served

On January 12, 2026, the U.S. EPA Region IX finalized an enforcement action under the Safe Drinking Water Act against Bendor, LLC. The Certificate of Service documents exactly who was notified and in what capacity.

• The Respondent: Bendor, LLC, represented by Beverly E. Hashimoto as a Member, with a registered address at 8451 West Mercer Way, Mercer Island, WA 98040. The LLC is the entity legally responsible for the SDWA violation.
• The Legal Team: Bendor was represented by Ian Sandison and Joyce Tam-Sugiyama, both Partners at Watanabe ING, LLP, a Honolulu law firm headquartered at 999 Bishop Street, Suite #1250. The presence of a Honolulu-based firm confirms the violation involved Hawaii operations.
• The Commercial Real Estate Angle: Araceli Benson, Principal Broker and Owner of Kauai Commercial Realty, LLC, located in Lihue, HI, is a named party served in this action. Lihue is the county seat of Kauai County, directly connecting the alleged violation to Kauai island.
• The Federal Complainant: Marcela Von Vacano, Assistant Regional Counsel for the U.S. EPA Region IX out of San Francisco, brought the charges. This is a staff attorney whose role is to enforce federal environmental law against violators in the Pacific region.
• Case Number: SDWA-09-2026-0009. The SDWA prefix confirms the statute violated is the Safe Drinking Water Act, a federal law that sets the legal standards for public water system safety in the United States.
• Resolution by Consent: The case was resolved via a Consent Agreement and Final Order. This means Bendor agreed to the EPA’s terms. There was no public trial, no contested hearing, and the details of specific violations, penalties, and corrective actions are contained in the full agreement document referenced by this Certificate of Service.

What This Cost People Who Never Signed Anything

Federal paperwork is cold by design. It lists names, addresses, docket numbers, and attorneys. What it does not list is the person who filled a glass of water from a tap connected to a system Bendor, LLC was legally responsible for maintaining under federal law. That person did not get served a Certificate of Service. They were not copied on the email thread between the company’s lawyers at a Honolulu high-rise and the EPA’s enforcement office in San Francisco. They were just drinking water.

The Safe Drinking Water Act exists because the United States learned, repeatedly and catastrophically, that private entities with control over water infrastructure will cut corners unless the law forces them not to. The statute is not a suggestion. It sets legally enforceable standards for what enters a public water supply because the consequences of failure are not abstract. Contaminated water causes illness. It causes long-term organ damage. In vulnerable populations, it kills. The law is written in the knowledge that by the time anyone notices something is wrong, the harm has already happened thousands of times over, one glass at a time.

Bendor, LLC is a real estate entity. Its member is listed at an address on Mercer Island, Washington, one of the wealthiest zip codes in the state of Washington. The water violation, however, happened in Hawaii, likely on Kauai, given that the commercial real estate broker named in the case operates out of Lihue. Kauai’s population includes thousands of working-class residents, agricultural workers, and Native Hawaiian families for whom a safe water supply is not a luxury amenity. It is the baseline requirement of daily survival.

A commercial real estate broker’s involvement suggests this is a property that was being sold, managed, or leased, meaning people may have been living or working there while the water system fell outside federal compliance. Those people had no way of knowing. They were not parties to the docket. They had no attorneys. They received no certified email from a Regional Hearing Clerk. They received, if anything, whatever came out of the tap.

The consent agreement resolves the legal question for Bendor, LLC. It does not resolve anything for the people who drank the water.

Straight From the Government Documents

The source document is a Certificate of Service attached to a Consent Agreement and Final Order. Below are the direct statements from that record, exactly as written.

“I hereby certify the foregoing Consent Agreement and Final Order in the matter of Bendor, LLC (Docket No. SDWA-09-2026-0009) was filed by the Regional Hearing Clerk, U.S. EPA, Region IX.”

Certificate of Service, U.S. EPA Region IX, January 12, 2026

• This establishes that the EPA formally concluded an enforcement action under the Safe Drinking Water Act against Bendor, LLC. A “Final Order” carries legal force; this is not a warning letter or a preliminary finding.
• The phrase “Consent Agreement” means Bendor accepted the terms of the order rather than contesting them, which typically includes agreed-upon corrective measures and, in most SDWA cases, a civil penalty. The specific penalty amount is in the full agreement document, which this Certificate attaches to.

“Beverly E. Hashimoto, Member, Bendor, LLC, 8451 West Mercer Way, Mercer Island, WA 98040”

Respondent listing, Certificate of Service, SDWA-09-2026-0009

• This identifies a specific named individual, Beverly E. Hashimoto, as a Member of Bendor, LLC and places her at an address in Mercer Island, Washington. She was directly served with the EPA’s Final Order, meaning the federal government considers her a responsible party in this enforcement action.
• Mercer Island is a high-income enclave near Seattle. The geographic disconnect between where the LLC’s member lives and where the drinking water violation occurred on Kauai is significant: it points to absentee ownership of a property whose water infrastructure was not adequately managed from a distance.

“Araceli Benson, Principal Broker/Owner, Kauai Commercial Realty, LLC, 4303 Rice Street, Suite C2 #303, Lihue, HI 96766”

Respondent listing, Certificate of Service, SDWA-09-2026-0009

• A commercial real estate broker is listed as a Respondent alongside the LLC itself and its member. This is the clearest geographic anchor in the document: the violation is tied to a commercial property in the Kauai, Hawaii area.
• The broker’s inclusion as a served party indicates their role in managing, listing, or transacting the relevant property may have created legal exposure under the SDWA enforcement. This is not a bystander; this is someone the EPA considered necessary to notify as part of the final order.

Who Bears the Actual Cost When a Water System Fails

Public Health

Safe drinking water is the most basic public health infrastructure. When a private entity violates the SDWA, real people face real exposure before the violation is ever detected or corrected.

• The Safe Drinking Water Act covers contaminants including microbial pathogens, lead, nitrates, arsenic, and synthetic chemicals. A violation can mean any of these substances were present at levels above the legal limit in a water system Bendor controlled, and the affected population may have been drinking that water for an unknown period before EPA action.
• Kauai’s population includes agricultural and resort industry workers who may lack comprehensive health insurance, making them the people least equipped to manage health consequences from contaminated water exposure and least likely to connect symptoms to a water supply problem.
• SDWA violations involving small or privately controlled water systems disproportionately affect renters and tenants in commercial properties, who have no legal standing to demand water quality testing themselves and depend entirely on the property owner to comply with federal law.
• Health effects from drinking water contamination are frequently delayed: lead exposure causes neurological damage that does not present immediately; nitrate contamination causes methemoglobinemia in infants weeks after exposure. By the time a consent order is signed, the window to prevent harm has already closed.

Economic Inequality

The economic structure of this case illustrates a familiar and enraging pattern: the people with financial stakes in the property are represented by high-billing Honolulu law firms, while the people with health stakes in the water had no seat at the table.

• Bendor, LLC retained two partners from Watanabe ING, LLP, a prominent Hawaii law firm, to navigate the consent agreement process. The cost of that legal representation will never be borne by anyone who drank the non-compliant water.
• A Consent Agreement and Final Order is a negotiated outcome. It means the penalty and corrective measures were arrived at through discussion between the corporate entity’s attorneys and the EPA, without any formal representation for affected community members in that negotiation.
• If the property connected to this violation was a commercial rental, the tenants or occupants may have been paying rent to Bendor, LLC for access to premises that included a water system the LLC failed to maintain within federal law. They paid; the LLC pocketed; the EPA eventually stepped in; and those tenants received nothing from the consent agreement process.
• Real estate LLCs structured across state lines, like Bendor with a Washington address and Hawaii operations, are a common mechanism for insulating wealthy property owners from direct legal liability. The corporate structure does not prevent an EPA enforcement action, but it does create layers of distance between the responsible individual and the affected community.

What the Numbers Reveal

What Now: Who to Pressure and How to Fight Back

The Consent Agreement is signed. The docket is closed for the EPA. That does not mean the story is over for Kauai. Here is where accountability still has room to run.

Named Corporate Roles to Watch

• Beverly E. Hashimoto, Member, Bendor, LLC: the identified responsible individual behind this LLC. Her name is on the federal enforcement record permanently.
• Araceli Benson, Principal Broker/Owner, Kauai Commercial Realty, LLC: a licensed real estate professional named in a federal SDWA enforcement action. Hawaii’s real estate licensing authority is the Hawaii Real Estate Commission.
• Ian Sandison and Joyce Tam-Sugiyama, Watanabe ING, LLP: the attorneys who negotiated the consent terms. The content of those negotiated terms is in the full agreement document referenced by this Certificate.

Regulatory Watchlist

• U.S. EPA Region IX (San Francisco): the federal body that brought this action. Track future enforcement actions and Consent Agreement compliance at EPA’s online docket search portal under SDWA-09-2026-0009.
• Hawaii Department of Health, Safe Drinking Water Branch: the state agency with concurrent jurisdiction over drinking water safety in Hawaii. File a public records request for any state-level inspection reports tied to this property.
• Hawaii Real Estate Commission: the body with authority to review whether a commercial real estate broker named in a federal SDWA enforcement action maintained required disclosures to parties in any property transaction involved in this case.
• Kauai County Council and Mayor’s Office: local elected officials who have direct authority to demand transparency on water safety enforcement actions affecting county residents.

What You Can Do Right Now

• File a Hawaii Uniform Information Practices Act (UIPA) public records request with the Hawaii Department of Health for all inspection records, notices of violation, and compliance orders related to Bendor, LLC and any property at the Kauai Commercial Realty address on record.
• Contact the EPA Region IX public affairs office and request the full Consent Agreement document for Docket No. SDWA-09-2026-0009. Under FOIA, this document is presumptively public once finalized.
• Connect with local Kauai tenant advocacy organizations and Native Hawaiian rights groups: share this enforcement record with them. They have the community knowledge to identify who was affected and what remedies may still be available.
• If you were a tenant or occupant of a property managed through Kauai Commercial Realty during the relevant period, consult a Hawaii environmental or tenant rights attorney. A federal SDWA Final Order is a documented admission of violation; that record has value in a civil claim for damages.
• Support organizations like the Surfrider Foundation’s Kauai Chapter and the Hawaii Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations, which track water quality and property accountability issues on the islands and can amplify community pressure.