Residents of the Pearl City Peninsula can resume drinking and cooking with tap water, according to the Hawaii Department of Health, which today lifted its drinking water advisory for the neighborhood.
The 635-home neighborhood is the second of 19 Navy water system areas that have been given the go-ahead to resume normal water use from fuel at the Navy’s Red Hill Fuel Facility contaminated its drinking water system that serves Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and surrounding neighborhoods in November. Earlier this month, the DOH said residents of Red Hill housing, which includes 135 homes, could resume water use.
“Today marks another important step toward getting all of our families back to their homes and getting everyone clean drinking water,” Rear Admiral Tim Kott, commander of Naval Region Hawaii, said in a statement. Press release. “We still have a lot of work to do, and I commend the Interagency Drinking Water System Team (IDWST) for their tireless work until the health advisory is lifted for all 19 areas.”
Thousands more households, as well as schools and businesses, remain under the DOH drinking water advisory. State health officials continue to warn these residents not to drink or cook with the water, or use it for oral hygiene. If a fuel odor is detected in the water, residents are also warned not to use it for bathing, washing dishes and laundry.
Navy officials had hoped to quickly meet clean water needs after the water emergency began in November, but the dates scheduled for the lifting of water warnings and the return of thousands of displaced military families in their homes have been continually pushed back as health officials continue to review test results.
For many remaining residents, the DOH health advisory is not expected to be lifted until mid-March, according to the latest Navy estimates that can be found here.
A number of areas do not have an estimated date for the lifting of the water advisory, including Aliamanu Military Reserve, Catlin Park, Maloelap, Doris Miller, Halsey Terrace, Radford Terrace, Earhart Village, Makalapa, Iroquois Point and others.
The Navy continually updates a map of affected areawhich details the stage the Navy is at in taking water samples and reviewing the results.
In lifting the drinking water advisory for the Pearl City Peninsula, DOH officials said all 83 water samples from homes or buildings in the area tested negative for oil contamination.
The DOH said in a press release that the decision to lift the advisory for the area labeled Zone A1 was made “after DOH’s multiple lines of evidence confirmed that no contamination is entering the A1 system. Navy water and no contamination remains” in the area.
The Navy’s DOH-approved sampling plan includes testing 10% of homes, as well as all schools and child development centers. Sampling will continue as part of the Navy’s long-term plan to ensure the water remains safe.
As military families grow increasingly tired of living in hotel rooms and juggling the myriad disruptions to their normal lives, many residents have also expressed unease about going back to drinking water. A number of residents who have returned to their Red Hill homes told the Star-Advertiser they continue to use bottled water for drinking and cooking.