On Tuesday, the Navy announced plans to comply with an order from Hawaii to drain fuel tanks that could be the source of a fuel leak in November that contaminated the drinking water of hundreds of people in and around the Pearl Harbor area.
The compliance comes after the Navy initially balked at the order, insisting it wasn’t necessary and saying the tanks were not responsible for the spill.
On November 20, kerosene spilled from a pipe into an access tunnel near reservoirs and an aquifer that supplies water to more than 90,000 people in homes, office buildings and schools.
Soon after, around 1,000 residents of the surrounding area reported that their water smelled of fuel and said they became nauseous and sick after drinking it.
The source of the spill has been identified and cleaned up, and Hawaii officials have ordered the Navy to drain 18 of the area’s 20 tanks that hold hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel, which the Navy said was unnecessary because the problem was a pipe and not one of the tanks.
A deputy state attorney general heard arguments over the order last month and concluded that the tanks could be classified as a “time bomb” and that the order was deemed necessary.
The Navy must now submit a plan by next month detailing how the tanks will be safely drained, and once the state health department approves it, the plan must be completed within 30 days. .
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The Navy is preparing to clear the facility, Rear Admiral Blake Converse said during a U.S. House Armed Services Subcommittee hearing on readiness.
“The Navy caused this problem, we own it and we are going to fix it,” said Converse, deputy commander of the US Pacific Fleet.
The Red Hill facility contains 20 giant underground reservoirs built into the mountainside during WWII. Each tank is roughly the height of a 25-story building. Collectively, they can hold up to 250 million gallons (946 million liters) of fuel, although two of the tanks are now empty.
Converse said Tuesday that Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, ordered the order to be enforced when the Hawaii Department of Health finalized it last week.
The Navy believes its water supply system was contaminated with jet fuel that leaked from pipes connected to the Red Hill reservoirs. He detected jet fuel in a well that taps into the aquifer 100 feet (30 meters) below the reservoir complex.
So far, only the Navy’s drinking water has been contaminated. The oil did not make its way into the municipal water supply system operated by the Honolulu Board of Water Supply. But the public service draws water from the same aquifer as the Navy.
Hawaii officials fear that the oil could migrate through the aquifer from the Navy well area to the water department’s Halawa well and poison the city’s drinking water. The Board of Water Supply has suspended use of its Halawa well, which supplies about a quarter of the water consumed in the city of Honolulu in a bid to prevent oil from infecting its water supply system.
Wayne Tanaka, director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii, which has long fought to shut down tanks, welcomed the Navy’s decision to comply with the order.
“I hope they finally see the light and recognize that the installation is an inherent danger to our water supply,” Tanaka said.
He said the state Department of Health, the Hawaii congressional delegation and others should ensure the Navy meets the deadlines included in the department’s order.
“We fully expect the Navy to follow the law in complying with the final order,” said Katie Arita-Chang, spokesperson for the Hawaii Department of Health.
Not operating the facility will have minimal impact, but continuing not to operate it beyond February will come at a cost, Converse said.
He said he did not have details of the costs and national security risks of the facility’s continued non-operation.
“Be clear, clean drinking water is a national security,” US Representative Kaiali’i Kahele from Hawaii said at the hearing.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.