Sierra Club’s Response to the Navy’s pursuit of double-wall stainless steel upgrades to Red Hill Fuel Tanks
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Marti Townsend, Sierra Club of Hawai‘i Chapter Director
Telephone: 808-372-1314
Email: marti.townsend@sierraclub.org
Sierra Club’s Response to the Navy’s pursuit of double-wall stainless steel upgrades to Red Hill Fuel Tanks
HONOLULU, HAWAIʻI (Friday, January 8) -- Today, the U.S. Navy announced that it is pursuing a double-wall stainless steel tank system at its Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. This is not news. For years the U.S. Navy has—and today announces it is continuing to—assess the extent to which these upgrades are feasible. In the years prior, the Navy has claimed that secondary containment, especially a double-wall steel system, was not possible at Red Hill because the facility was not constructed with the intent of being upgraded and in operation for nearly 100 years. Instead, the Navy proposed the cheapest, least protective option to monitor and retrofit some aspects of the tank system.
That proposal by the Navy was rejected by the U.S. EPA and Hawaiʻi Department of Health in November, after reviewing the long-delayed Tank Upgrade Alternative and Release Detection Document. The regulators did not mince words in their rejection letter. The EPA and DOH said that the Navy has not demonstrated its chosen upgrades are “the most protective of the groundwater and drinking water resources and other options are either less protective or impractical” and that the plan “lacks detail, clarity, rationale and justification” to demonstrate that the Navy’s chosen tank upgrades adequately protect Oʻahu’s drinking water.
In response to the Navy’s announcement, Marti Townsend, Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi director has the following statement:
“Retiring the Red Hill fuel storage tanks and relocating the fuel remains the only sure way of safeguarding Oʻahu’s primary drinking water supply. While we are glad the Navy is abandoning its prior do-next-to-nothing approach to these rusty fuel tanks, the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi maintains relocation is the best way of protecting our water.”
A double-wall stainless steel tank system was an option fully considered for many years by the Sierra Club, the Board of Water Supply, and many others concerned with protecting Oʻahu’s water supply. In the course of analyzing these options, it became clear that such technology does not exist for field-constructed tanks like those in Red Hill.
While we look forward to engaging with the U.S. Navy’s experts during the contested case hearing on the permit to operate the Red Hill tanks, we will not allow the Navy’s desperate hopes to implement a new technology to delay taking all necessary steps to immediately protect our water from the grave threat the Navy’s fuel poses to our water.”
Constructed in 1943, the Red Hill Underground Storage Tank Facility stores 250 million gallons of fuel just 100 feet above Oʻahu’s primary drinking water aquifer. In 2014, the facility leaked 27,000 gallons of fuel into the environment. That fuel remains in the environment and petro-chemical contamination has been documented at the drinking water monitoring well immediately makai of the underground tank facility. The massive leak in 2014 triggered a 20-year enforcement action by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Hawaiʻi Department of Health to monitor and improve the storage facility. This agreement states that the Navy is required to upgrade the tanks to a “double-wall equivalency” by 2034 or relocate the tanks. The U.S. Navy’s current proposal seeks to extend the deadline for upgrading or retiring the tanks to 2045.
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