Hawaii Sierra Club steps in as state orders shutdown of Red Hill fuel tanks

Honolulu Star Advertiser, December 14, 2021

The Hawaii Sierra Club is seeking to intervene in state proceedings aimed at forcing the U.S. Navy to drain its Red Hill underground fuel tanks after jet fuel contaminated its drinking water system, which serves an estimated 93,000 people on Oahu.

The Hawaii Department of Health last week issued an administrative order instructing the Navy to suspend operations at its Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, which is believed to be the source of the contamination, while it cleans up the fuel and figures out what needs to be done to safely operate the facility. DOH says the Navy can then seek state permission to continue operating the facility.

The Navy has said it intends to fight the order, and has taken issue with emptying its tanks, which it says are critical infrastructure. The fuel helps power its operations throughout the Pacific and Indian oceans.

An administrative hearing is planned for Thursday.

The Hawaii Sierra Club, which is being represented by environmental law firm Earthjustice, says that DOH hasn’t been aggressive enough in standing up to the Navy over the years.

“While we welcome the Department of Health’s emergency order to shut down Red Hill, the agency has failed to stand up to the Navy in the past and protect O‘ahu’s drinking water,” said Earthjustice attorney David Henkin, in a news release. “With the island’s aquifer at stake and our drinking water on the line, it’s clear the Navy must defuel and shut down the Red Hill facility now, before more residents get sick.

“We seek to intervene to ensure that the Department of Health does not, once again, let the Navy off the hook with half-measures that have proved inadequate to protect the health and safety of O‘ahu’s people.”

A DOH spokeswoman said that the department’s emergency order “stands for itself in communicating our actions to protect public health and the environment.”

While DOH has ordered a suspension of operations at Red Hill, the Hawaii Sierra Club has intensified its calls for a permanent shutdown of the Red Hill fuel facility since late November when residents, many of whom are military families, began complaining of a fuel-like odor coming from their tap water. Dozens of water users began complaining of skin rashes, burning skin after bathing, vomiting and diarrhea, symptoms that health officials say are consistent with contact with or consumption of petroleum­-contaminated water.

Over the past two weeks, about 3,200 families who live in the affected areas in Moanalua and lower Halawa have been displaced from their homes due to the water contamination. The military has been housing them in Waikiki hotels.

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply, which serves the majority of residents on Oahu, is also taking precautions to prevent any fuel contamination in the groundwater from getting into its drinking water system. It’s shut down its Halawa shaft and two additional wells. It’s also looking to install another monitoring well to try to track fuel contamination from the Red Hill facility and gauge whether it is moving toward its wells.

Hawaii Sierra Club Director Wayne Tanaka said the risk that the Navy’s Red Hill fuel farm poses to Oahu’s drinking water is too great to continue operations.

“The water supply for tens of thousands of O‘ahu residents has already been poisoned, and hundreds of thousands of others continue to be at risk of similar harm,” said Tanaka in the news release. “This avoidable catastrophe can only get much, much worse — and the only way to prevent that from happening is for the Department of Health to stick to its guns, and force the Navy to protect our irreplaceable drinking water supply from its 80-year-old, leaking fuel storage tanks.”

DOH on Friday announced that its tests of the Navy’s Red Hill drinking water shaft found petroleum chemicals associated with diesel fuel were 350 times the safe limit.

The Navy has begun trying to clean the petroleum out of the shaft with divers and is looking to install a water decontamination system.

A hearings officer in the case is expected to rule on the Hawaii Sierra Club’s motion.