Editorial: Navy snafus put civilians at risk

Honolulu Star Advertiser | January 19, 2022

The debacle that is the Red Hill water crisis has a newly revealed set of victims: residents of Kapilina Beach Homes in Ewa Beach.

The community of about 1,400 homes — once military property but now privately operated — had been told its water came from outside the Navy’s contaminated system. But as residents fell sick with symptoms similar to those affecting residents of military housing near Red Hill, it became clear that the Kapilina water source was also tainted with leaked jet fuel from the Navy’s underground tank farm.

Imagine yourself as one of these Kapilina families. You pay monthly rent for a secure home and all of a sudden the water in your pipes is undrinkable. You can’t use it for cleaning or bathing without risking illness. If you were in the military, the Navy would move you into a hotel room with an allowance for expenses. But as a civilian, you have to pay your own way and file for repayment later. To move would mean breaking your lease, risking your deposit, plus having to come up with something like $12,000 to secure a new rental.

This comes on top of what happened in Kapilina in late 2019, when the electricity bills skyrocketed. The homes are not on the Hawaiian Electric Co. power grid, but part of an aged system run — again — by the Navy. Rates soared by 68% at the time, to offset rates that had been below cost for three years.

And now it’s the water. You could try to tough it out, but for how long? It’s already been more than a month.

The Navy has flushed and reflushed the water system, attempting to clear it of petroleum hydrocarbons that were three times the level deemed safe — measured at Aliamanu Military Reservation at year’s end. Mid-February is the latest estimate of when some residents might safely return to their homes — though what, if any, headway is being made by the flushing remains very unclear. The lack of transparency and disclosure about the scope and success of water-cleaning efforts are not acceptable.

The Navy is under a state emergency order, issued Dec. 6, to clean up and safeguard the water system, to arrange an independent review of the 20 underground World War II-era fuel tanks at Red Hill and to empty the tanks, at least until they are deemed secure. The cost of the crisis so far is estimated at $250 million, including the cleanup and to temporarily relocate residents. That’s without folding in the Kapilina residents, who should be covered immediately.

A forever closure of the underground system would likely cost billions and take many years, but it is the best solution, even if the Navy hasn’t come around to it yet.

All one has to do is extrapolate today’s pain, involving this limited set of residents, to comprehend the urgency. Those underground tanks are poised just 100 feet above a freshwater aquifer that serves much of Oahu. The city Board of Water Supply has already shut down two of its nearby wells to guard against contamination.

Testimony given in a state Department of Health contested case hearing in December indicated that more than 5,000 gallons of fuel could be leaking undetected every year. The probability of a 1,000 to 30,000 gallon leak over the next five years was approximated at 80%, rising to 99.8% within 20 years.

In that hearing the Navy objected to the portion of the state order requiring it to empty the Red Hill tanks. The hearing officer’s ruling went against the military, and the Navy has since said it would comply, but not necessarily permanently.

So let us return to the imagination exercise. Imagine it is five years from now and you are one of the 400,000 or so residents of Oahu served by the aquifer under Red Hill. Now imagine a massive leak from the underground tanks — an 80% probability, remember? Then, based on the Navy’s performance with the far smaller-scale current contamination, imagine what will happen. Where will you go? What will you drink?

Scary, isn’t it? And not that much of a stretch.