Move quickly to find source of fuel leaks

The state Department of Health is correct to raise the alarm about the risk to Oahu’s drinking supply from the U.S. Navy’s Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility, which sits a mere 100 feet above the groundwater aquifer and has leaked repeatedly in the past.

The Navy must work more quickly to address rising concerns aired by the Health Department, the Board of Water Supply and a City Council committee that collectively represent the interests of anyone who consumes tap water from Halawa to Hawaii Kai, the broad region served by water wells within easy tainting distance of the fuel-storage facility.

Although no contamination of the drinking supply is currently detected, according to the Board of Water Supply, the risk is real and requires the Navy to pursue solutions more urgently than it has in the past.

Officials said that it might be next spring before the Navy confirms whether a potential 27,000-gallon aviation fuel leak first detected in January actually occurred. Why is it taking so long to address what is clearly a matter of public health?

The underground fuel-storage facility was built during World War II and contains 20 vertical storage tanks capable of storing about 250 million gallons of fuel, which is used to supply aircraft and ships at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam about 21/2 miles away.

According to the state Health Department, the Navy has reported leaks totaling about 1.2 million gallons of fuel since the facility was first built 70 years ago, including the 27,000 gallons found missing from Tank 5 in January. After that incident, the Board of Water Supply temporarily shut down five water wells in the vicinity and has been monitoring water quality closely since consumption from those wells resumed.

Now the Navy says that January leak may have never occurred, citing other far less dangerous factors that may be responsible for the 27,000-gallon discrepancy between what Red Hill operators expected to find in the tank and what they actually measured. This belated explanation is hardly reassuring, inconclusive as it is, and the public’s frustration is compounded by the Navy’s inability to do much more than speculate more than four months after the problem was reported.

The Navy has monitoring wells south of the Red Hill facility, which serve to detect potential contamination in that area, but none west or north of the facility, according to a City Council resolution. The Navy should drill additional monitoring wells as soon as possible, even though that would be but an initial step in what must become a much broader overhaul.

State Deputy Health Director Gary Gill has described the Red Hill facility "as one, big, long 70-year spill" and rightly raises questions about the 144-acre facility’s long-term viability unless billions of dollars worth of repairs and upgrades occur.

The Navy must commit the resources necessary to protect Oahu’s precious water supply from the potentially catastrophic consequences of a major leak from its underground fuel tanks. Along with money, time and manpower, a greater sense of urgency is required.