Molasses pollutes harbor

A molasses spill dumped an estimated 233,000 gallons of the dark, syrupy liquid into Hono­lulu Harbor on Monday, killing thousands of fish so far and prompting beach closures.

State officials said they are still trying to assess the scope of the “severe” environmental damage. A corroded, faulty pipe that runs under Pier 52 at Sand Island and pumps molasses exports onto Matson Inc. cargo ships likely caused the spill, company representatives and state officials said Tuesday.

They’re still not sure how long it will take for the spill’s plume, which has spread up the harbor to the Keehi shoreline, to dissipate into the ocean.

In the meantime they say the molasses likely caused the fish to suffocate by depleting oxygen in the water.

It led thousands of other reef-dwelling fish that have survived the spill so far to crowd the shallowest parts of the harbor’s shore.

“To my knowledge, nothing of this magnitude on Oahu ever in the past” has occurred, said Gary Gill, the state Department of Health’s deputy director for environmental health.

The thick, sugar-based liquid won’t harm people directly, but the small fish killed by the spill could attract marine predators such as sharks, barracudas and eels into the harbor area, Gill said. Also, the plume could touch off algae blooms, which would pose a public health threat, he added.

State health officials posted signs around the affected areas Tuesday warning people not to swim there.

No cleanup plan is in the works because officials don’t have a way to remove the substance from the water. Unlike oil, which rises to the surface and can be skimmed off, molasses sinks deeper into the water, they said. “We don’t believe at this time that there’s any way to do a cleanup other than to let nature take its course,” Gill said.

Gill and other state officials weren’t sure how long it might take for the substance to dissipate on its own. They said divers were taking samples to get an idea of the concentrations involved.

A private contractor started removing the dead fish from the harbor Monday night, officials said, and necropsies will be done to better understand what killed the marine life.

“There’s not a lot of data on how sugar affects marine animals,” said Dave Gulko, a biologist with the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Aquatic Resources Division who worked on the site Monday and Tuesday. Distressed reef fish are swimming up the shallowest part of the shore, fish “that you would never see” there — including butterflyfish, eels, goatfish, squirrelfish and others, Gulko said.

Matson, which ships molasses exports from Hawaii to the mainland, reported the spill Monday to the state DOH’s Hazard Evaluation and Emergency Response office after workers started seeing a brown substance in the water and smelled something unusual, company spokes­man Jeff Hull said.

The ship that had been loaded with molasses left at about 5 a.m. Monday morning, Hull said. The Coast Guard then received reports of “dark discoloration” in Hono­lulu Harbor at about 8 a.m. Monday, according to a DOH news release.

Matson then hired divers with Pacific Environmental Co., who inspected Matson’s loading operation underwater and discovered the faulty pipe as the cause, according to a statement Matson released Tuesday.

The company is “fairly certain” the leak did not occur in the molasses tanks or the ship, and the pipe they’ve identified as the source was not normally used to pump the liquid onto Matson ships, Hull added.

There was no molasses being pumped onto Matson ships Tuesday, and the company is working with DOH and other state agencies, including DLNR and the Department of Transportation (which regulates the harbors), to address the spill, Hull said.

“Matson regrets that the incident impacted many harbor users, as well as wildlife,” Matson’s statement read. “We take our role as an environmental steward very seriously and … we are taking steps to ensure this situation does not happen again.”

It’s too early to say what penalties the company might face, Gill said. He noted that discharging a pollutant into state waters violates the Clean Water Act and could be punished with fines of up to $25,000 a day.

Matson has a lease at the harbor with DOT, department spokes­woman Caro­line Sluyter said.

Contractors inspect the harbor twice a year from the water to look for polluted areas, but it’s not clear whether the molasses pipes were part of those inspections, Sluyter said Tuesday.

Matson has had a molasses operation at Sand Island since 1983 and completed “a number” of terminal upgrades since then, Hull said in an email Tuesday.

The last reported molasses spill in Hawaii took place in 2003, when a 2-inch hole in a state transmission line spilled 50,000 gallons into Maui’s Kahu­lui Harbor. In that case the molasses, from Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., was supposed to be pumped aboard a Matson barge. The spill was reported when officials noticed a discrepancy between the amount of molasses leaving its storage tank and that received by the barge.

A similar molasses spill took place this past July near Guadalajara, Mexico, according to media reports. Hawaii state health officials said they knew of an additional spill that took place in Puerto Rico.

“Anywhere where you might have a sugar industry which is loading molasses as part of the sugar refining process onto ships, there’s a potential for this kind of spill,” Gill said.