Mahalo for supporting Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Enjoy this free story!
At a packed Nov. 19 hearing on the ongoing Red Hill fuel tank debacle, it was inspirational to hear so many passionate citizen voices speaking out to protect Honolulu’s precious and irreplaceable aquifer from being poisoned by the U.S. Navy.
Five years ago, 27,000 gallons of fuel poured into the soil only 100 feet above the natural groundwater source of drinking water for half-a-million residents of Central to East Honolulu. Unbelievably, the Navy and state Department of Health (DOH) are poised to sign an agreement to perpetuate this terrifying status quo for another 25 years, even though the Navy’s own risk assessment gives a 27% chance of another fuel release from these 80-year-old tanks.
Once in the groundwater, the fuel, with up to 2,000 different cancer-causing hydrocarbons and additives toxic to the kidneys and nervous system, would pollute the entire aquifer of Honolulu for generations to come. Unbelievably, the Navy and DOH are poised to sign an agreement to perpetuate this terrifying status quo for another 25 years despite ongoing daily leakage and a 27% chance annually of another catastrophic fuel release.
Despite the magnitude of this hazard, there was not enough media coverage of the Nov. 19 hearing at Moanalua Middle School. A second public hearing immediately after the holidays at an even larger venue should be planned, with broad media coverage and postponement of any decision-making until critical information is more effectively disseminated to the public.
The community’s voice calling for the tanks to be drained and relocated now must be truly heard and honored. A DOH hearing on Dec. 2 about extending the status quo to 2045 is scheduled on a workday morning, when most cannot attend, in an obscure location at the end of Waimano Home Road. This venue and timing, plus the scant media coverage of the last hearing, are simply unacceptable considering the gravity of this crisis and its impact.
The military has an abominable track record for protecting the environment and Hawaii’s experience has been no different. The Administrative Order on Consent (AOC) for Red Hill signed by the DOH and the Navy in 2015, one year after the massive leak, alludes in its “tank upgrade” memorandum to extremely unreassuring proposals such as “real time soil vapor monitoring” and “on demand release detection” and ominously proposes the “construction of a water treatment plant below Red Hill.”
None of these are strategies designed to save Honolulu’s aquifer. They are simply plans to deal with anticipated future catastrophic fuel releases. The current proposed amendment scheduled for testimony on Monday is completely unacceptable. It would basically kick the can down the road until 2045, without doing anything substantial to resolve the Red Hill fuel tank crisis or to definitively protect our aquifer.
At Manchester in Kitsap, Wash., the largest fuel depot in the U.S., above-ground relocation is anticipated to cost $186 million and is being prioritized.
As Hawaii residents, we cannot place our faith in the government to protect us, our children, our grandchildren or our environment. All of us who care about the health of future generations, all who have reverence for our aina, our ocean, our reefs, for the integrity of life itself in these precious islands, need to rise up and demand that the Red Hill tanks be drained immediately and relocated away from the aquifer, above ground over capstone.
These 20 mammoth fuel tanks, each of which can readily contain Aloha Tower, are a gargantuan rusting hulking underground monument to the U.S. military industrial complex and must go. Nothing is more important to our national security than protecting the integrity of our priceless life-giving water, ka wai ola.
Ellen Sofio, M.D., is a physician who works in Wahiawa.
82