Navy’s responses to leak at Red Hill fuel frustration

The Navy on Thursday assured members of a committee created by the Legislature to monitor underground fuel tanks that a release of approximately 1,000 gallons of jet fuel at its Red Hill fuel farm earlier this month had been “captured and fully contained” and that there was no evidence of environmental harm or risk to an underground aquifer that supplies drinking water.

“What we do know is that the containment system in the lower access tunnel worked exactly as intended to capture the fuel spilled from the pipeline,” Capt. Gordie Meyer, commander of Naval Facilities Engineering Command Hawaii, told the committee, which comprises members of the Legislature, congressional delegation, Honolulu Board of Water Supply, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, military, state Department of Health and the public. “The Navy is working closely with the DOH to confirm our assessment that there is no environmental impact or impact to the groundwater.”

But members of the committee and the public grew increasingly frustrated as Meyer repeatedly declined to disclose details about what happened, citing an ongoing investigation into the matter.

State Sen. Mike Gabbard (D, Kapolei-Makakilo) asked the Navy to explain why news reports following the leak said that approximately 1,000 gallons of fuel was released yet only 700 gallons was recovered. If accurate, asked Gabbard, “What happened to the other 300 gallons?”

Meyer seemed to indicate that he didn’t know the source of the figures that were reported by the media and that the spill was actually less than 1,000 gallons, but he didn’t say by how much.

“The investigation is ongoing,” said Meyer. “We stand by and continue to identify that less than 1,000 gallons were released. There might be a variety of numbers that are thrown out there, and with the ongoing investigation I do not want to speculate where individuals received different information and numbers, and that will be part of the detailed investigation underway.”

In a May 7 news release, the day after the spill, the Navy said that “approximately 1,000 gallons of fuel was released during a fuel transfer and properly collected by the fuel containment system.”

As for the 700 gallons that was reportedly contained, state health officials disclosed to the media that this was how much fuel the Navy told them had been recovered following the spill.

Meyer also dodged questions from Ernie Lau, manager and chief engineer of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, about how long it took the Navy to notify state health officials about the leak. The Department of Health, along with the EPA, is in charge of regulating the facility, which contains 20 massive underground fuel tanks about 2.5 miles from Pearl Harbor.

The Navy has been under increasing pressure from the public and environmental groups to relocate the tanks after 27,000 gallons of fuel leaked from one of the tanks in 2014, and subsequent news reports revealed a long history of leaks at the aging facility that could threaten Oahu’s drinking water supply.

“How was DOH notified and when?” asked Lau about this most recent leak.

Meyer would only say that the Health Department was notified “very quickly.”

In fact, state health officials subsequently disclosed that it took the Navy 13 hours to notify them despite there being a 24-hour emergency hot­line. The spill occurred at 6:35 p.m. May 6, and the Navy notified the Health Department at 7:30 a.m. May 7, according to the department.

State health officials also seemed to contradict the Navy’s assessment that the leak had been fully contained, and provided a less sanguine appraisal of situation.

“Based on soil vapor data provided by the Navy thus far, our preliminary review indicates that some fuel entered the subsurface and there are elevated soil vapor measurements as compared to measurements prior to May 5,” said Joanna Seto, the Health Department’s environmental health program administrator.

Even though the Heath Department has routinely made soil vapor levels at Red Hill public, health officials are refusing to release the recent data, citing the ongoing investigation.

The Navy on Thursday also wouldn’t say what might have caused the leak, whether the fuel leaked from a pipe or nozzles or whether the fuel flowed over metal lids on the floor of the tunnel that lead to wells.

To those questions, Meyer repeatedly responded that the investigation is underway and that he didn’t want to bias the results. He also wouldn’t say how long the investigation would take or whether the final report would be released to the public.

“I do not want to put a timeline on the investigation,” said Meyer. “Obviously, we want to do it thoroughly, unbiased and appropriately. We want to do it quickly, but not at the expense of thoroughness. So I don’t want to put an exact time frame on that.”

David Kimo Frankel, an attorney for the Hawaii Sierra Club, which has pressed the Navy for years to relocate the aging tanks or install a secondary containment system, grew increasingly impatient with the Navy’s responses as the Zoom meeting drew on, at one point asking moderator Peter Adler to step in.

“Peter: Are you going to let the Navy repeat the mantra that it is being ‘transparent’ and then refuse to answer every single pertinent question?” asked Frankel in the meeting’s online chat.