The U.S. Navy has concluded that a May 6 spill at its Red Hill underground fuel farm was due to a control room operator’s failure to follow correct procedures. Navy officials said Tuesday, after releasing the results of its investigation, that additional safeguards have been implemented at the facility and that “appropriate action” has been taken against the civilian employee who made the error.
“This release was not due to age of infrastructure, corrosion or the equipment condition,” said Capt. James Meyer, commanding officer of Naval Facilities Hawaii.
The release, of what the Navy now estimates was 1,618 gallons of jet fuel, became a flashpoint in an increasingly contentious battle over the future of the World War II-era facility, with the Hawaii Sierra Club saying at the time that it was further evidence that the aging facility poses a grave threat to Oahu’s drinking water supply.
The Navy and Hawaii Sierra Club are locked in a contested case proceeding before the state Department of Health over the issuance of a state permit to allow the Navy to continue operating the facility.
Adding to the pressure, the Hawaii Sierra Club on Monday filed a lawsuit against DOH over its failure to timely turn over documents relating to another fuel release in the vicinity, which may or may not be connected to the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. From March 2020 to May 2021, the Navy says, approximately 7,100 gallons of fuel was recovered from the water and soil of Pearl Harbor, which likely included a mixture of new and older sources.
DOH has delayed a decision on the Navy’s Red Hill permit while it looks into whether that release is pertinent to the Navy’s application.
Operator error
The Navy said Tuesday that the May 6 fuel release was not from any of the underground tanks, but rather a connecting pipeline. The Navy was transferring fuel from one tank to another when a control room operator failed to follow valve procedures, the Navy said.
The operations order “lays out in excruciating detail what valves are supposed to be open and when,” said Capt. Albert Hornyak, commanding officer at the Naval Supply Systems Command’s Fleet Logistics Center Pearl Harbor.
He said failure to follow that protocol resulted in a rapid surge of pressure in the pipeline, causing the spill.
“It’s almost like building a Lego,” said Hornyak. “You go through, and you have your steps and you follow those steps, and if you don’t follow those steps exactly, the picture on the box that you are trying to build toward is not going to look the same.”
Hornyak would not specify what actions were taken against the control room operator.
He said the operators undergo extensive training, but as an added safeguard the Navy has added an additional operator during fuel transfers to provide a “second set of eyes.” The Navy also has increased the sensitivity of its alarm systems to detect pressure and fuel level irregularities.
The Navy’s investigation concluded that all but 38 gallons of the spilled fuel was recovered and that there was no indication that the fuel had been detected in groundwater monitoring wells.
The Navy initially had estimated that about 1,000 gallons of fuel had spilled, but the investigation found that it was hundreds of gallons more.
The investigation into the root cause of the spill was conducted by Austin Brockenbrough & Associates, an engineering consulting firm.
Sierra Club lawsuit
Wayne Tanaka, executive director of the Hawaii Sierra Club, said the Navy’s reports did little to assuage his concerns about the facility that contains 20 massive underground fuel tanks and sits just 100 feet above an aquifer that serves as a major source of drinking water for Oahu.
“They really just reinforced what we already know, which is there is no way to eliminate human error,” said Tanaka.
He said that the reports also made him think about how “incredibly worse this could have been.”
The Hawaii Sierra Club is also trying to get more information about the 7,100 gallons of fuel that was recovered from Pearl Harbor. The environmental group filed a public-records request with DOH on Sept. 8 seeking all documents that “mention or relate” to the fuel leak that was first spotted in March 2020.
On Oct. 8 a deputy attorney general for the state emailed the Sierra Club to say that DOH was working to respond to the records request but noted the Navy was “claiming the requested material is protected in the interest of national security.”
The Attorney General’s Office provided the Navy with a copy of the records to identify needed redaction.
The Sierra Club says it has yet to receive any documents and is questioning why the Navy should be permitted to redact the documents.
“The law is the law. The public has a legal right to know what’s in these documents,” said Tanaka in a news release. “And it is extremely disappointing that we now have to litigate, just to get the public records we need to understand what happened with the Pearl Harbor leak.”
DOH didn’t not respond to a question about when it expects to begin making documents available to the Sierra Club. But Kathleen Ho, deputy director of environmental health for DOH, said her agency is “committed to transparency with stakeholders and the community” on this issue.
“DOH is obligated to comply with both federal and state law and has been engaged in the process of providing the Sierra Club the records it requested,” Ho said in a statement. “Unfortunately the process takes time due to the volume and complexity of the records and our reliance upon the Navy for its assistance with review of the national security implications in accordance with federal law.”
RED HILL BULK FUEL STORAGE FACILITY
>> Constructed (1940-1943) by the Navy under a ridge between Halawa and Moanalua, the facility consists of 20 vertical, steel-lined underground tanks encased in concrete. The tanks lie under 100 feet of rock and are built into cavities mined inside of Red Hill.
>> Each tank measures 100 feet in diameter and is 250 feet tall, equivalent to a 20-story building.
>> Red Hill can store up to 250 million gallons of fuel. It currently holds three types of petroleum fuel: marine diesel for ships and two types of jet fuel, JP-5 and JP-8.
>> The tanks are connected to three gravity-fed pipelines that run 2.5 miles inside a tunnel to fueling piers at Pearl Harbor.
>> Hundreds of thousands of residents in and around Honolulu rely on an aquifer 100 feet below the Red Hill facility for fresh drinking water.
>> In January 2014, in the course of refilling a tank, the Navy identified an estimated fuel release of up to 27,000 gallons of JP-8 jet fuel and reported it to the state Department of Health. Drinking water monitoring found compliance with federal and state safety standards before and after the release.
>> In January a Navy pipeline failed two leak detection tests. Navy officials didn’t report the failures to state health officials for another three months, according to a June letter from the Health Department to the Navy. The Navy said about 7,100 gallons of fuel was recovered from the harbor and soil.
>> In May the Navy confirmed that a fuel spill was detected May 6 at the Red Hill fuel farm. The Navy now estimates that 1,618 gallons of jet fuel was released.
Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; U.S. Navy
