The subterranean Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility suspected of contaminating a vital source of drinking water on Oahu can hold up to 250 million gallons of fuel for military ships and aircraft in its 20 massive tanks.

It’s one of the largest fuel storage facilities in the country.

As the Navy continues to struggle with the contamination of its water system that serves about 93,000 people in areas around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-­Hickam, it and the other military branches also are grappling with how the crisis could impact their operations if the facility were to cease operations.

The Navy said last week it had temporarily halted using the Red Hill pipe system but reiterated its long-standing position that Red Hill cannot be decommissioned.

“Please remember that the fuel stored at Red Hill is vital to the nation and Hawaii, providing fuel not only to the Navy, Air Force, Army and Marines, but also Coast Guard and Hawaii National Guard,” said Navy spokesman Mike Andrews in a statement that to many foreshadowed the fight ahead for those who want Red Hill permanently shut down.

On Monday, Gov. David Ige issued an emergency order commanding the Navy to defuel Red Hill within 30 days of resolving the current contamination before it can resume operations. On Tuesday the Navy said it would resist the order.

During a news conference Monday, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said that in the short-term the temporary suspension of fueling “will have a very minimal effect, if any at all right now” on operations in the Pacific. He would not discuss the long-term implications.

“I don’t want to get into topics or conversations with regards to how long we can continue to do this for national security reasons,” said Del Toro, who was in Hawaii for events commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Navy has confirmed that its Red Hill water shaft was tainted with petroleum, likely from jet fuel. Officials said Friday the water system contamination is believed to have come from a 14,000-gallon spill of fuel and water from the facility Nov. 20.

Many of the 3,200 military families affected by the contamination have had to leave their homes for temporary lodging in hotels and elsewhere after reporting fuel-­like odors coming from their faucets and health effects including skin rashes, nausea and diarrhea. Military officials have said it will likely be weeks or longer before they can return.

In response to the ongoing water crisis, the U.S. Department of Defense developed an Oahu Military Water Contamination Incident Report Registry to document all residents potentially exposed to the contamination, and the U.S. Army formed Task Force Ohana to provide assistance to residents of the Aliamanu Military Reservation and Red Hill, distributing water, setting up shower stations and providing other assistance, with medical personnel screening roughly 600 people a day for symptoms.

Military readiness

The fueling hub that the military depends on to power its ships and aircraft for operations across the Pacific is also threatening the health of the troops the military depends on to operate them.

When asked if that potentially posed a problem for military readiness, Del Toro said, “It’s not the fuel itself that’s making them sick, it’s the fuel in the water.” Navy investigators, he said, would get to the bottom of it.

Terron Sims, security fellow at the Truman National Security Project, described the Red Hill water crisis as a years-in-the-making problem that undermines America’s military readiness, and said that every day it continues it will get worse.

“The biggest problem is that these installations are super old,” Sims said. “The way that budget dollars are formed, there’s not a whole lot of money that goes into updating the infrastructure.”

The military built the Red Hill facility during the 1940s to support the Navy’s Pacific Fleet; it was built underground to make it harder for enemy forces to strike. Today, after two decades of wars in the Middle East, the Pentagon increasingly considers the Pacific to be its top-priority theater, and Hawaii is the nerve center for those operations.

As China asserts its claims over disputed territories and extends its military and economic influence in the region, tensions have simmered in the South China Sea, one of the world’s most critical waterways.

At least one-third of all global trade passes through the South China Sea, where the Chinese military has been building bases on disputed islands and atolls. This has led to increasing clashes with neighboring countries over navigation and fishing rights. As pushback, the U.S. Navy has been conducting frequent “freedom of navigation operations” throughout the region.

Meanwhile, the Air Force has been implementing a strategy it calls “Agile Combat Employment,” which involves frequently moving aircraft around airstrips spread across islands in the Pacific to make them harder for Chinese, Russian or North Korean missiles to strike in the event of a conflict.

The constant operations have proved demanding on the military’s equipment and its aging infrastructure. Congress is making a major push to pump funding into upgrades to shipyards that have been struggling to maintain American warships.

Safety concerns

The 80-year-old Red Hill facility has continued to play a critical role fueling operations in the Pacific, even as Navy personnel have internally raised concerns about the facility’s condition and safety. Sims said that commanders and lawmakers have for years emphasized funding pricey weapons systems and operations while letting the infrastructure that supports them fall into disrepair, calling it a case of “laziness and negligence.”

“It’s just a matter of the right leader getting in place and prioritizing the soft aspect of defense, and not focusing all their energy on the hard aspect of defense,” Sims said. “You’ve got to make an installation function in order to have good training and be prepared to fight wars.”

The unique architecture of the underground Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility that made it nearly impossible for enemy forces to locate or strike during World War II also poses unique challenges for operations and maintenance.

A March 2014 Pentagon budget request for $50 million in improvements to Red Hill’s fire suppression system noted that analysts had concluded “the existing underground fueling facility at Red Hill has inadequate fire protection infrastructure and communication system” and that “fueling operations in the underground complex create high potential for fire incident.”

The budget request asserted that “fires involving fuel are extremely difficult to extinguish. This is even more so in the underground tunnels of the Red Hill tank farm because of the confined spaces. Also the ventilation within the tunnel as well as the remote location and inadequate fire protection infrastructure external to the tunnel make this a high risk operation.”

But it was a 27,000-gallon fuel spill from the facility in 2014 that drew the attention of regulators and environmental groups concerned about possible groundwater contamination due to corrosion of the tanks, which sit about 100 feet above an aquifer that is a major source of drinking water shared with the Honolulu Board of Water Supply.

The BWS announced Dec. 3 that it had shut down its Halawa shaft — which serves about 40% of urban Honolulu’s water users — as a precaution during the current crisis.

Under intense scrutiny, the Navy has proposed a series of possible upgrades to the tanks, despite calls from many that they should be emptied and shut down permanently.

Sims said that even if the Navy were to shut down Red Hill, it would take time to decommission the facility and replace it. And building new facilities with the same storage capabilities as Red Hill could take years and billions of dollars.

Ultimately, Sims said, it would fall to Congress to make that a priority.

“It wouldn’t get it built today, but you could get it budgeted,” Sims said, adding the longer commanders and lawmakers wait, the more complicated — and expensive — the process will be.

Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, told reporters in Hawaii on Monday that “this is not a get-it-done-before-Christmas-of-2021 effort. This is a long-term effort that we need to get it right.”

“We need to make it right forever,” he said.

Handling of the crisis

But the water contamination crisis comes after recent revelations that Navy officials sought to prevent the concerns of their own personnel about the facility’s safety from becoming public.

In October, emails obtained by Honolulu Civil Beat showed that “political concerns” prompted Navy officials to withhold knowledge of a 2020 leak from state officials over concerns it could derail efforts to get an operating permit from the Department of Health.

In November, an email obtained by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser showed that a senior Navy officer had raised concerns about multiple leaking valves and pipes ahead of another spill that occurred May 6, but Navy officials did not appear to share this information with the state.

For nearly a week before the Navy acknowledged detecting contamination of its water supply, military families had been experiencing illnesses and rashes before eventually reporting tap water that smelled of chemicals. The Navy says it suspended fueling operations from Red Hill on Nov. 27 — one day before Navy officials say they learned of problems in the water.

During a Dec. 2 town hall meeting for residents in Army housing areas that rely on the Navy’s water supply, 25th Infantry Division Cmdr. Maj. Gen. Joseph Ryan told a resident who brought up issues going back to 2014 that he understood “this is about trust and confidence and faith that when we fix it, this time we’re fixing it for good.” He added, “I can’t guarantee that.”

U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, expressed concerns about confidence in the Navy’s handling of the crisis during a congressional confirmation hearing Wednesday for Adm. Christopher Grady, a candidate for vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“The Department of Defense needs to provide answers to the citizens of Hawaii, and the nation as a whole, about how it can safely protect the aquifer while still storing the required fuel reserve for national security, even if that means ultimately moving the fuel elsewhere,” Hirono told Grady, who promised to make water safety a priority.

During a Friday town hall on Facebook Live, Ryan said: “Our readiness posture here in the Pacific is predicated, the foundation of it, is the life, health and safety of our service members and their families.”