Navy and state officials are making preparations to filter millions of gallons of water from the contaminated Red Hill well and flush it into nearby Halawa Stream.
It’s one more step in the long response effort to contamination of the Navy’s drinking water system that serves 93,000 people by jet fuel from its Red Hill fuel storage facility. Built underground to make it harder for Japanese forces to target during World War II, the facility’s 20 underground tanks sit 100 feet above a critical aquifer that provides most of the drinking water for Honolulu.
The Navy has placed eight massive granular activated- carbon tanks — or GACs — next to the Red Hill well. Altogether the system is capable of filtering and discharging 5 million gallons of water a day.
The plan was developed and is being executed by the Interagency Drinking Water System Team, which includes representatives from the Navy, Army, state Department of Health and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
There are several steps along the way to get the water from the well to the filtration system, let alone into the stream.
The Navy had to build a long makeshift pipeline going into the well’s water pump station. Below the pump room, members of the Navy’s Hawaii-based Mobile Diving Salvage Unit One have been working inside the well itself since early December. The divers have collected samples and conducted regular “skimming” operations to remove visible contaminants from the surface, and have been installing absorbent pads inside the well in hopes of capturing as much contamination as possible.
As the water moves up out of the well through the pipeline and into the GACs, officials monitor the water for contamination.
“(There are) several points to ensure that we get results within the system within one hour with on-site analyzers that we’ll be continuing to monitor for any chemicals, new contaminants in the water and any irregularities,” said Lt. Cmdr. Travis Myers, an officer with Naval Facilities Engineering Command who is in charge of operating the GAC system.
“We will be testing the water that’s incoming into the treatment system, and also the outputs from each of these treatments,” said Dayna Fujimoto, an environmental compliance specialist with NAVFAC Hawaii. “The results from that will be able to help us determine the performance of the treatment system.”
Officials said they expect the flushing to begin within days but are hesitant to say how long the process will take. They say that will depend on testing results as they go forward and how effective the process appears to be.
During a congressional hearing with Navy leaders earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Kai Kahele, D-Hawaii, expressed concerns about the plan and called for alternatives.
“I have serious reservations about releasing such a high volume of treated water into the stream due to the possible unintended consequences and downstream effects,” Kahele said. “There are people that fish in that stream, there are people that crab in that stream, and that is why I think the Navy should make sure the public is well aware before that discharge commences.”
Myers said that while 5 million gallons is a substantial amount of water, there’s little risk of flooding.
“Typical rain events as we as we saw one month ago over New Year’s, we experienced about 600 million gallons per day. So 600 million versus the 5 million that we see now, we are expecting minimal impacts to the Halawa Stream and the downstream portions below the system.”
Matthew Kurano of the Health Department’s Clean Water Branch said his agency has a “healthy skepticism” about anything that might go into the state’s freshwater streams but that DOH believes it’s safe enough to proceed and that protecting the aquifer is the top priority.
“I think it’s very intuitive for people to understand that the first thing you do when you spill something is to try to collect it as much as you can before it gets anywhere else,” Kurano said.
Navy officials acknowledge this is just one part of a larger effort to protect the aquifer and clean the well and water system — an effort that will take much longer.
“This is a first important step,” said NAVFAC Pacific’s environmental director Travis Hylton. “This is a process that will give us some time in making sure that we’re able to counter the potential for contaminants migrating away from the site. So this isn’t the end of the remediation processes; this is to get us enough time to make sure that we don’t have contamination migrating outside.”
In the meantime, officials say they have ensured the Red Hill shaft is blocked off from the drinking water system.
“We have physically isolated distributions, and there’s no physical possible way the water can come from the Red Hill shaft into the distribution system,” Myers said.
The Navy has faced intense scrutiny of its handling of the crisis at a time when the Pentagon sees the Pacific as its most important theater of operations. In the days leading up to families reporting unusual illnesses and tap water smelling of fuel, leaked emails showed that top officials hid safety concerns raised by Navy officers and employees.
Honolulu Council Chairman Tommy Waters and Vice Chairwoman Esther Kia‘aina wrote a letter to President Joe Biden this week expressing concern over the Navy’s handling of the crisis and warning that it could have long-lasting consequences.
“We believe the Navy’s mishandling of the Red Hill crisis is jeopardizing national security interests and the overall relationship between the U.S. military and the people of Hawai‘i,” said the letter, which was released Friday. “The State of Hawai‘i and the City and County of Honolulu have historically supported the United States military’s strategic positions and assets in our communities for decades. This support, however, is not unconditional.”
