Residents of Pearl City Peninsula can resume drinking and cooking with their tap water, according to the Hawaii Department of Health, which on Wednesday lifted its drinking water advisory for the neighborhood.

The neighborhood of 635 homes is the second of 19 zones on the Navy’s water system that has gotten the green light to resume normal water usage since jet fuel from the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility contaminated its drinking water system which serves Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and surrounding neighborhoods in November. Earlier this month, DOH said that residents of Red Hill housing, which includes 135 homes, could resume water use.

In a press release, Rear Adm. Tim Kott, commander of Navy Region Hawaii, said the second advisory lift “marks another important step toward returning all of our families to their homes and providing all of them with safe drinking water.” He added, “We still have a lot of work ahead, and I commend the Interagency Drinking Water System Team (IDWST) for working tirelessly until the health advisory is lifted for all 19 zones.”

Thousands of other households, as well as schools and businesses, remain under DOH’s drinking water advisory. State health officials continue to caution those residents not to drink or cook with the water, or use it for oral hygiene. If a fuel odor is detected in the water, residents also are warned not to use it for bathing, dishwashing and laundry.

At the city level, the Honolulu City Council on Wednesday unanimously backed a measure that requires a city permit to operate an underground storage tank system that can hold more than 100,000 gallons of any regulated substance. It also requires the permit seeker to secure approval from the state health director.

The measure was drafted in response to the ongoing tainted water crisis tied to the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. Its massive underground tank system can hold up to 250 million gallons of fuel.

“We have no greater kuleana than to protect our drinking water … and that’s what this bill does,” Council Chairman Tommy Waters said during the Council meeting. “Ola i ka wai, water is life, the basic truth of Hawaiian culture and for the people of the world. Without clean water, life cannot be sustained. Everything else pales in comparison to that.”

Introduced by Waters and Council member Radiant Cordero, Bill 48 also stipulates that any operator of an underground storage tank with a capacity over 100,000 gallons of any regulated substance will need to obtain a permit from the city within 60 days of the effective date of the ordinance.

In a statement issued after the vote, Mayor Rick Blangiardi stated that he intended to sign off on the measure, and added, “Bill 48 is a vitally important piece of legislation in the safety of large underground storage tanks with the potential to impact the purity of Oahu groundwater.”

The expected upshot of the city law taking effect is that the Navy would need to request a permit from the city to continue operating Red Hill tanks. While, generally, the federal government is allowed to operate as it wants to without complying with state and city mandates, there are exceptions.

Bill 48 cites federal law which it says gives the City and County of Honolulu legal authority to enact underground storage tank requirements that the federal government must comply with. It also points to a state law that allows the city to adopt rules around underground storage tanks as long as they remain consistent with state Health Department rules.

“The U.S. Navy would like us to believe that without retaining Red Hill that we, the people of Hawaii, are jeopardizing national security. I don’t think so,” said Council member Esther Kiaaina.

“Their handling of the Red Hill crisis and throughout the history of a lot of the issues that we face with the Navy — Kahoolawe, Lualualei, the overthrow — I think their continuance of disrespecting the people of Hawaii and all of our political leaders is jeopardizing national security,” she said.

The bill also does not allow a permit to be issued unless the applicant can demonstrate the tank will not leak any regulated substance into the environment during its operating life. The permit would also only last five years, and can be revoked if the operator violates conditions of the permit, misrepresented facts to get the permit or there is a release or threatened release of the regulated substance.

After filing for a permit with the city, the tank operator also would need to submit a permit application with the state health director. Both permits would accrue a $15,000 application review fee.

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply submitted written testimony in favor of the measure. “The need to protect groundwater quality and quantity now and into the future outweighs the continued operation of these large field-constructed underground storage fuel tanks at Red Hill,” wrote Board of Water Supply Chief Engineer Ernest Lau.

He added that the fuel in the tanks and pipelines “should be removed immediately.”

After the water emergency began in November, Navy officials had initially hoped to quickly meet safe drinking water requirements. But the projected dates for lifting the water warnings, and getting thousands of displaced military families back in their homes, have been continually pushed back as health officials continue to review test results.

For many of the remaining affected residents, DOH’s health advisory is now not expected to be lifted until mid-March, according to the Navy’s latest estimates.

A number of zones have no estimated date for when the water advisory will be lifted, including Aliamanu Military Reservation, Catlin Park, Maloelap, Doris Miller, Halsey Terrace, Radford Terrace, Earhart Village, Makalapa, Iroquois Point and others.

The Navy continuously is updating a map of the affected region, which details the stage the Navy is at in taking water samples and reviewing results.

In lifting the drinking water advisory for Pearl City Peninsula, DOH officials said that all 83 water samples from homes or buildings in the area came up negative for petroleum contamination.

DOH said in a press release that the decision to lift the advisory for the area that is labeled Zone A1 was made “after DOH’s multiple lines of evidence confirmed that no contamination is entering the Navy water system and no contamination remains” in the zone.

The Navy’s sampling plan, approved by DOH, includes testing 10% of homes, as well as all schools and child development centers. Sampling will continue as part of the Navy’s long-term plan to ensure the water remains safe.

While military families have grown increasingly weary of living out of hotel rooms and juggling the myriad disruptions to their normal lives, many residents also have expressed unease at going back to drinking the water. A number of residents who have returned to their Red Hill homes have told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that they continue to use bottled water for drinking and cooking.