Students, staff at schools affected by Red Hill fuel leak remain wary of tap water

The caution tape finally has been stripped off nearly all the sink faucets and drinking fountains at Red Hill Elementary School, now that the fuel contamination warnings have been lifted. Yet the teachers and children are still afraid to use the water for anything but hand-washing.

“Those are working,” Principal Komarey Moss says, gesturing toward a couple of student drinking fountains outside a classroom, “but no one uses them yet.”

Four miles away at Holy Family Catholic Academy, every time Principal Celeste Akiu washes her hands, she still does the sniff test and looks for any telltale oily sheen on the water’s surface that would suggest the presence of poisonous petroleum.

Asked whether she believes the water is safe to drink, she pauses for a beat, smiles, takes a breath and says, “We are hopeful.”

Some students and families at Hickam Elementary School also remain nervous about the taps. Even after the school’s running water got the all-clear in March, “When I said, ‘We’re still drinking bottled water,’ I had many people thanking me,” Principal Patrick Wetzel says.

At the 13 Oahu schools affected by the Navy’s water contamination crisis, now that their water supply has been declared safe, the faucets are finally flowing.

However, trust in the reported safety of the water still is not.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser visited the two public schools and one private school this month to learn how they are faring after their water was under official “do not drink” warnings for a wearying stretch of nearly four months, then over the past few weeks declared safe to use again for drinking, cooking and hygiene.

It was the first time since the water contamination crisis linked to the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility began in late November that any media outlet was permitted to go inside any of the affected public school campuses to talk with educators, parents and students about their struggle and determination to keep their schools going.

They are still dealing with the aftermath of a leak from the fuel storage facility in November that contaminated the Navy’s drinking water system, which serves approximately 93,000 residents at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and surrounding neighborhoods.

Residents on the Navy’s water system in and around the base reported a fuel or chemical odor coming from their taps, and some reported falling ill with headaches, rashes, vomiting and diarrhea.

As a months-long debate dragged on among officials over how serious the contamination was and how to resolve the problem, thousands of residents were temporarily displaced, housed in Waikiki hotels 8 to 10 miles away, which disrupted routines and lives.

About 3,200 students and more than 500 employees in all are at the public elementary schools on the Navy’s water system: Red Hill, Nimitz, Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor Kai, Iroquois Point, Hickam and Mokulele. Hundreds more students and educators are at affected private schools: Montessori Center of Pearl Harbor, Holy Family Catholic Academy, Assets School, Kamaaina Kids, Navy Hale Keiki School and Iroquois Point Preschool.

As if the COVID-19 health restrictions, learning disruptions and uncertainty in what was then the second year of the pandemic were not hard enough on the residents and their schools, the water crisis added another layer of unnecessary pain.

Adapting to the crisis

Every school affected by the water crisis has its unique “how we found out” story.

And each has its hard-won “how we kept going” story, with educators and communities rallying to avoid closing their campuses and adding even more instability to the lives of anxious students and uprooted families.

Early on the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend, for instance, Hickam Elementary Principal Wetzel was on campus when his phone rang at 6:45 a.m. Rumors about the water contamination were flying.

“I got a call from the principal at Nimitz Elementary. … He said, ‘Does your water smell like jet fuel?’ My first two words were, ‘Wait, what?’”

Wetzel raced to check his own school’s taps and detected no foul odors. Yet with no official word yet on whether his school’s water was contaminated, and students already arriving for the school day, the principal had to make quick decisions with limited information: The school would stay open.

Previously frozen pizza sticks, and cereal and milk, were OK to serve the kids for breakfast, because no tap water would be consumed. By 7:20 a.m. he had staff members hurrying to the commissary to buy cases of bottled water. By 8:30 a.m. there was bottled water in every classroom.

Similar scenes unfolded at Red Hill Elementary School, Holy Family Catholic Academy and the other affected schools, each adapting in mere hours or days to operate without using the piped water.

“We didn’t want to close at all, because we didn’t want to backtrack and lose that stability” for the students, Moss says.

By the third day of the crisis, Red Hill Elementary had hand-washing stations from the Navy and “massive amounts of bottled water,” Moss says.

Teachers and students across the schools quickly learned to rely on sanitizing wipes, gels and sprays, then the Navy-provided water buffalo tanks, portable hygiene stations that had to be constantly refilled and cleaned, and 5-gallon buckets jury-rigged with spouts or tubing to run clean water over little hands.

Sinks and fountains were taped off. Menus were revamped to favor food that didn’t require gallons of water to cook, or to clean pots and pans; some schools served previously frozen pizza and chicken nuggets for weeks.

Military and community volunteers materialized at many campuses to help carry clean water daily to classrooms, or pump the pedals on the hand-washing stations for the littlest children. Neighbors and businesses offered to take in affected families’ laundry and donate bottled water, buckets and other goods and services.

The principals at all three schools say they are amazed by and grateful for the community’s support.

Still, weeks turned into months. The displaced children who were being bused in or making long sunrise commutes grew exhausted. “We saw behaviors, tantrums, crying,” Moss says. “Kids can’t articulate why they feel like that. They just know things aren’t normal. It was a lot for them to handle.”

The Red Hill campus canceled its uniform requirement and forgave tardy arrivals. So did the Hickam campus, where almost every child is a military dependent.

“We told them, ‘Wear what you want.’ They were excited!” Moss says. “We always tried to bring that human aspect. We had to extend grace.”

Rebuilding trust

In recent weeks, as waves of residential neighborhoods have had their water flushed, tested and declared safe by officials, so, too, have the schools.

But their worries are far from over: While the Pentagon finally decided in March to permanently shut down the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, the defueling process could take a year. Meanwhile, the risk of underground movement of spilled fuel into the drinking water aquifer continues to be assessed; the Navy is working to install 16 new monitoring wells.

On top of all of that, the Navy in February reported elevated levels of beryllium at an outdoor sink at Pearl Harbor Elementary School, and a water sample taken March 16 at Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary School contained mercury levels nearly twice the limit set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. Then, 30 gallons of fuel and water was spilled at the Red Hill fuel facility April 1, and initial findings were reported last week of lead contamination in water at the Montessori Center and a house at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

Those cases have not helped to calm the nerves of educators and parents still deciding whether to feel trust or fear every time they turn a faucet handle.

Hickam Elementary second grade teacher Kimberly Vogt says her seventh grade son still won’t brush his teeth with water from the tap, only bottled water.

Vogt, who lives on base with her husband and two young children, believes fuel contamination caused rashes behind her ears and neck, and her family’s chronic fatigue and stomach upset. They had to live out of hotels for months and commute.

She is proud of how her and other families have pushed through, and grateful for the support her family has received from the military, but says what affected families want is more information and transparency.

“People just want clear, concise answers. You want to build that trust,” Vogt says.

The state Health Department says the water at schools and child care facilities will be tested monthly by the Navy for the first three months.

“After that, schools and child care facilities will be tested by the Navy once every six months,” says Katie Arita-Chang, acting communications director with the Health Department. All public water systems, including the Navy water system, must test drinking water for lead and mercury, which are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, she adds.

On the Red Hill Elementary campus, the more than 20 wooden shelves that were built by the DOE over the school’s sinks to hold large buckets outfitted with spouts are still installed. They had enabled students to wash their hands with potable water provided by the military.

While the faucet water is supposed to be safe now, Moss is not yet ready to take down the shelves. “We’re leaving them because we’re not sure,” she says with a wry laugh. “Just in case.”

‘Don’t let us down’

At Holy Family Catholic Academy, a private parochial campus for preschool through grade 8 near Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, students and teachers lately have cheered the happy return of messy art projects and science experiments, water-table play, mac and cheese, and “Musubi Monday” snacks.

And now that the Navy has taken back its bulky, gray mobile hand-washing stations, “there’s a light in the hallways,” literally and figuratively, Principal Akiu muses. “We’ve reclaimed our learning space.”

In classroom E-131, fondly known as the “Noah’s Ark” class, preschool teacher assistant Kiara Akana helps 4-year-old students Jack and Alina with finger painting — a medium they haven’t been able to use since the water shutdown because it takes so much water to clean up.

“It tickles!” Jack giggles as Akana paints one of his upturned hands with bright- orange goo, the other with a sunny yellow. Kiara gets blue and purple paint, and the children press their hands onto paper with green construction-paper leaves to create flower shapes.

Washing up afterward with the running water is fun, too, as the bubbles turn the color of the paint. The kids are so happy, they bounce around the washroom like rubber balls.

In the cafeteria, sticky rice is back on the menu because there’s flowing water to clean the pots. During a recent visit a fragrant corn chowder served for lunch was made with water from the tap.

Still, the staff is on guard. Akiu has asked her maintenance crew to conduct checks of the water at least weekly as they clean the school’s sinks.

Using the running water while officials are still trying to determine exactly how widespread the fuel leakage has been at the Red Hill storage facility requires a leap of faith for some students and staff, Akiu acknowledges.

It also requires a careful finessing of answers to children’s innocent questions about how it’s possible that while one day the school’s water could have been poisonous, the next day it was declared fine.

Although Akiu says she feels mostly optimistic about the water’s safety, “I will say there’s that ounce of, like, please, the powers that be, the government or what have you — don’t let us down.”

“These children are trusting us.”