Investigations into Red Hill water crisis drag on

Emilee Carpenter was 17 weeks pregnant when she found out in early December that the tap water she and her husband had been drinking and bathing in was laced with jet fuel.

In the days prior, she had been suffering from severe headaches and stomach pains. Her husband broke out in hives after taking a shower. Then the water coming out of their faucets in the Salt Lake military housing began to reek of chemicals.

As similar reports in neighborhoods in and around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam poured in, the Navy confirmed that a leak from its Red Hill fuel facility had caused the water contamination.

But six months later, multiple investigations into the contamination still haven’t been released, leaving many unanswered questions about how fuel ended up in the water system, whether more could have been done to prevent residents from being poisoned and whether the contamination may have begun months earlier.

To date, the Pentagon also hasn’t held anyone responsible for the water contamination, which has cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars in costs related to cleaning its water distribution system, remediating the environment and covering hotel and living expenses for thousands of residents who for months were displaced from their homes.

Carpenter, like other military families interviewed by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, said the Navy’s response to the crisis had shaken her confidence that military officials would ever fully divulge the details of what happened.

“Many people our age who join the military, they joined because they needed health care, they needed stability,” said Carpenter, who is 21, and her husband, 22. “So when you join, the pretext is, I join the military, but you take care of me. And they didn’t take care of us. It was a big deal when we found out (about the contamination), and the fact that we still haven’t heard anything …”

Some military families who were sickened by the fuel spill also worry they may have been drinking contaminated water for months prior to the November incident.

Bonnie Russell, a Catlin Park military spouse, said her kids had been experiencing rashes on and off during the months prior to the November incident. Cheri Burness, whose husband is also in the military, said she had strange brain fog in the months before getting sick in November.

“I would love to know what they found,” said Burness of the investigations into Red Hill.

What’s known

A year ago, on May 6, 2021, civilian workers at the Red Hill fuel facility, which contains 20 massive underground tanks, were transferring fuel from one tank to another when there was a loud explosion and fuel began pouring out of a pipe near Tank 20, overtopping a bulkhead door and flowing into a tunnel, according to interviews with Red Hill employees contained in Navy documents.

Workers scrambled to stop the leak, and the following day, the Navy issued a news release saying there was no sign of a threat to the environment.

The Navy said about 1,000 gallons had been released and that its leak detection and response system worked exactly as it was supposed to, containing all but 38 gallons.

But in the ensuing months there would be troubling signs.

In the days after the spill, soil vapor levels spiked, suggesting fuel had seeped into the ground below the tanks.

Monitoring well data around Red Hill also began showing elevated readings of total petroleum hydrocarbons, suggesting fuel had seeped into the groundwater.

Water samples taken from a tap in the Navy’s Red Hill well began to show signs of petroleum contamination in July, August and September, with two readings in August exceeding the state’s safety limit.

Then on Nov. 20 there was another spill. The Navy sent out a news release saying that 14,000 gallons of fuel and water was released from a pipe that was part of the facility’s fire suppression system. At the time, fuel odors around the neighborhoods of Foster Village and Aliamanu were so strong that several residents called 911, and multiple units from the Honolulu Fire Department and Federal Fire Department responded.

But Navy officials continued to assure the public the situation was under control.

“There are no signs or indication of any releases to the environment and the drinking water remains safe to drink,” the Navy said in a news release.

The Navy’s reports to the public on the May and November leaks have since been shown to be devastatingly inaccurate. In the days following the November leak, residents on the Navy’s water system began to get sick with nausea and vomiting, burning skin, rashes, headaches and mouth sores.

It’s not clear how many of the approximately 93,000 people on the Navy’s system were affected, but recently released data of a voluntary survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 2,000 people had symptoms of petroleum exposure.

It’s now believed that as much as 19,000 gallons of fuel may have been released from a Red Hill tank on May 6, far greater than the 1,000 gallons reported at the time. Navy officials say a portion of that fuel is thought to have somehow ended up in the fire suppression line where it sat for months until a worker ran into it with a cart, rupturing the pipeline.

The Navy has said that fuel then likely flowed into an obscure drain that releases rainfall into the environment, exiting right by the Red Hill shaft.

Those theories have yet to be confirmed by the Navy, however.

No timeline for findings

In the weeks following the water contamination, multiple agencies, including the Navy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Health, announced they were launching investigations into Red Hill. But none of those reports have been released, and federal and state officials Friday wouldn’t provide a timeline of when their findings would be made public.

On Nov. 29, Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, ordered a command investigation into the contamination. That report was turned over to Paparo on Jan. 14 and forwarded to the Pentagon. In mid-March, Pentagon commanders ordered a “supplemental investigation,” saying the initial investigation “did not include a sufficient review of actions the Navy took in response to the May and November releases.”

Navy spokesperson Sandra Gall said the command investigation remains under review, and wouldn’t provide a timeline for its release.

In December the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s office said it was also launching a probe into the Navy’s operation of Red Hill.

It’s not clear when that review will be completed.

“This evaluation is ongoing, and as a matter of practice, the DoD OIG does not provide timelines for our oversight work,” said Megan Reed, a spokesperson for the DOD’s inspector general’s office.

The EPA and DOH also haven’t released investigations that officials from those agencies said they were conducting in the weeks after the contamination.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters in February that his agency was launching an investigation into Red Hill as part of its “strong, independent role” in upholding environmental laws and regulations. Regan declined at the time to specify the scope or timeline for the investigation, and details of it remain vague.

EPA spokesperson Alejandro Diaz said Friday that the EPA is investigating the Navy’s compliance with oil pollution-related regulations under the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, as well as the Navy’s water system. As part of that work, he said the EPA conducted inspections of Navy facilities during the weeks of Feb. 28 and April 4.

“While there is no hard deadline for when EPA will complete the reviews and investigations, we are working to have them completed expeditiously,” said Diaz.

DOH said it was conducting its own investigation into Red Hill amid concerns the Navy shouldn’t be investigating itself. On Friday a spokeswoman said those investigations were embedded in its regulatory activities, including groundwater monitoring, overseeing the defueling of Red Hill, ensuring the safety of the Navy’s water system and determining the root cause of the water contamination.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz said the investigations into Red Hill need to be wrapped up soon.

“All of these investigations need to be completed as soon as possible, and they need to be made as public as possible,” he said. “There may be sensitive information, and I think the public will understand that if anything classified is redacted, and pending personnel matters may not be public. But everything else is by definition public information, and we understand that these things need to be done thoroughly. But we are coming up on six months, and so it is time to start publishing the results of these investigations.”

Meanwhile, military families continue to wait.

“If we saw an investigation, I would personally feel a whole lot more comfortable,” said Carpenter, whose baby was born about two weeks ago.