Survey details ills from Navy’s fuel-tainted water

Approximately 2,000 people reported that they had experienced health effects ranging from skin rashes to vomiting following exposure to jet fuel in the Navy’s Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam drinking water system in November, according to results of a survey released Thursday by the state Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

More than one-third sought medical treatment, and 17 people reported being hospitalized overnight.

The voluntary survey included 2,289 participants, 87% of whom reported symptoms.

Health officials said the survey, conducted from Jan. 7 to Feb. 10, doesn’t capture the full scale of the health impacts. Of nearly 10,000 households that are estimated to have been affected, just 1,389 households participated in the survey, according to DOH and the CDC.

About 93,000 residents in neighborhoods in and around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-­Hickam are served by the Navy’s water system.

Those surveyed reported a range of symptoms, such as burning in their eyes, nose and throat, nosebleeds, skin rashes and blisters, seizures, headaches, dizziness, coughing, wheezing, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. A detailed chart of the reported health effects and their incidence is included in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

About 80% of those with symptoms reported improvement after switching to another source of water. However, 75% of participants who reported health effects said their symptoms lasted for 30 days or more.

“This incident was unprecedented and impacted the lives and health of thousands of people,” said Kathleen Ho, DOH’s deputy director of environmental health, in a news release. “This survey helps to quantify their experiences. We are committed to continuing to work with ATSDR to search for answers on how the Navy’s contamination of its drinking water system impacts health and well-­being.”

Eighty-eight percent of survey respondents were affiliated with the Department of Defense.

State poised to fine Navy

The state is also considering fining the Navy after finding last week that it has been over-pumping the one remaining well it has to supply drinking water to its users.

In late November hundreds of residents on the Navy’s water system began reporting that their water had a fuel or chemical odor, and some could see an oily sheen. Residents also began reporting that they, their children and their pets were getting sick. Around this time the Navy shut down its Red Hill shaft, one of three underground wells that serve its water users.

At the time, Navy officials said it was out of an abundance of caution, but subsequent tests found that the shaft was contaminated with jet fuel that had leaked from the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility. The Red Hill well is just 3,000 feet makai of 20 massive, underground fuel tanks.

The Navy later shut down its Halawa well out of concern that the jet fuel could migrate across the aquifer. It’s since been relying solely on its Waiawa well. But last week the state water commission found that the Navy had been over-pumping this well beyond what its permit allows.

The water commission will issue a notice of violation to the Navy, which will require it to reduce its pumping to within its permitted allocation of 14.977 mgd, said Kaleo Manuel, water deputy with the Commission on Water Resource Management.

He said the Navy could be fined up to $5,000, as well as face daily fines if the over-pumping continues.

“The commission is committed to working with the Navy through this situation and to ensure those affected families on the Navy system have the water they need for their domestic uses,” said Manuel in a statement. He said the water commission has asked the Navy to reduce nonpotable water use, including irrigation.