Major repairs needed for Red Hill fuel to be drained

The Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility will need to undergo extensive repairs in order for the fuel in the massive underground tanks to be drained safely and to prevent a catastrophic release that could further pollute the groundwater, cause a major fire or potentially injure or kill workers, according to an 880-page report released Friday by the Navy.

The assessment completed by Simpson Gumpertz &Heger, a Navy contractor, does not provide an estimate for how long the repairs might take. The state Department of Health, which regulates the facility, said a timeline is expected from the Navy by June 30.

The Navy has indicated it will take a year to defuel the 18 active Red Hill tanks after the repairs are made. It’s not clear what that timeline is based on. Navy officials previously said that a tank can be drained in a few days.

Navy officials did not respond to questions about the report Friday.

On March 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility to be drained and permanently shut down. The decision came after jet fuel from the facility leaked into a Navy drinking water well, sickening residents in neighborhoods around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and spurring a political firestorm and calls for the World War II- era facility to be shut down.

The Navy has been moving forward on plans to close the facility and remove the fuel. But environmental groups and officials with the Honolulu Board of Water Supply have fretted over the time it will take to finally remove the fuel that sits just 100 feet above an aquifer that also supplies drinking water to southern Oahu.

The report, which paints an alarming picture of deteriorating and aging pipelines, corrosion and faulty valves, is likely to exacerbate those concerns.

David Kimo Frankel, an attorney for the Hawaii Sierra Club, said the report was shocking, though similar to prior Navy reports on the facility.

“This 2022 report is as head-spinning as the others,” Frankel said by email. “It describes a facility that should have been shut down decades ago. It reveals truths about the facility that the Navy covered up for three years during (a state hearing). Heads should roll.”

The assessment was provided to DOH on May 13 but designated as “critical security information,” preventing state officials from releasing it publicly. DOH, under an emergency order, required the Navy to provide a redacted version for public release.

Among the redactions are estimates of the cost of repairs and what portions of the work are already funded.

“This report describes extensive and critical repairs that are needed to safely defuel and decommission Red Hill,” said Kathleen Ho, DOH deputy director of environmental health, in a statement. “While the need to defuel Red Hill is urgent, public and environmental safety remain the first priority.”

The report, which was contracted prior to the Pentagon’s order to shut down Red Hill, details more than 200 repairs that would be needed to safely operate the facility, including about three dozen that are critical before defueling.

The needed fixes are extensive and include major structural repairs in the pipelines and distribution system.

The facility includes 20 steel-lined tanks encased in concrete that were carved into basalt rock. Each tank is roughly the height of an 18-story building and can hold up to 12.5 million gallons of fuel. The tanks are connected to three pipelines that run through an underground tunnel and lead to fueling piers at Pearl Harbor and Hickam Airfield.

The Navy needs to drain the 18 tanks that up until 2021’s fuel contamination were active.

The most significant recommendations that should be completed before defueling involve the lower access tunnel adjacent to the Red Hill tanks, according to the report. The assessment found that a surge analysis needed to be conducted along the pipelines; dresser couplings, which are used to connect pipes, needed to be protected; corroded piping needed to be repaired; and damaged coating and pipe supports needed to be fixed, in addition to a long list of other repairs.

The report also says the Navy needs to develop additional written procedures for normal and emergency operations, and that employees need more training to prevent spills and respond to emergencies.

The assessment found that many of the recommended fixes are needed to prevent incidents similar to the May 6, 2021, and Nov. 20 fuel spills that led to the Navy’s drinking water system being polluted with jet fuel. The report also lists needed repairs to avoid what it refers to as a Sept. 29 “near-miss event.”

The report doesn’t explain what Sept. 29 event it is referring to. But the Honolulu Star-Advertiser last year reported that on Sept. 29 there had been a pressure surge in a pipeline similar to the one that caused the May 6 fuel leak, and that Navy officials were so concerned that they shut down Red Hill operations for nine days while they investigated.

The Star-Advertiser reporting, based on an internal email sent to high-level Navy officials and obtained by the newspaper, warned there could be multiple valves throughout Red Hill’s pipeline system that could be leaking, and referred to sagging pressure conditions that were similar to the May 6 spill.

DOH officials, at the time, said the Navy had not informed them of the Sept. 29 incident or that Red Hill operations had been suspended. Meanwhile, the Navy brushed off concerns about the incident and said the shutdown was a routine response and represented the “abundance of caution used in the professional management of complex fuel operations at Red Hill.”

The report released Friday, however, describes what happened as a “near-miss event” and suggests similar incidents could cause a fire, asphyxiate workers and pollute the groundwater with fuel. It lists a number of related recommendations to prevent such an occurrence.

The report defines a “near-miss” event as what could have been a catastrophic release of a highly hazardous chemical and found there was no system in place to report or investigate such incidents.

To read the full report, visit 808ne.ws/redhillreport.