David Shapiro: The Navy keeps getting sunk by its own lies on Red Hill

Just when we thought the lying and denying might end in the Red Hill fuel crisis that threatens Oahu’s major aquifer, we got a new shock: that despite Navy denials, there was video of November’s massive leak that fouled the drinking water of military families near Pearl Harbor and forced the city to close a key well.

Gov. David Ige said on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” livestream program that he was “very surprised” to see the videos that appeared in Honolulu Civil Beat of fuel gushing into a Red Hill tunnel from a pipe that was accidentally breached by a worker.

The Navy, Ige said, “assured us, they told us, that no video was available.”

“There definitely is a lot more work that will be required of the Navy to restore trust between the federal government and the state government — and the Navy and the general public.”

The cellphone video taken by the worker involved in the breach was significant because it showed far more vividly than written reports how voluminous and out of control the leak was, as well as how much more threatening to the aquifer it could have become.

The video appeared after the military tried to quiet the controversy with two reports highly critical of the Navy’s stewardship of the 20-tank World War II fuel facility, and admitted critics were right about the threat to the aquifer below.

The November leak sickened more than 90,000 people on the military water system and displaced some 4,000 families for months. More than 5,000 gallons of fuel from the 20,000-gallon spill got into the environment, and officials are uncertain of how much may have made it into the aquifer or where it may be drifting.

As a precaution, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply has indefinitely shut down its nearby Halawa Shaft, the largest single source of Oahu’s drinking water, and warned of possible water restrictions.

The new hit to the Navy’s credibility over emergence of the denied video has amplified local cynicism about Navy claims that emptying the 20 Red Hill tanks can’t start until the end of 2024 at the earliest, and that it could take two years or more to safely finish the job and get the aquifer out of harm’s way.

A leading critic is Ernest Lau, chief engineer of the Board of Water Supply, who denounced the defueling timetable the Navy submitted to the state Department of Health as “unacceptable.”

Lau said, “The suggested timeline stands in stark contrast to repeated assurances from the Navy over the last several years that the Red Hill tanks and pipelines are properly designed, constructed and installed, that the facility meets or exceeds regulatory standards, and that each tank can be emptied in less than 24 hours.”

Lau had been a lonely voice warning for years about the existential threat posed to Oahu’s aquifer by the Red Hill tanks; it’s notable that he’s one player in this drama never found to be lying.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.