Hawaii Water Commission presses Navy to comply with water permit or risk fines

Members of the state Water Commission this week expressed frustration about the Navy’s continued overpumping of the Waiawa shaft, saying more needs to be done to get the Navy into compliance with its permit. But Navy officials have already scaled back their use by as much as 20%, and it’s not clear how much more they can conserve during the summer months, when water use is at its height.

The Waiawa shaft is the last of three drinking water wells that is still in use by the Navy after jet fuel from Red Hill contaminated the Navy’s drinking water system in 2021. The Navy’s Red Hill shaft, the source of the contamination, has been offline since November, and the Navy took its Aiea-Halawa shaft offline as a precaution.

As a result, the Navy has been relying solely on its Waiawa shaft to supply drinking water to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and the surrounding neighborhoods. Its state permit allows it to pump up to 14.977 million gallons a day out of the shaft. In recent months it has been exceeding that allocation by about 20%.

In June the state Commission on Water Resource Management sent a letter to the Navy warning it that it needed to come into compliance with its permit or risk fines of $5,000 a day. But commission staff this week said that the next step is to meet with Navy officials and that it’s unlikely the Navy will face fines anytime soon because its permit allocation is based on a 12-month average.

Water commissioner Neil Hannahs said more should be done to bring the Navy into immediate compliance. “Right now it feels like we are over-stressing the resource while we talk,” he said during a Tuesday commission meeting.

Hannahs said that allowing negotiations with the Navy to drag on “is like waiting for the accident to happen, rather than preventing it.”

Water commissioner Paul Meyer agreed.

“It does appear to be a kind of willful violation of the terms of the permit,” said Meyer. “One would think under the circumstances, given the nature of the violation and the spirit of cooperation, that the Navy would come along on this and cut back their pumpage to stay within the terms of its permit.”

Overpumping a well can lead to too much chloride in the water, making it undrinkable, though Ryan Imata, a commission staffer, said chloride levels in the Waiawa shaft have remained at safe levels despite the increased pumping.

Water use data shows that the Navy has cut back considerably on its water use. Last summer, prior to the Red Hill contamination, it was pumping as much as 23 million gallons a day from its three wells. Its monthly averages for April, May and June are between 17.49 mgd to 18.154 mgd.

Navy officials say they have made a concerted effort to save water. The base has installed 2,000 low-flow shower heads in gyms and military housing, shut down all car washes, ceased nearly all irrigation in common areas and cut back on watering golf courses by about 75%, the bare minimum, according to Navy spokesperson Lydia Robertson. Military families are also being urged to conserve water.

Commissioners also pressed the Navy on why it hasn’t come up with a use for the approximately 4.5 million gallons of water it has been pumping daily out of the Red Hill shaft. The water is being pumped out of the shaft in an attempt to remediate the aquifer. It’s then being treated and released into Halawa Stream.

The Navy has said that for months tests of the water have come up clean.

“It’s at the point now where I think that the water is pretty clear, and if it is good enough to put into the stream, then it is probably good enough to use for irrigation,” said water commissioner Michael Buck.

Buck said that could relieve pressure on the Wai­awa shaft.

Commander James Sullivan, with Naval Facilities Engineering Command, said that it’s been a challenge to find ways to reuse the water.

“All of the options we are getting are very expensive, as well as very long-term,” he said. “It would take several years to get some of the infrastructure for the pipes. Obviously, it is not feasible just to pump directly into trucks. You’d have hundreds and hundreds of trucks on the road to get that water out to irrigate.”

Sullivan said the Navy continues to look for “simpler, easier and quicker solutions.”

Paul Eyre, a hydrogeo­logist who in past years worked for both the Water Commission and the Navy on its water system, said that he didn’t think the Navy’s current level of pumping would increase chloride levels or cause environmental harm.

“There wouldn’t be a hydrological consequence to that other than it could take you that much closer to the sustainable yield,” he said.

The sustainable yield for the Waipahu-Waiawa aquifer system is 104 mgd. The commission didn’t respond Friday to how much is currently being pumped from wells in that area.

Eyre said it appeared the Navy has cut back considerably on its water use and that the ongoing pressure on the Navy seemed to be motivated more out of anger over the crisis tied to the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

“The mood is to punish the Navy for having screwed up as badly as they have screwed up,” he said. “So this thing of going after the Navy for exceeding its (Waiawa) allocation is driven more by punishment than it is by hydrological concern.”

Eyre said that the bigger issue was the operational risk of relying on just one drinking water source with no backup.

“Their system is being stressed to the max,” he said.