Editorial: More problems for Navy at Red Hill

The many appalling problems newly revealed about the Navy’s handling of its drinking water at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam (JBPHH) demand swift corrective action, with improvement benchmarks that must be insisted upon by regulators and the public.

An investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, done in April but quietly posted on its website just this month, found that the Navy potentially violated state and federal laws relating to safe drinking water in its operation and maintenance at JBPHH (see 808ne.ws/EPAnavywater). The system serves about 93,000 people, primarily military families — but as shown by the November Red Hill fuel leak that contaminated JBPHH drinking water and sickened hundreds, it also affects public schools, private preschools and civilian businesses.

Among the system’s many defects, the EPA found:

>> Rusted pump shafts and rusted pipes in the Waiawa and Aiea-Halawa shafts, two of the three water wells the Navy relied on to supply the JBPHH water system. The third, the Red Hill shaft, still had a visible sheen on the surface of a tunnel and smelled of fuel in April.

>> Exposed wiring, rusting, flaking paint, leaking oil and abandoned pumps.

>> Lack of a preventative maintenance program, resulting in a reactionary approach to maintenance.

>> No operator safety training program and insufficient operating procedures.

>> Incorrect and sloppy storage of chemicals, and rusting and pitting water storage tanks. In one tank, an unsealed roof hatch enabled geckos to nest inside.

>> Numerous deficiencies with the Red Hill water tanks; one tank, installed in the mid-1990s, had never been cleaned and had a significant amount of sediment at the bottom.

The EPA investigations into the JBPHH water system, and the Army’s smaller Aliamanu Military Reservation system, were launched this spring, after the Red Hill fuel leaks occurred last year. That fuel-contamination crisis is now leading to the imminent closure of the World War II-era, 20-tank underground storage facility — a process that also demands close oversight, even as it needs to be expedited faster than the Navy’s two-year time frame.

As for the military’s mishandling of crucial drinking-water systems: It should not have taken an EPA investigation spurred by a fuel-leak crisis to uncover the breadth of deficiencies that clearly have been ongoing for years. In light of the findings, the EPA said, the Navy and the Army have taken steps to address problems, and “have submitted plans they will take to address all of EPA’s findings.”

Stay on them to see these through. Military families, and civilians, who are drinking this water deserve to know fully what those actions are — and how these water systems are being improved for their health and safety.