Editorial: Navy, clean up wastewater mess

Rightly so, the Hawaii Department of Health (DOH) is taking the Navy’s repeated release of polluted wastewater at its treatment plant near Pearl Harbor very seriously, issuing a nearly $9 million penalty for “766 counts of discharging pollutants in exceedance of permit limits, 17 counts of unauthorized bypass, and 212 counts of operation and maintenance failures.”

That’s a big fine and a big number of violations for a myriad of deficiencies at the wastewater treatment plant.

The Navy facility was found to have allowed “critical violations” of requirements imposed by its federal permit, leading to those 995 — count ’em — violations. That led DOH Deputy Director of Environmental Health Kathleen Ho to warn of “a potential catastrophic failure” of the wastewater plant.

It’s fitting that the DOH has issued the massive $8.7 million penalty, along with a detailed order outlining actions the Navy must take to remedy the violations. The order includes a staggered set of deadlines to meet requirements, and this will help ensure that DOH will also do what it must: Monitor and enforce the remedies.

For its part, the Navy responds that it has been working to shore up operations at the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Hawaii Wastewater Treatment Plant since entering into a Federal Facilities Compliance Agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency in June 2021.

Somehow, though, that fails to reassure. The EPA ordered compliance in June 2021, but the DOH found multiple problems at the plant a year later, followed by a polluting wastewater spill just last month, in August.

As DOH now orders, the Navy must show it is acting promptly to avoid catastrophic spills by providing a full assessment of its wastewater operations and reporting on all deficiencies. The order requires the Navy hire an independent, third-party contractor to do this assessment within 30 days, with a report due to DOH in one year.

The state order also requires the Navy to identify and report on all backlogged maintenance within six months, and then provide a timeline for clearing each action.

It’s impossible to ignore the similarities between the Navy’s failure to maintain the wastewater facility, even after problems were detected, and the issues at the Navy’s Red Hill fuel storage facility. In both cases, negligence and substandard maintenance, along with an apparent disregard for warnings issued by state regulators, preceded operational failures and environmentally costly spills. The warnings came amid continued violations, and a continual state of disrepair.

In the case of the Wastewater Treatment Plant, untreated or partially treated sewage was released containing high levels of Enterococci bacteria and other contaminants on 764 days between 2020 and 2022, accounting for 764 of the violations.

More violations correspond to ongoing degradation of the plant’s aeration basin, which has exposed rebar and is “potentially compromised.” The basin was offline for at least 196 days between Oct. 6, 2021, and July 26, leading to 196 violations.

On one day a month ago, Aug. 30, a pump failed, sand filters clogged and approximately 300,000 gallons of contaminated wastewater overflowed the facility. That is the last violation documented in the DOH order.

Ho did not mince words in announcing the penalty and DOH order. “We are taking action to protect our state’s water resources and to hold the Navy accountable to make critical repairs,” she stated.

Protecting Hawaii’s waters is a paramount responsibility. DOH must keep pressure on the Navy to clean up its act, and the state’s fine and order should be enforced for that purpose.