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The U.S. Department of Defense has once again sped up its timeline for defueling the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility and now says that it expects to begin draining approximately 104 million gallons of fuel from the underground tanks in mid-October, largely completing the process in three months.
The new timeline, presented to federal and state regulators this week as part of a supplement to the Pentagon’s defueling plan, shaves off a year from the original timeline. Top military officials originally said defueling would be completed by the end of 2024, before shortening that to July 2024.
The DOD’s new projected date for completing defueling is Jan. 19.
After draining the tanks, there still will be about 100,000 to 400,000 gallons of fuel remaining at the Red Hill facility that the military will need to remove.
The faster timeline is the result of “finding efficiencies in our facility repair and defueling process,” said Vice Adm. John Wade, commander of Joint Task Force-Red Hill, in a news release.
The Pentagon’s initial timeline for removing the fuel from the tanks was widely panned by environmental groups and the Honolulu Board of Water Supply. Red Hill fuel operations ceased in late 2021 after a fuel spill at the facility contaminated the Navy’s drinking water system and sickened military families living in neighborhoods in and around Joint Base Pearl-Harbor Hickam. But the continued existence of the fuel, sitting 100 feet above the aquifer that supplies drinking water to Honolulu, continues to pose a threat.
The faster timeline is encouraging, said Kathleen Ho, the state Department of Health’s deputy director of environmental health, in a news release Tuesday.
“Moving up the timeline is a testament to the continued work by DOH and the community to push the Joint Task Force to move quickly and safely to defuel Red Hill,” she said.
The plan still needs to be approved by DOH and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ho said DOH will review the military’s latest submission to make sure the plan can be executed safely and without further risk to the environment.
The start of defueling is based on a number of conditions, according to the plan, such as regulators issuing timely approvals for various milestones, contracting with tankers to take the fuel and completing repairs at Red Hill to ensure that the fuel can be drained safely.
The military says that so far it is on track despite a spill at Red Hill in November of a toxic fire suppressant known as aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, that set off another round of public criticism, investigations and environmental testing.
Joint Task Force-Red Hill has completed all of its tasks by their due date, according to the latest defueling documents, and is on track in completing extensive repairs throughout the facility. So far, it’s completed 214 out of 253 identified repairs.
Spill scenarios
Joint Task Force-Red Hill, which was created for the purpose of defueling Red Hill, also has been assessing potential spill scenarios and devising response plans. In January it created a team to assist with that effort, which includes representatives from the EPA, DOH, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, the Federal Fire Department, Defense Logistics Agency, U.S. Coast Guard and Naval Sea Systems Command Supervisor of Salvage and Diving.
The latest defueling plans lay out a range of scenarios that could occur at Red Hill and provide details about the military’s preparations.
In a worst-case scenario, a vacuum condition could cause a section of piping to fracture near a double blocking blow valve, causing 4.3 million gallons of fuel to spew from the tank gallery into the lower-access tunnel over 30 hours, according to the defueling plan. The military estimates the flow rate would be about 13,800 gallons per minute, which would overwhelm pumps and exceed the 385,000-gallon capacity of a surge tank.
As a precaution, the military says it will use supplementary pumps to move fuel to tankers at Hotel Pier and line the sides of the ramp with sandbags and other barricades to redirect fuel in order to “minimize environmental impacts.”
The most likely causes of a fuel spill at Red Hill during the defueling operation include a pipe rupture, faulty repair or valve failure, according to the DOD’s defueling plan, which also found that there is a small chance of overfilling a tanker, resulting in fuel spilling onto the deck and into the water.
The military is also preparing in the event that there is a fire at Red Hill, though found that the chance is small. A military analysis concluded that there is a 1-in-856 million chance of there being a fuel release coupled with a source of ignition that would result in a fire.
Red Hill’s fire suppression system, which relied on AFFF, has been inoperable due to recent spills and malfunctions. As a backup, Joint Task Force-Red Hill has been working on a “layered approach” to addressing a potential fire that involves a manned fire watch, using existing water sprinklers and the Federal Fire Department.
Once defueling begins, the Pentagon plans to place the fuel on tankers and distribute it to various locations, including West Oahu. Other locations it is considering include Puget Sound and Vancouver in Washington and Selby and Point Loma in California. It’s also looking at international points in Australia, Port of Singapore, the Philippines and Japan.
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