Navy wants to remove 3 pipelines at Red Hill fuel facility

The Navy announced Wednesday it wants to dismantle the pipelines connecting the massive fuel tanks at its underground Red Hill facility to Pearl Harbor.

The Navy submitted a supplement to the state Department of Health for the under-review Red Hill Tank Closure Plan that calls for the three pipelines to be removed as part of a three-year closure plan that will take place after the defueling of the tanks — a process the military now says is set to conclude in January.

The Red Hill tanks store about 104 million gallons of fuel and sit just 100 feet above a critical aquifer that most of Oahu relies on for clean drinking water. For years, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply and environmental groups warned that the tanks posed a serious threat to the island’s water supply.

In November 2021, fuel from the facility contaminated the Navy’s Oahu water supply, which serves 93,000 people — including service members, military families and civilians living in former military housing areas such as the Kapilina beach homes. Amid mounting pressure and after months of resisting a state emergency order to drain the tanks, the Pentagon announced in March 2022 that it would permanently shutter the facility.

However, as part of the shutdown, the Navy has pursued a controversial campaign of soliciting ideas from the community for “beneficial reuse” of the tanks, though military officials have insisted they will never be reused for fuel. But some officials, like BWS General Manager Ernie Lau, have expressed vocal concern that any reuse plan could be a backdoor to putting fuel back in the tanks so long as the pipelines are in place.

Local officials and activists have cited language in the National Defense Authorization Act — signed by President Joe Biden in December — which seems to give military officials a ready escape from that commitment if the Defense Department wants to change course under either Biden or a future administration, as cause for concern.

The act states that the secretary of defense must first certify to congressional defense committees that defueling the facility won’t adversely affect the military’s ability to fuel its Indo-­Pacific operations before the Navy can begin draining the fuel sitting in massive underground tanks

In a Wednesday news release, the Navy said “this key update demonstrates the (Navy’s) commitment to never use the tanks for storage of fuel or other hazardous substance storage.”

When reached for comment Wednesday night, Lau told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser “we still need to look at the entire supplement with all the enclosures more closely, but the Navy now deciding to remove all the three large fuel pipelines that run over 3 miles connecting the tanks to Pearl Harbor is very promising.”

In its announcement of the new supplement, the Navy said removing the pipelines also would have “other benefits,” such as eliminating long-term maintenance costs and “providing more flexibility for potential beneficial non-fuel reuse within the tunnel space.”

But ironically, until defueling is complete, the pipelines are critical to that process. Joint Task Force Red Hill, the military organization under Vice Adm. John Wade tasked with defueling the tanks, has been working to repair the pipelines, which were found to be in a state of profound disrepair, to ensure the fuel can be safely moved from the tanks at Red Hill to fuel tanker ships in Pearl Harbor as part of the defueling process.

The Red Hill water crisis has strained relations between the local community, Hawaii officials and military leaders at a time when the Pentagon considers the Pacific to be its top priority theater of operations amid simmering tensions with China. Many local residents are rethinking their relationship with the military as a series of chemical and fuel spills around the islands have brought intense scrutiny on the military’s environmental impact.

“The Navy recognizes that the planning and process of closure at Red Hill is iterative,” said Meredith Berger, the assistant secretary of the Navy who oversees energy, installations and environment issues for the service. “This supplement continues to prioritize the Navy’s commitment to the safety of the Oahu community and environmental health, and reinforces our assurance of transparency.”

But Lau said that he still has several questions about the plan. While JTF Red Hill has worked around the clock and has managed to accelerate the timeline of defueling from an initial estimated completion date at the end of 2024 to early January, the task force said last month that there still would be an estimated 100,000 to 400,000 gallons of fuel remaining at the Red Hill facility after that process that the military will need to remove.

“How much of that fuel is going to be in the pipelines — or if it’s anyplace else?” asked Lau. “(If) removing the pipelines would help to address (this), will that take all the 100,000 to 400,000 out of the facility?”

In its release, the Navy said removal of the pipelines is not expected to impact the planned three-year closure timeline after draining the tanks. But Lau said he’d like to see if that timeline could be accelerated too.

“The sooner that we can get every drop of fuel out of that facility from being right over our drinking water aquifer, the better,” Lau said.