Environmental risks will persist after Red Hill tanks are drained

Ever since thousands of gallons of jet fuel spewed from a pipeline at Red Hill in November 2021 and made its way into the Navy’s drinking water system, sickening military families, environmentalists and water officials have had their sights set on ensuring that the fuel in the facility’s massive underground tanks that sit just 100 feet above an aquifer is permanently removed.

Now, under an expedited timeline, that goal is expected to be met as soon as January. But the effort to safeguard the environment is far from over. Residual fuel stuck throughout the facility will continue to pose a risk to the groundwater, and removing it will be a challenge, the military’s top official overseeing the defueling effort cautioned Tuesday, while the environmental remediation of the site is likely to persist for decades.

Relying on the force of gravity, military officials plan to begin draining 104 million gallons of fuel from the Red Hill tanks through pipelines that lead down to Pearl Harbor piers, which will remove an estimated 99.85% of the fuel from the facility.

But another 100,000 to 400,000 gallons of fuel is expected to remain in the facility’s pipelines and surge tanks. By comparison, the November 2021 fuel spill that contaminated the Navy’s drinking water system and caused widespread havoc involved just 20,000 gallons of fuel.

“We understand how significant it is,” said Vice Adm. John Wade, who is leading the defueling effort as commander of Joint Task Force-Red Hill, during a biannual meeting of the Red Hill Fuel Tank Advisory Committee. “It’s much larger than the amount of fuel that was spilled in November, so I don’t want people to think that I’m flippant at all. But it’s a physics problem. We can’t get the fuel out by gravity.”

Wade was among top officials from the military, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Health who provided updates on Red Hill during an hours-long meeting at Moanalua High School Performing Arts Center. A plan has not yet been established to address the problem of residual fuel.

“What we do need is a methodical, deliberate approach where we’ve got to systematically go through each of the low-point drains, the bends, and we also have to inspect every valve,” said Wade. “But I also want to make sure that everyone understands the enormity of this. There’s about 100 low-point drains. There are 3-1/2 miles of pipelines within the facility. There are close to 2,000 valves. So we have to approach this systematically and delicately. We cannot do this nonchalantly.”

Once Red Hill operations were suspended following the water contamination debacle, the military in 2022 drained approximately 1 million gallons of fuel that was resting in the pipelines. The fuel needed to be removed so that the military could embark on extensive pipeline repairs to ensure that the fuel from the tanks could be drained safely.

Wade said that once the repairs began, the military began finding “pockets of fuel,” including 14,000 gallons that was dammed behind a valve that was installed four decades ago, likely due to the accumulation of sediment over years of fueling operations. He said it took 14 weeks just to remove the fuel, which involved lead abatement, asbestos removal and coming up with response plans in case there was an environmental release.

“So that’s what we may have to contend with when we finish defueling and we finish unpacking (the pipelines),” said Wade. “There may be residual fuel, and we’ll have to work that deliberately and we’ll be transparent. But that’s what we need to do.”

While the defueling plans are well underway and involve a complicated matrix of deadlines that must be met by military officials and environmental regulators in order to stay on track, the military only recently flagged the problem of residual fuel, which will be part of Red Hill’s closure phase.

Last week the military announced that rather than keeping the Red Hill pipelines in place as initially envisioned, it would remove them. In a report to regulators, the Navy indicated the contractor hired to remove the pipelines would be responsible for removing any residual fuel that is encountered.

Removing the infrastructure is expected to be difficult, according to the report, involving the removal of three major pipelines, portions of which contain lead paint and asbestos, associated valves, steel frame supports and other material within cramped spaces.

Military officials and regulators from DOH and the EPA also updated members of the committee and the public about ongoing environmental remediation efforts in the area around Red Hill. There are believed to have been dozens of fuel leaks from Red Hill since the facility was installed in the 1940s, in addition to recent revelations about spills of aqueous film forming foam, a fire suppressant that contains so-called forever chemicals called PFAS that have been linked to an increased risk of certain cancers as well as other health problems.

DOH presented updated maps of monitoring-well data that reflect levels of petroleum contamination in the groundwater around the Red Hill tank farm. Those maps show that the enlarged plume following May and November 2021 fuel spills at Red Hill has continued to shrink in size, and levels of petroleum hydrocarbons have declined.

DOH also presented the results of PFAS testing in a dozen monitoring wells taken between December and April. The testing found trace amounts of PFAS throughout the wells, all but one of which were below strict new drinking water limits proposed by the EPA, as well as environmental action levels.

“Normally in the environment you wouldn’t have PFAS chemicals like this,” said Ernie Lau, manager and chief engineer of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, who is a member of the Red Hill Fuel Tank Advisory Committee. He asked the Navy and regulators where the contamination might be coming from.

“Look at these PFAS numbers. They are all over the place. They are not at one location, and there are multiple PFAS chemicals,” he said.

The one sample that exceeded the EPA’s proposed limit for drinking water, which was taken from the Red Hill shaft shortly after it was contaminated with fuel in 2021, may be attributed to the equipment of divers who were sent into the well to try to clean up the fuel, a Navy official said.

Officials didn’t address what may be causing the trace levels of PFAS throughout the wells.

The committee meeting also included more than two hours of public testimony in which residents once again grilled the Navy for contaminating the environment.

Marti Townsend, former director of the Hawaii Sierra Club, who was speaking on behalf of the agency, said it’s critical that the Navy fully remediate the contamination of the aquifer and not leave the pollution for the state to deal with, citing the case of Kahoolawe, which for decades was used by the military as a bombing range.

“My concern is that we will see this Red Hill water crisis follow the same path of Kahoolawe, where the people of Hawaii are left with the responsibility of cleaning up the military’s mess,” said Townsend. “The Navy does not have a good track record.”