For nearly three weeks now, the public has been advised to stay out of waters near the entrance channel to Pearl Harbor, due to discharge of partially treated sewage from the troubled Pearl Harbor Wastewater Treatment Plant. It’s not the first time, and unfortunately, it won’t be the last — due to a facility that has fallen into serious disrepair under Navy handling.

Since June 2021, the plant has been under a federal Environmental Protection Agency order to improve, but clearly, work is not moving quickly nor well enough. The state Department of Health (DOH) in September 2022 slapped the facility with $8.7 million in fines for wastewater violations (which the Navy is contesting), and, as now evidenced, sewage continues to be released without required optimal treatment.

On Oct. 9, the DOH issued a sewage spill advisory that has yet to be canceled. Between just Oct. 12-17, the Navy quantified, about 1.75 million gallons of partially treated effluent have bypassed sand filters, though the discharge underwent ultraviolet-light disinfection.

Now, at the Department of Health’s direction, the Navy is doing additional sampling at the facility and adjacent shoreline “to ensure public health and safety while the plant undergoes significant sand filter upgrades.” Good; more testing is a necessary precaution.

But here’s the thing: During this upgrade period, the Navy anticipates that “bypasses of the sand filters could occur daily.” Daily.

The outfall is about 1.5 miles offshore, so the effluent doesn’t — yet — appear to be affecting beaches or beachgoers. Affected waters are near the Pearl Harbor entrance channel just off the ewa end of the Reef Runway. Still, this negative situation, the latest of many over years, was enough to retrigger DOH concerns.

Oddly, however, DOH’s new directive for more sampling of the partially treated wastewater was made verbally — not in writing, as it should be for the record. It’s important that the state maintain firm oversight over the Navy, document concerns and ratchet actions as warranted.

Lax oversight only harkens to another aging Navy facility that had deteriorated to the point of environmental hazard: the WWII-era Red Hill fuel-tank facility. All eyes, rightly, are now on the dangers posed by those underground tanks‚ currently undergoing permanent defueling after spills in 2021 disastrously contaminated the water of 93,000 users in the Pearl Harbor-Hickam area, sickening hundreds and displacing thousands.

Similarly, more attention now must be paid to the Pearl Harbor wastewater plant, which was built in increments from 1969 through 1997.

In 2019, DOH officials found the facility in such disrepair they were unable to safely complete the inspection, and findings were reported to the EPA and Department of Defense. Follow-up inspections revealed, appallingly, cracked concrete tanks, disconnected parts in its machinery and severely corroded equipment.

Under the 2021 Federal Facilities Compliance Agreement between the Navy and EPA, the Navy must, by the end of 2024: Replace or repair the plant’s three primary clarifiers, five of the six secondary clarifiers, and the effluent pump station; it also must develop a plan to prevent and respond to potential infrastructure failures at the plant.

As for the DOH’s 2022 notice of violations to the Navy, it cited a whopping 766 counts of pollutants discharged into the ocean from January 2020 to July 2022; 212 counts related to operation and maintenance failures; and 17 counts of bypassing filters without authorization.

All that, disturbingly, only foreshadowed today’s ongoing problems.

The Navy last week said it is actively pursuing options to expedite completion of the sand filter upgrades, as well as alternate solutions, on top of the six construction projects underway to upgrade the plant.

But each day of partially treated sewage spewed into Oahu’s offshore waters now becomes a daily reminder of the Navy’s longstanding negligence and lack of care for Hawaii’s environment. The quicker this literal cruddy mess is fixed and cleared up, the better it will be for everyone.