The Honolulu Board of Water Supply has been a vigorous advocate for the integrity of the aquifer that is among Oahu’s most critical resources. No more clearly has that been seen than over the years-long response to the 2021 contamination from the U.S. Navy’s underground fuel storage facility at Red Hill, tainting water principally serving military customers.

There has been encouraging progress made in the federally ordered emptying of the fuel tanks, with the challenging next steps being the dismantling of miles of pipes and the fuel they still contain.

The water board has been pursuing federal funds, most notably in November with the filing of a $1.2 billion claim against the Navy to recover costs associated with the contamination crisis.

But there are other courses of action underway that need to accelerate, particularly given recently approved water-rate increases. In November the board adopted a rate hike of more than 50%, over a 5-1/2-year schedule.

Although the trigger for those rate increases is primarily the mammoth infrastructure upgrades the water board needs to make across its entire system, the contamination crisis is also a factor, according to the water agency.

Still, the ratepayers need to see that the water utility is doing all it can to draw on sources other than what customers pay. These efforts should include the securing of additional resources that have become available through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), first passed in 2021.

That cache of funds totals $400 billion for national use, but state Department of Health (DOH) officials have said Hawaii’s share could total up to $75 million.

In December, the DOH sent the water board a letter asserting that the BIL funds could be used for a treatment system enabling reactivation of the Halawa Shaft, which was shut right after the Navy’s November 2021 fuel spill as a precaution against contaminants spreading through the aquifer. In later queries from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, however, the DOH confirmed that currently only $26 million of the total local share is in hand for “emerging contaminants.”

The assertion of these funds as a solution in the Red Hill saga may indeed be premature, as water board officials maintain. It’s still uncertain whether the projects tied to the Halawa Shaft would actually qualify for these funds, said Ernest Lau, the water agency’s manager and chief engineer.

He said that the “emerging” chemicals the funds are meant to address are those that are currently unregulated. These include perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — also called “forever chemicals.”

In November 2022, one year after its fuel leak, the military alerted the public that 1,300 gallons of a solution laced with these forever chemicals had spilled at Red Hill, prompting a cleanup and widespread concern. The principal concern about the Halawa Shaft, though, had been the fuel-based contaminants that are regulated, Lau said.

What is critical at this stage is that officials from the water board, the Health Department and the federal Environmental Protection Agency that administers the Hawaii emerging-contaminant funds come to agreement over what projects could be covered with BIL money, and to do so urgently.

”The sooner we can get clarity, the sooner we can scrub our long-term capital program and see what projects actually fit in the requirements and time frame of the funding,” Lau said.

Agreed. The safeguarding of Oahu’s water supply, and its conveyance to a population dependent on it, is an expensive undertaking. Every resource must be tapped, every effort must be made to ensure that it is safe. Failure to do so would deliver a blow far more costly.