HONOLULU — The Sierra Club Hawaii chapter has pursued litigation and other actions to fight against the Red Hill fuel tanks for years, as they warned that the fuel would leak into the aquifer and poison people. Earlier this week, along with Earthjustice, they filed a motion to intervene in the Department of Health’s case against the facility.
The Department of Health issued an emergency order on Dec. 6, saying the U.S. Navy must remove fuel from the 20 underground storage tanks at its Red Hill facility within 30 days. The Navy said the following day that it would fight the order.
Along with demanding that the Navy remove the fuel from the Red Hill storage tanks, the Department of Health’s emergency order says the Navy must suspend operations at the Red Hill Storage Facility and take measures to treat contaminated drinking water at the Red Hill shaft. The Navy has stated that its fuel operations at Red Hill are temporarily suspended.
The contested case hearing over the emergency order is scheduled for Monday, Dec. 20, at 8 a.m., and the public can watch the proceedings. If the case doesn’t finish Monday, then it will continue to be heard the next day.
David Henkin, the lawyer for Earthjustice who is working with the Sierra Club, told Spectrum News Hawaii that they were happy, while also surprised that the Department of Health issued the emergency order, because “we’ve been fighting with the Department of Health over the authorizations of these tanks for years.”
The Sierra Club sued the Department of Health in 2017 and won, saying the department exempted the Red Hill fuel tanks from regulations and did not follow requirements to ensure the upgrade of the existing tanks. The Sierra Club filed another lawsuit against the Department of Health in 2019 that is still ongoing to prevent the automatic approval of permits for the Red Hill storage tanks.
Henkin said Earthjustice and the Sierra Club wanted to participate in Monday’s proceedings to make sure “the Department of Health does not back down from its demand that the Navy promptly get the fuel out of this facility.”
“Our concern here is that in the past, the department has been willing to accept half measures that are inadequate to protect the public health,” Henkin said.
The Navy objected to Earthjustice and the Sierra Club joining the case. The Navy has until midnight Friday to file its written opposition, and the hearing’s officer, David Day, will decide over the weekend if Earthjustice and the Sierra Club can join the case.
Lydia Robertson, a public affairs officer for the Navy Region Hawaii, said in a statement to Spectrum News Hawaii that they cannot comment on the pending hearing, but noted that “the Secretary of the Navy has already ordered the cessation of all operations at the Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks until the investigation into the cause of the incident is complete, and ordered isolation of the Red Hill well until all affected can be supplied with potable water that meets EPA drinking water standards.”
“We are eager to get the Red Hill facility defueled,” said Henkin about Earthjustice and the Sierra Club’s goals. “We're not saying that the Navy can't have fuel anywhere, but it cannot have fuel in leaking, underground tanks that were built almost 80 years ago, and are only 100 feet above our aquifer.”
There have been many questions surrounding the Navy’s Red Hill Fuel Storage Facility, where the military built 20 vertical fuel tanks underground, which are the equivalent of a 25-foot story building and store up to 250 million gallons of fuel, during World War II. Red Hill is located near Pearl Harbor and is above an aquifer that supplies drinking water to residents from Moanalua to Hawaii Kai.
The Department of Health’s emergency order was issued after housing residents, offices and schools that use the Navy water system started smelling a fuel-like odor and said they were experiencing physical symptoms that ranged from rashes to vomiting. The Department of Health confirmed on December 10 that the Red Hill well, where water is pumped for the Navy’s water system, tested positive for petroleum components. That same day, the Navy identified that the contamination likely came from a November spill of a mixture of 14,000 gallons of water and fuel.
The Honolulu City County held a special meeting Wednesday to pass Bill 48, which requires anyone who operates an underground storage tank with a capacity of 100,000 gallons or more to obtain a permit from the City that would only be granted if the applicant proves that the tank system will not leak. On the first reading, they also passed Resolution 21-276, which urges the immediate defueling of the Red Hill storage facility’s tanks. The bill and resolution will now be sent to a committee for a public hearing, and eventually to the Mayor for approval.
At the meeting, the Board of Water Supply Manager and Chief Engineer Ernie Lau said that after touring the Red Hill storage facility that same day that he thought the contamination may have come from both the Navy’s November release as well as a leak in May of 1,600-gallons of fuel from the Red Hill fuel tanks.
“We've made a formal request to the leadership of the Navy for a fully unredacted version of their forensic investigative report that they completed for the May 6 event,” said Lau.
The Board of Water Supply closed its Halawa well on Dec. 3, which provides 10 million gallons a day for about 20% of Honolulu, as a precautionary measure. The following week, BWS also closed its Aiea well. BWS doesn’t know where fuel is moving in the groundwater, Lau said, and the two wells accept water from the same aquifer as the Navy’s contaminated well. If BWS did pump from the Halawa or Aiea well, then the contaminated water might move towards them. BWS is considering digging a new well, which would provide a unique water source, but that would take at least 10 years.
In the meantime, the Board of Water Supply will rely on its other wells to meet the demands of Honolulu and has asked residents and businesses to conserve water.