WASHINGTON — Members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation are denouncing as a “betrayal” the Defense Department’s decision to challenge a state order that the Navy remove fuel from a storage facility blamed for contaminating drinking water on the state’s most populous island.
Sen. Brian Schatz, Rep. Kai Kahele and Rep. Ed Case each issued statements condemning an announcement from Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks that the Pentagon will appeal a state-issued emergency order that requires the Navy to submit, by Wednesday, “a workplan and implementation schedule for defueling the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage facility.”
The facility comprises 20 underground World War II-era fuel tanks, which are used to support naval operations in the Pacific. Hicks indicated the Navy planned to file appeals at both the state and federal level.
“The DoD made a grave and unforced error that undermines public trust. Fortunately, we have civilian oversight of the military, and this inexplicable and maddening resistance to the defuel order will not succeed. They will lose in court, and they will lose in Congress,” Schatz said.
Hawaii’s Department of Health issued the emergency order to ultimately defuel the Navy tanks in early December, after the Honolulu Board of Water Supply found levels of gasoline and diesel-range hydrocarbons as much as 350 times higher than state-approved levels in the drinking water from a Navy-operated well. The well is the main source of drinking water for nearly 90,000 residents, including military families, who live near or are stationed at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on the island of Oahu.
For several days, the military families reported that their tap water smelled funny and that they were getting sick after using and drinking it. One family, who spoke with Spectrum News in December, said that they were still experiencing medical problems they attributed to drinking the tainted water.
Hundreds of families were forced to move into hotels or shuttle between their homes without running water and hotel rooms where they could shower and do laundry.
“Put simply, the Department of Defense’s decision to appeal the State’s emergency order is a betrayal to the people of Hawaii. There is no more precious resource than our water. If they are incapable of being a good neighbor and stewards of our environment, they must shutdown Red Hill. I will do everything I can to protect Hawaii’s drinking water,” said Kahele said in a statement posted on Twitter.
In his statement, Case said, “I strongly disagree with the Defense Department’s decision to further contest the emergency order. I will do everything I can to fully effectuate the order and, if necessary, to confirm that Hawaii and any other state is legally entitled to protect it drinking water.”
Case and Kahele attempted to gain reassurances from Navy officials during a hearing on the issue in January. At that hearing, Navy officials said that the leak that caused the contamination resulted from “operator error” and “improper operation of the piping systems or auxiliary systems associated with the bottle storage facility, not the integrity of any of the 20 tanks themselves.”
The Navy also fought the order in a state hearing on Dec. 20 and 21. But on Jan. 3, the Department of Health’s Deputy Director issued a final ruling that upheld the emergency order.
In her statement, Hicks said that the Department of Defense was only filing the appeal, this time, because it “will afford us time to make evidence-based and transparent decisions."
Sen. Mazie Hirono, the fourth member of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, seemed to take that information into account when crafting her statement on the news.
Hirono wrote that “the safety and well-being of the people of Hawaii must be the top priority…” and urged “…all parties to continue working together to reach our shared goals of protecting Oahu’s drinking water.”