UH News: The University of Hawaiʻi Red Hill Task Force has launched a Tap Water Screening Dashboard that displays data on potential fuel-based contaminants in water screened by UH experts and is intended to help the public better understand the quality of their tap water. The interactive dashboard allows the public to track water sample findings over time and provides visual maps and graphs used for screening analyses as well as downloadable data.
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(October/ Civil Beat) The Navy urged residents to conserve water after a fourth water main break occurred on its system Monday, adding to the list of problems for some 93,000 people near Pearl Harbor who faced a fuel contamination crisis last year.
Military officials said people should continue to boil water for drinking and cooking as a precaution against bacteria until the system is deemed safe.
“My main concern is the sediment and bacteria,” Navy Capt. Mark Sohaney, the commander of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, said at a news conference.
The previous three water main breaks occurred Friday, prompting the Navy to order residents to boil their water and forcing the closure of child development centers, gyms and other facilities.
See the rest of this Civil Beat article here.
The lawsuit was originally filed earlier this year with the US District Court for the District of Hawaii, and included the names of 10 plaintiffs.
The most recent update to the document, which was filed on Thursday, includes the name of more than 100 new plaintiffs, including civilians, who claim they suffered physically, emotionally and financially after a series of failures last November resulted in a fuel leak at the facility.
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(LK comment: Jacob is right on… In addition to conservation and reuse, Hawaii needs to begin to think about a Desal pilot program just in case. The price of Desal has significantly decreased and we have seen what one Red Hill situation can cause and we have not seen the end of this crisis.) April 2022, Civil Beat Opinion Jacob Wiencek: Late last year a devastating water crisis hit Hawaii as thousands of gallons of fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility leaked into the groundwater.
The Red Hill crisis is not the only water crisis to face Hawaii in the recent past. Maui County had to issue a water conservation noticethat inflamed an age-old debate about balancing water for residents and one of our primary economic pillars, tourism.
More broadly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration holds that the entire state of Hawaii is either in abnormally dry conditions or at least moderate to severe drought.
Whether through a man-made crisis or climate change we are facing increasing pressure on our water resources — and that pressure will only intensify as Hawaii’s population continues to grow (we clocked a 7% growth rate from 2010-2020).
To see the rest of this excellent piece see: https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/04/red-hill-crisis-underscores-water-insecurity-in-hawaii/
The U.S. Navy will comply with Hawaiʻi’s order to remove fuel from a massive underground storage tank facility near Pearl Harbor blamed for contaminating drinking water, officials said Tuesday.
The Navy is making preparations to defuel the facility, Rear Adm. Blake Converse said during a U.S. House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness hearing.
“The Navy caused this problem. We own it and we’re going to fix it,” Converse told members of Congress. “Nothing is more important than the health, safety and wellbeing of our families, our military residents, our neighbors and the communities that we call home.”
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12 December, Civil Beat, Christina Jedra: (Comment: This is a good historical summary of the Red Hill history) As Oahu residents reel from the news that military families’ drinking water was contaminated with petroleum, and that water for the broader community is also at risk, scrutiny of the nearby Navy’s fuel facility is intensifying.
But the crisis is not a surprise to many residents, officials and local environmental advocates. For years, they’ve considered Red Hill an inevitable environmental and public health disaster.
“My fear was that something terrible would happen before people wake up and this comes to their attention,” Ernie Lau, chief engineer of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, said this week.
The military said it caught wind of the emergency over Thanksgiving weekend as complaints rolled in from military housing residents saying that their water smelled of fuel and that their families and pets were falling ill. After initially dismissing concerns, the Navy later acknowledged that the Red Hill well that services that community was contaminated.
State health officials announced on Friday that the Navy’s water system contained levels of gasoline and diesel range hydrocarbons as much as 350 times higher than state standards for safe drinking water.
The cause of the problem is still under investigation, but the suspected source is the Navy’s World War II-era Red Hill fuel facility located uphill from the affected military communities.
A link to the full story is here
10 December HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Samples collected by the state Health Department earlier this month at the Navy’s Red Hill water shaft found petroleum levels 66 to 350 times higher than the limits considered safe for drinking water, the state announced Friday.
The results were the latest worrisome development in the contaminated water crisis, which has left dozens sick, displaced at least 3,000 families and prevented thousands more from using their tap water.
Meanwhile, Navy officials said during a legislative briefing Friday they believe they’ve found the source of the contamination ― a spill on Nov. 20 at a fire suppression system downhill from Red Hill and not the underground fuel tanks that have been the source of a number of leaks in recent years.
“The Navy is responsible for this crisis,” Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, told lawmakers. “We are taking ownership and we are going to fix it.”
At the briefing, U.S. Pacific Fleet Deputy Commander Blake Converse said Navy tests have confirmed the petroleum in the Red Hill shaft is jet fuel from a relatively new spill.
He said they believe “with a high degree of confidence” that the contamination is from the Nov. 20 spill of jet fuel from a fire suppression drain line in the tunnel downhill of the Red Hill bulk fuel storage tanks. The Navy has said that 14,000 gallons of fuel and water were released in that incident.
Eight days after the spill, military families first started reporting a bad smell and taste in the water. Some said it made them sick, and the Health Department has gotten 600 complaints so far.
Converse stressed they don’t think the fuel is from the underground Red Hill fuel tanks.
In response to those claims, lawmakers expressed skepticism, saying they wanted confirmation about the source of the fuel from the state Health Department and EPA.
The state Health Department says the cause of the leak remains under investigation.
“The Navy, frankly, lately hasn’t given us a lot of reason to trust them so I think we all feel that we want an independent agency to come in and verify,” said House Environment Chair Nicole Lowen.
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