The state Department of Health has not adopted standards for underground storage tanks or tank systems, like the ones in the Navy’s fuel storage facility at Red Hill, as required by law, a state judge ruled Wednesday.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey P. Crabtree’s ruling finds in favor of the Sierra Club in its lawsuit against the Health Department and Director Virginia Pressler. Crabtree said current DOH administrative rules, which exempt from state regulation underground storage tanks and tank systems owned and operated by the U.S. military, do not comply with legislation approved by state lawmakers in 1992.
“The statute trumps the admin rule,” Crabtree said.
The 1992 law is part of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency program to let states establish standards for the EPA to enforce. The law requires replacement or upgrade of then-existing tank systems by Dec. 22, 1998, to prevent releases over their operating life.
The DOH is already in the process of adopting new administrative rules that do not exempt the military, which it expects to begin enforcing in October.
Sierra Club attorney David Kimo Frankel said Crabtree’s ruling should move up the state’s calendar. He also said DOH has not been as tough on the Navy as it could be.
“This ruling should allow it to,” he said.
The DOH has relied on the Navy to conduct studies on the effects of fuel leaks at Red Hill on the drinking water for more than 400,000 residents. The storage tanks sit 100 feet above the primary aquifer for Oahu.
“Whatever work is done at Red Hill, we want the Navy to pay for it,” Deputy Attorney General Wade H. Hargrove III said.
The Red Hill tanks leaked about 27,000 gallons of jet fuel into the ground in 2014 and had periodic spills before then.
