For years, environmental regulators have zeroed in on the risks posed by the Navy’s aging Red Hill fuel tanks, which have been the source of dozens of leaks since they were built in the 1940s.
But the pipelines transporting that fuel from 18 active tanks to fueling piers at Pearl Harbor are just as old and, according to Navy documents, also suffering from corrosion and other wear and tear that increase the risk of fuel spills.
A comprehensive assessment ordered by defense officials of the pipeline system, which was conducted in 2015 and 2016, found that the pipelines were in need of 350 repairs to address corrosion and dents, many of them urgent, according to Navy documents turned over to the Hawaii Department of Health this month.
However, it’s not clear if many of those repairs were ever made, augmenting concerns about the Navy’s overall maintenance of the facility and ability to safely defuel it, as state health officials have ordered.
Of the 350 identified needed repairs, 230 were categorized in a September 2016 report as needing to be fixed immediately or within six months and were deemed “critical to the hydraulic and structural integrity of the piping.”
But at the time Navy officials had money budgeted to make only 23 of those repairs, which were completed in December 2016, according to Navy documents. Another 26 repairs were not completed until May 2018.
Navy documents suggest that defense officials were looking to save costs on remaining repairs by using more lenient criteria to classify whether a pipeline problem was in need of being fixed, a finding that Sierra Club of Hawai‘i attorney David Kimo Frankel called “incredibly troubling.”
The pipeline inspection report detailed “additional assessment methodologies and repair recommendations (such as modification to the maximum operating pressure) that could reduce the overall number of repairs and/or the economic and operational impact of the repairs,” according to an August 2019 report prepared for Naval Facilities Engineering Command, called Inspection and Repair of Red Hill Pipelines.
Last week, Navy officials asked for more time to respond to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s questions about whether the remaining repairs were made, as well as other questions about its pipelines, but then did not provide responses by an extended deadline.
The Navy’s pipeline documents were turned over in response to a January 2022 order from a state Health Department hearing officer who is presiding over a contested case hearing involving the Navy’s permit application to continue operating the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. In a statement, Rear Adm. Charlie Brown, U.S. Navy Chief of Information, said that the documents are “responsive to the hearing officer’s requests for information about various structural and operational aspects of the facility and about the Navy’s maintenance and incident response activities.”
Brown said additional documents will be released in the coming weeks ahead of a hearing on the Navy’s permit application, which is scheduled for May 23.
“The Department remains focused on immediate actions to protect our people, and the local Hawaii population, while also taking actions that will position it to make informed and environmentally protective longer-term decisions,” Brown said in his statement.
The state Department of Health has increasingly focused on the condition of the Red Hill pipeline system as it seeks to force the Navy to comply with its Dec. 6 order to defuel all of its tanks after jet fuel released from the facility last year contaminated the Navy’s drinking water system that serves approximately 93,000 people at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and surrounding neighborhoods. In November, residents on the system began complaining of fuel odors coming from their taps, skin rashes and burns and painful gastrointestinal symptoms. Three months later, the Navy is still trying to clean the fuel out of its Red Hill drinking water well, which has been taken offline, and restore safe drinking water to the affected residents, many of whom are military families.
Earlier this year, federal defense officials sued the state over its defueling order and said that decisions about the future of the Red Hill facility are being debated at the highest level of government.
Moving the fuel
Red Hill’s underground tanks each have the capacity to hold up to 12.5 million gallons of fuel. Navy officials have declined to answer questions in recent months about exactly how much fuel is currently sitting within the tank farm, which hasn’t been operational since the drinking water contamination emergency began in November. But the Navy has said that about 180 million gallons of fuel sit within the tanks at any given time.
During a recent contested case hearing on the Department of Health’s emergency order to defuel the tanks, state officials, bolstered by testimony from witnesses called by the Sierra Club of Hawai‘i and Honolulu Board of Water Supply, painted a picture of an aging World War II-era facility that has long posed a risk to a major source of drinking water not just for the Navy, but southern Oahu.
State health officials, who wield regulatory authority over Red Hill, described extensive corrosion within the Navy’s tanks and a troubling tank inspection process that has resulted in eight of the tanks not being inspected in more than 20 years, three of which haven’t been inspected in about four decades.
David Norfleet, an engineering consultant for the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, said during the hearing that he had identified dozens of fuel releases from the tanks from historic records for Red Hill. Those are just the known or suspected releases and total about 175,000 gallons of fuel.
A recent Navy analysis found that the risk of fuel releases from the tanks will increase significantly in the coming years.
A Department of Health hearing officer overseeing the case subsequently called the Red Hill facility a “ticking time bomb.”
But as state regulators and an overwhelming number of federal, state and local politicians call for the permanent shutdown of the facility, state health officials have also cautioned that they need to make sure that the tanks can be drained safely, and that includes making sure that the pipelines aren’t at risk of major problems.
A May 6 pipeline rupture at Red Hill is now believed to have spewed thousands of gallons, and is believed to be the source of the drinking water contamination.
The DOH did not respond to specific questions about the Navy’s pipeline reports. But in a statement noted that it had fined the Navy more than $325,000 in October for violations that included failures to safely maintain the Red Hill pipeline system.
“DOH is incredibly concerned by the threat that the entire Red Hill facility, including any deficiencies in the pipeline system, poses to the public and our drinking water,” DOH said in a statement. “The December 6, 2021 emergency order requires an independent assessment and facility repairs to ensure that defueling can be completed safely.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it will also be inspecting the facility during the week of Feb. 28.
Marti Townsend, a former director of the Sierra Club of Hawai‘i who now works for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, said the Navy’s inability to immediately say whether the list of repairs identified in 2016 had been completed was particularly troubling and highlights the Navy’s failures in passing along and keeping track of critical information about the Red Hill facility.
“This is the structural amnesia that I have been complaining about for years,” she said.
