The state Department of Health says the Navy’s conclusion that just a small amount of fuel likely escaped into the environment following a May 6, 2021, fuel release doesn’t comport with its own analysis showing spikes in petroleum contamination in monitoring wells around the Red Hill fuel storage facility in the months following the spill.
The Navy’s conclusion was part of its long-awaited investigation, released June 30, into how jet fuel came to contaminate its drinking water system in November, sickening hundreds of residents around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
DOH officials say they’re now going to try to calculate for themselves how much fuel likely escaped into the soil and groundwater.
“We are going back with our subject-matter experts to look at heat maps and to do a backwards calculation to see how much would have needed to spill to get that level that was reported in the groundwater monitoring wells,” said DOH spokesperson Katie Arita-Chang.
In November, hundreds of military families living around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam began complaining about their water. When they turned on their faucets or sprinklers, it smelled like gasoline. Their kids were vomiting and breaking out in rashes. When they took a shower, their eyes burned from the water. Some had chemical burns in their mouths. Pets were getting sick and refusing to drink the water.
In the days that followed, they would learn that the water in their homes had been contaminated by jet fuel following a leak at the Navy’s Red Hill facility on Nov. 20. But some residents on the Navy’s water system began to suspect their water had been poisoned months earlier as they thought back on unexplained symptoms, such as hair loss, unusual skin conditions and headaches.
Determining whether those symptoms may indeed have been tied to the water is difficult. Capt. Michael McGinnis, U.S. Pacific Fleet surgeon, said during a June 30 news conference to discuss the findings of the Navy’s investigation, that a review of electronic medical records over the year prior to November showed no increase in symptoms that may be reflective of fuel exposure.
“We have not seen any evidence of chronic medical issues from chronic exposure,” said McGinnis.
Earlier this year, however, there were troubling signs that the Navy’s fuel contamination problems began months prior to the November spill and were more extensive than what the Navy had portrayed. Regulators began delving into hundreds of readings from soil vapor and groundwater monitoring wells surrounding the fuel facility.
That data showed that total petroleum hydrocarbons, a large family of chemical compounds in oil, began increasing in concentration after the May 6, 2021, fuel spill at Red Hill. The types of TPH detected in monitoring wells indicated new fuel releases as well as degraded fuel, which suggested that old fuel spilled from the facility may have become dislodged and began migrating below ground.
The data indicates that fuel reached the subsurface and affected groundwater monitoring wells in Red Hill’s lower access tunnel for a significant period of time, DOH said last week.
There were also detections of TPH in the Navy’s Red Hill drinking water well in August that were above the levels that would alert the Navy and regulators to a potential problem, as well as lower-level detections in the well in July and September.
The Red Hill well fed the Navy’s drinking water system up until late November when it was shut down as Navy officials began to suspect it was contaminated with fuel.
The Navy’s investigation doesn’t provide much explanation for these readings. Rear Adm. Dean VanderLey, commander of Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Pacific, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser during the June 30 news conference there were working theories that the Navy and DOH were investigating, but that it was probably the result of old fuel becoming dislodged, rather than new fuel releases.
About 21,000 gallons of fuel spilled at Red Hill on May 6, 2021, most of which the Navy says was sucked up into a fire suppression pipeline. The Navy’s investigation said the quantity of fuel released to the environment couldn’t be calculated, but “is assessed to be small.”
That fuel could have entered the environment through six imperfections in the concrete and soil vapor monitoring ports, according to the investigation.
The investigation also pointed out that the elevated levels of TPH detected in groundwater monitoring wells last year decreased significantly after silica gel was used, a method Navy officials have said can provide a more accurate reading of fuel contaminants, but one that DOH rejects.
For example, after water samples taken from the Red Hill well on Aug. 5 and Aug. 26 showed levels of TPH that exceeded environmental action levels, the Navy retested using silica gel. “When the samples were analyzed using the silica gel cleanup method, there were no detections,” according to the Navy’s investigation.
DOH says using silica gel can provide a lower reading of contamination that is not accurate.
There are also lingering questions about whether solvents used to clean up spilled fuel may have also seeped into the groundwater, creating another source of contamination. DOH said last week that it its experts are investigating what effect the use of detergents and cleaners would have on groundwater.
DOH said it was told by the Navy that it used Simple Green to clean up the November spill but only water after the May spill. But it’s not clear if that is accurate.
VanderLey told the Star-Advertiser on June 30 that the Navy does not know what was used to clean up the May 6 spill.
