The Navy has failed once again to demonstrate adequate concern and responsibility for the safety of military families and others dependent on its drinking water system, as it failed to deliver on the safe and diligent operation of its Red Hill fueling facility. Instead, the Navy took shortcuts rather than act according to its mandate to protect water users.
When toxic jet fuel contaminated drinking water in its system, the Navy chose not to test the water in homes of those who reported being nauseated and sickened by drinking it, whether for petroleum chemicals or other substances. While the Navy created the impression that it was following up with careful scrutiny, that was not the case.
Samples were collected from more than 1,000 homes during the first few weeks following the water contamination. But incredibly, they were not specifically tested for chemicals, and were instead simply discarded, after regulators determined the water distribution system would have to be flushed.
That is infuriating to Bridget Merancio, an Army wife and mother of three, whose family and even pet dogs had already been sick for a week when, on Nov. 29, she awoke to find that her home “smelled like an auto body shop,” as the Star-Advertiser reported Tuesday.
The next day, on Nov. 30, the Navy started flushing its main distribution system, and instructed all families to flush the water from their home pipes.
Only days later, on Dec. 2, did the Navy confirm that its Red Hill shaft had been contaminated with jet fuel. As a result of this backward process, there is little data available to indicate what specific chemicals may have been present at dangerous levels in the water before the flushing began.
While the Navy sent some samples from public locations such as community centers to Environmental Protection Agency-certified labs out of state, this was only done after the extensive flushing was initiated. Hawaii’s Department of Health (DOH) found that this was likely to have diluted the contamination.
While it could also have sent samples that it collected from homes to the EPA lab, the Navy instead dumped the water and threw out the vials after a month. Now, the Merancios and hundreds of other families who drank and used water from the Navy’s system serving neighborhoods in and around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam will never find out exactly what was in their water.
Responding directly to those who were exposed to the contaminated water, the Navy sent obscure, confusing and conflicting messages. Some learned only from the Star-Advertiser that water samples taken from their homes were not tested.
Households that can’t find results for their water sample on a water data page established by the Navy can now assume their sample was never tested, reported the Star-Advertiser’s Sophie Cocke.
The proper response to drinking-water contamination would have been to immediately determine exactly what was in the water, and that should have been the Navy’s first response, said Andrew Whelton, an expert in water contamination and response efforts who assisted with the Navy’s Red Hill response.
The U.S. Pacific Fleet itself detailed a pattern of neglect at Red Hill with a June report, revealing that the fuel-storagefacility’s pipe system is in a dangerous state of disrepair, which could enable further water contamination. That complicates the urgent need to defuel and close down Red Hill, as ordered in March by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
A preliminary Navy plan, released in June, set the earliest date for complete defueling as Dec. 31, 2024. But condemning the plan’s lack of detail, the Hawaii Department of Health rejected it. The Navy’s deadline to turn in a revised plan is today. That plan must lay out clearly how the Navy will safely and quickly decommission Red Hill, with an attention to island residents’ safety and access to clean water that has so far been sorely lacking.
