A new analysis of options for retiring the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility has concluded that trying to remove the 20 underground tanks would be dangerous for workers and may result in a catastrophic failure of the facility.
A cheaper and safer alternative would be to leave the tanks in the ground and not try to fill them in, according to a report produced by Jacobs Government Service Company for the Navy and submitted to the Hawaii Department of Health on Thursday.
Each tank, located deep underground, is 200 feet tall and made of a steel liner that is encased in concrete.
“Removal of the tank steel liners would create safety issues associated with lifting workers and equipment to great heights within the tanks, unbreathable fumes emitted during steel cutting, and stability of the tanks during demolition,” according to the report. “Removal of the surrounding concrete would create additional safety concerns, including potential destabilization of the rock face and overburden, risk of catastrophic failure, and loss of life during construction.”
The Navy is hoping that the analysis will help sway DOH officials to approve its preferred “closure in place” plan, which the report estimates will cost $119 million and take about three years to complete.
The Navy is in the process of repairing the facility so it can safely drain about 100 million gallons of fuel from the tanks and permanently close it.
The analysis also looked at the option of keeping the tanks in the ground, but filling them in. That option would be more expensive, costing about $223 million and take about five years to complete. It would require enormous amounts of fill material that may not be available on island, according to the report, which concluded that trucking in the material to Red Hill could create extensive traffic woes.
BWS issued a statement on Thursday opposing the Navy’s “closure in place” plan.
The Navy told DOH last month that it wanted to keep the tanks in the ground, but at the time, the report evaluating options had not yet been completed.
The report by Jacobs Government Service Company can be read here.
