Two news stories breaking on Tuesday underscore, very concerningly, the uncertainty of chemical dangers that lurk below Hawaii’s picture-perfect environs. The risks posed by military use of lands must put the public on high alert, and heightened awareness calls for proactive measures.
On Tuesday:
>> The Red Hill Water Alliance Initiative (WAI), a consortium of top state and city leaders, in its final report pressed the Navy for ongoing and longterm aquifer remediation and cleanup — estimated at $750 million over three decades — and stressed the need for an integrated approach to resolving the water crisis. That crisis, of course, emerged very publicly with the November 2021 fuel spill that sickened hundreds using the Pearl Harbor-
Hickam water system.
>> The Navy disclosed that in 4 of 21 groundwater monitoring wells in the Red Hill vicinity, an exceedance of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), a component of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) or “forever chemicals,” was detected. The Navy has been sampling since aqueous film forming foam (AFFF), which contains PFAs, leaked at Red Hill in November 2022 — which only compounded environmental concerns after the 2021 fuel spill. The Navy, it must be noted, says that its water system continues to meet regulatory requirements and remains safe to drink. It is sourced solely from the Waiawa Shaft, about six miles from Red Hill, and the most recently sample on Oct. 24 did not detect PFAS.
While that itself is reassuring, here’s what’s puzzling: The profiles of the PFOS in the groundwater monitoring wells do not match that of the November 2022 AFFF release.
That means the detected forever chemicals came from another source — but where, and from how long ago, are uncertain. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PFAs have been utilized for decades not just in firefighting foam, but also in other industrial uses, household cleaning products, food packaging, and stain-repellents in carpets and fabrics.
But it’s such uncertainty about chemicals in Hawaii’s ground — their source, how they move in the environment, how long they can remain — that’s at the core of WAI’s call for the Navy to be legally and financially responsible to monitor, assess and remediate any damage done over the decades by its many fuel spills. The WAI report estimates that between 644,000 and 1.9 million gallons of fuel have gone into the ground over the facility’s 80-year lifetime; further, a 2018 Navy-commissioned risk management report said more than 5,800 gallons had likely been released from Red Hill every year.
The WAI report provides important guidance as the Red Hill facility transitions from defueling to closure. In early March, the Navy Closure Task Force-Red Hill is set to start the task of permanent shutdown. The Department of Defense pledges that closure will not be complete “until we can ensure, in coordination with the EPA and DOH (state Department of Health), that the facility no longer contains fuel and that we have done all necessary corrective action around the facility to mitigate any risk to human health, the aquifer or the environment.”
So it’s vital that WAI — comprising the governor, mayor, other top leaders and the University of Hawaii — has now staked out a strong message that’s skeptical of longstanding military platitudes over fuel safety. While acknowledging that fuel will degrade “as a matter of science,” the report said there is “insufficient research to show how efficient degradation occurs in the specific environment beneath the tanks, more than 500 feet below the surface and 100 feet above the aquifer.”
The report, then, is right to call for more independent research to understand the distribution, movement and characterization of fuel around the Red Hill facility that’s in the ground and not yet in the water table.
The WAI leaders’ solidarity and unity of purpose must remain strong these next years, as federal and military dollars are sought for the DoD to take legal responsibility for environmental remediation and restoration; for more fuel-movement research coordinated by UH; and for better access to the Navy’s water-monitoring wells.
Oahu’s future generations deserve more vigilance than has occurred over the past decades — and Hawaii’s beautiful, fragile environment deserves no less.
