Navy officials and their contractors violated the Department of Defense’s fire code when they installed PVC piping instead of steel throughout a new fire suppression system at Red Hill. After recognizing the error in 2017, instead of fixing it, they chose to save on costs and replace only a small portion of the PVC piping.

The sloppy handling of the pipeline system, which was designed to deploy aqueous film forming foam, or AFFF, a fire suppressant, was a major factor that led to fuel contaminating the Navy’s drinking water system in November, according to a Navy investigation into last year’s fuel spills at Red Hill that was released June 30. The PVC piping also increased the risk of a fire at the underground facility that currently holds more than 100 million gallons of fuel.

In November, a Red Hill worker inadvertently crashed the passenger cart of a train into a fire suppression line, cracking one of the PVC valves. More than 19,000 gallons of fuel that was never supposed to be in the pipe came gushing out, flowed down a tunnel and ultimately made its way into the Navy’s Red Hill drinking water well and the taps of residents living around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

If the pipeline had been made of steel, as the fire code required, the damage likely would have been averted, according to the report, which cited a long list of other operational, maintenance and management failures at Red Hill that contributed to the disaster.

The report also found that the pipeline rupture was largely foreseen.

Hawaii Sierra Club Director Wayne Tanaka said the PVC piping debacle is “just one of a litany of issues with the entire facility that have finally been revealed.”

“Navy officials have been trying to sell us a lemon for years, and now that people have finally gotten hurt they are finally giving us a glimpse of what they knew was under the hood,” he said.

Missed opportunities

The installation of the AFFF system was part of a $58 million overhaul of Red Hill’s fire protection system to get it up to safety standards. In addition to installing an AFFF system in the lower tunnel, funding was put toward a water sprinkler system in both the upper and lower tunnels, hydrants and waterlines, and repairing oil-tight doors along the tunnel, among other repairs.

Problems with the AFFF system, which is used by firefighters to extinguish fuel fires, began early.

In 2015, Naval Facilities Engineering Services Command (NAVFAC) Pacific, which was overseeing the project, and Insynergy Engineering, which was hired to do the design work, stipulated in design specifications that the AFFF retention line be constructed entirely of steel, according to the Navy investigation. Those specs were part of the construction contract that was awarded to Hensel Phelps that year.

However, just prior to beginning construction in October 2015, Hensel Phelps asked NAVFAC Pacific to clarify what material was to be used in the AFFF retention line, as well as other lines in the AFFF system. The company had interpreted the drawings and specifications as using PVC and it wanted to make sure, according to the Navy’s report.

A couple of weeks later, a construction manager working on behalf of NAVFAC Pacific told the company to “proceed as per the proposal” and that no contract change was required.

“There is no written record that he conferred with the responsible design manager or any other NAVFAC Pacific government employee prior to this reply,” according to the Navy’s investigation.

Hensel Phelps went ahead and began installing the PVC piping, which NAVFAC Pacific and the design firm were aware of throughout the construction period but apparently took no action, according to the report.

The document doesn’t explain who realized that the PVC piping was a major blunder, but by September 2017, NAVFAC Pacific had completed an investigation into how its AFFF retention line ended up being constructed of PVC. The 2017 report warned the AFFF retention line was located in an industrial space where large equipment and materials are transported and that it was vulnerable to being struck by a heavy object.

“In the event of impact, steel is far sturdier than PVC,” the 2017 report noted.

That report also cautioned that PVC was not acceptable because the gaskets will break down when in contact with fuel, and PVC increases the risk of static electricity causing an explosion during fuel transport.

There was another problem: The PVC retention line could not be reused if there was a catastrophic leak and it needed to pump 100% fuel. The piping would be limited to a one-time use.

Nonetheless, Navy officials decided the next month to replace the PVC piping with steel only in the immediate area of sumps, while keeping most of the piping as PVC. The NAVFAC Pacific fire protection engineer concurred.

The decision was made “primarily due to the excessive cost to replace the pipe with steel,” according to the Navy’s investigation.

The cost to change out all of the PVC piping with steel was estimated at $16.24 million, a Navy spokesperson told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser last week in response to questions about the report. Instead, the Navy paid $4.1 million to switch out only part of it.

“It is reasonable that steel pipe, as required by the DoD (Unified Facilities Code), would have been less likely to sag under the weight of fuel contained within it, making it unlikely that the trolley would have struck the low point drain valve in that case,” the Navy’s investigation concluded. “Even if struck by the trolley in the same manner as actually occurred, a steel retention line and low point drain would most likely not have ruptured, thereby preventing the spill.”

Overlooked signs

There were other warning signs and missed opportunities in the run-up to last year’s water contamination crisis.

In May 2021, unbeknownst to any of the workers, an estimated 21,000 gallons of fuel spilled from a Red Hill tank and pipe, almost all of which was sucked up into the fire suppression line, according to the Navy investigation. That fuel sat in the line for the next six months until it was hit by the passenger cart.

During that time there were multiple inspections of the fire suppression system, including visual inspections of the AFFF retention line, by a fire safety company called Kinetix, which has main offices in Philadelphia and Baltimore. However, no deficiencies were found and inspectors apparently missed visible signs of fuel seeping out of a portion of the piping.

The Navy is now in the midst of permanently shutting down Red Hill and figuring out how to safely drain the facility without another major accident that could further pollute the groundwater below the facility. Part of that work, according to an assessment released earlier this year, will include shoring up Red Hill’s fire protection system.

Navy spokesperson Lydia Robertson said the Navy is now working on the design for either repairing or replacing the AFFF recovery line in anticipation of defueling.