Military to fight state’s order on Red Hill fuel tanks, official says

The U.S. military plans to appeal the state’s emergency order requiring it to drain its Red Hill fuel tanks, a decision that was met Monday with swift rebuke by members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, the state Department of Health and groups that have long fought for the tanks’ removal, including the Hawaii Sierra Club.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, in a statement released Monday, said that the U.S. Department of Defense is on an “aggressive schedule” to analyze its fuel reserves in the Pacific theater within the next 60 days so that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin can make a decision on the long-term future of Red Hill. She said this includes the option of permanently draining the tanks.

Hicks said that DOD plans to appeal the state’s order in federal and state court ahead of a Wednesday deadline, which “will afford us time to make evidence-based and transparent decisions.”

“Despite these legal process requirements, we hope to collaborate with the State of Hawaii in a way that would allow the parties the time and space needed to reach solutions together,” said Hicks.

Kathleen Ho, deputy director of environmental health for the state Health Department, called the decision to appeal disappointing.

“The Navy committed to Congress and in multiple public forums that it would comply with the emergency order,” Ho said in a statement. “Today’s announcement that they intend to appeal the emergency order is yet another breach of trust between the Navy and the people of Hawai‘i.”

The state Department of Health issued its emergency order Dec. 6, days after the Navy confirmed a long-feared scenario that jet fuel from its Red Hill tank farm had contaminated its drinking water system, which serves about 93,000 residents in and around the neighborhoods of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Residents on the Navy’s drinking water system had been reporting a fuel odor coming from their taps, as well as health problems including skin rashes, headaches, vomiting and diarrhea.

The state’s order required the Navy to suspend operations at its Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, which includes 18 active underground fuel tanks, each large enough to envelop Aloha Tower, that sit just 100 feet above a major source of drinking water for Oahu. Amid the suspension, the order required the Navy to clean up contamination around its Red Hill shaft, assess the facility’s safety and drain its Red Hill tanks before seeking permission from the state to resume fueling operations.

The Navy has been working to clean up the contamination but took issue with the draining requirement and challenged the state’s authority to issue the emergency order. The Navy contested the order through an administrative appeals process but lost. On Dec. 27 a hearing officer overseeing the case called Red Hill a “ticking time bomb” that posed an imminent peril to human health and the environment.

In the ensuing weeks the Navy said it would comply with the state’s emergency order, but military officials remained silent on whether they would appeal the order in court.

The Navy’s overtures toward compliance were met with cautious optimism by environmental and community groups advocating for the permanent shutdown of Red Hill. The Department of Defense’s decision to take the fight to court is sure to inflame a growing mistrust toward the Navy and criticism that top military officials often engage in double talk — issuing public statements about compliance and transparency while working behind the scenes to undermine regulators.

During a hearing in December before the House Armed Services Committee, U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, raised concerns that top military officials were not being forthright about their intentions toward the state. “This is coming off as a voluntary compliance, and a voluntary compliance can at some point in the future be reversed, and that is the fear of the state of Hawaii,” he said during the hearing. “And so I would strongly urge the Navy and the Department of Defense, as you analyze your clear legal options in terms of the emergency order, to confirm that the state of Hawaii does in fact have this authority.”

Case said Monday, following Hicks’ announcement, that he would do everything he can to make sure the state’s order remains in effect and, “if necessary, to confirm that Hawaii and any other state is legally entitled to protect its drinking water.”

Hawaii’s congressional delegation, which had been reluctant to take an aggressive stance on retiring the aging Red Hill tanks, has taken a much harder line amid the ongoing fuel contamination that left thousands of military families living out of hotels. In December the delegation inserted a last-minute provision into Congress’ annual defense bill requiring it to assess alternative locations to Red Hill.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said that the Department of Defense, in deciding to appeal the state’s order, had “made a grave and unforced error that undermines public trust.”

”Fortunately, we have civilian oversight of the military, and this inexplicable and maddening resistance to the defuel order will not succeed,” said Schatz. “They will lose in court and they will lose in Congress.”

U.S. Rep. Kai Kahele, D-Hawaii, said the Department of Defense’s decision to appeal “is a betrayal to the people of Hawaii” and said the military must shut down Red Hill if it can’t be a “good neighbor and stewards of our environment.”

Meanwhile, the Navy continues to clean and test its water system. Officials told state legislators Monday morning during a briefing that they had finished flushing and testing their water distribution system and have finished flushing about 80% of homes.

They’ve also begun efforts to clean up groundwater around their Red Hill drinking water well, where jet fuel entered their system. The Navy has begun pumping up to 5 million gallons of groundwater daily from the shaft, filtering it and depositing it into Halawa Stream. Navy and environmental regulators hope that the pumping, which is expected to continue for two months, will reduce the spread of petroleum into other parts of the aquifer.

The Navy’s water contamination crisis, which has already cost more than $250 million, has had a direct effect on military families and civilians on the Navy’s waterlines. But it’s also posed a threat to the Honolulu Board of Water Supply’s wells, which supply drinking water to the majority of Oahu residents.

Three of those wells have been shut down out of concern that the Navy’s petroleum contamination could migrate. Honolulu Board of Water Supply Chief Engineer Ernie Lau said that his concerns about potential contamination have yet to be assuaged and that urban Honolulu could face water shortages this summer as demand for water increases amid the curtailed supply.