By Alfred Acenas
EBC Hawaii-Pacific Bureau
PEARL HARBOR (Eagle News) – During a town hall meeting at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam (JBPHH) on Sunday, December 5, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro personally delivered a public apology for the ongoing water contamination crisis that has already lasted for one week and affected some 93,000 residents on Oahu.
”I deeply apologize to each and every one of you and to the people of Hawaii,” Del Toro said. “I reaffirm my commitment as your secretary of the Navy, speaking on behalf of the Secretary of Department of Defense as well, that we are bringing to bear all the resources of our department or our Navy to fix this problem by doing so, it’s extremely important for us to be transparent.”
“We mistakenly felt the initial tests… meant we may drink the water and I said in my notification that my staff and I were drinking the water. That was not a cover, we were,” explained JBPHH Commanding Officer Captain Erik Spitzer on the base’s official social media account. “We truly thought the testing results indicated the water was safe to drink. We were wrong. I apologize with my whole heart that we trusted those initial tests.”
Meanwhile, Governor David Ige, together with Hawaii’s Congressional delegation including Senator Brian Schatz, Senator Mazie Hirono, Congressman Ed Case, and Congressman Kai Kahele, issued a joint statement calling for the immediate suspension of the Navy’s bulk fuel operations at Red Hill.
“Test results confirming contamination of drinking water at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam show that the Navy is not effectively operating the World War II-era facility and protecting the health and safety of the people of Hawaii. We are calling for the Navy to immediately suspend operations at Red Hill while they confront and remedy this crisis,” the statement read.
Constructed from 1940 through 1943, the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility is located under a volcanic mountain ridge near Honolulu, east of Pearl Harbor.
Capable of storing up to 250 million gallons (946,353 kiloliters) of fuel, the facility consists of 20 steel lined tanks, encased in concrete, and built into cavities that were mined inside of Red Hill.
Each tank has a storage capacity of approximately 12.5 million gallons (47,318 kiloliters). The tanks are connected to three pipelines that run 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) through a tunnel to fueling piers at Pearl Harbor.
The structural integrity and relevance of the aging facility has previously been under scrutiny, particularly in 2014 when it released some 27,000 gallons (102,000 liters) of jet fuel from one of the tanks, resulting in a spike in levels of hydrocarbons in soil vapor and groundwater.
(Eagle News Service)