Protestors upset with the Department of Defence’s response to the leak of jet fuel into the water supply hold signs outside the gate at Joint Base Pearl Harbour-Hickam, Hawaii. File
| Photo Credit: AP

“Navy officials “lacked sufficient understanding” of the risks of maintaining massive fuel storage tanks on top of a drinking water well at Pearl Harbour where spilled jet fuel poisoned more than 6,000 people in 2021,” a U.S. military watchdog said on Thursday (November 14, 2024.)

“The lack of awareness came even though officials had engineering drawings and environmental studies that described the risks,” the U.S. Department of Defence’s (DoD) inspector general said.

The finding was among a long list of Navy failures identified by the inspector general in two reports that follow a years long investigation into the fuel leak at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. Investigators said it was imperative for the Navy to address its management of fuel and water systems at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and recommended that the military assesses leak detection systems at other Navy fuel facilities.

“The DoD must take this action, and others, to ensure that tragedies like the one in November 2021 are not allowed to repeat,” Inspector General Robert P. Storch said in a statement.

The military built the Red Hill fuel tanks into the side of a mountain in the early 1940s to protect them from aerial attack. There were 20 tanks in all, each about the height of a 25-story building with the capacity to hold 47.3 million litres (12.5 million gallons.) The site was in the hills above Pearl Harbour and on top of an aquifer equipped with wells that provided drinking water to the Navy and to Honolulu’s municipal water system.

Fuel leaks at Red Hill had occurred before, including in 2014, prompting the Sierra Club of Hawaii and the Honolulu Board of Water Supply to ask the military to move the tanks to a place where they wouldn’t threaten Oahu’s water. But the Navy refused, saying the island’s water was safe.

The 2021 spill gushed from a ruptured pipe in May of that year. Most of it flowed into a fire suppression drain system, where it sat unnoticed for six months until a cart rammed a sagging line holding the liquid. Crews believed they mopped up most of this fuel but they failed to get about 5,000 gallons (19,000 litres.) Around Thanksgiving, the fuel flowed into a drain and drinking water well that supplied water to 90,000 people at Joint Base Pearl Harbour-Hickam.

The inspector general’s report noted that 4,000 families had to move out of their homes for months because they couldn’t drink or bathe in the water. The military spent more than $220 million housing residents in hotels and responding to the spill. Congress appropriated $2.1 billion more, some of which is helping the Navy close the Red Hill facility in compliance with an order from Hawaii regulators.

The inspector general’s other findings are that the Navy never told the state department of health, which regulates underground fuel tanks, about the missing fuel after the May 2021 spill.

“Further, the Navy missed four separate opportunities in November 2021 to activate emergency response plans to respond to the water contamination. That includes on November 20, when fuel was released from the drainage pipe and on November 28, when residents called base authorities to report chemical and fuel smells emanating from their water.”

According to the findings, the Navy issued news releases on November 21 and 22 saying “the drinking water was safe” but did so without conducting any laboratory analysis to confirm that was the case.

The findings also revealed that the Navy didn’t assume contamination from the spill had spread throughout Pearl Harbor’s drinking water system, as required by the water system emergency response plan. The report said some residents may have continued to cook and shower with their tap water as a result.