So far, the Navy has not participated in the Red Hill Sanitation Roundtable

The Navy has yet to register for a roundtable convened by state and federal environmental regulators to share information and develop an action plan to address fuel contamination caused by the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility. , according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. As a result, work on the plan has stalled for a few months.

Gabriela Carvalho, EPA’s Red Hill project coordinator, said the action plan should be a collection of all the environmental work that is underway and needs to be done to address the fuel spill contamination from Red Hill. and restore polluted groundwater.

“The purpose of the action plan is to communicate with key stakeholders and the public how the remediation of Red Hill contamination will unfold over the next few years,” she told a meeting. of the Fuel Tank Advisory Committee on November 9.

“Progress on developing this action plan has been stalled for the past two months because the Navy has not been able to commit to participating,” Carvalho said. “We hope the Navy will commit to participate. We have had discussions with senior Navy personnel about this, and we hope that these discussions will continue. »

Rear Admiral Stephen Barnett, commander of Naval Region Hawaii, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser at the meeting that defense officials in Washington, D.C., are still working out the details of the Navy’s level of involvement. .

“We will participate; we’re just trying to fine-tune the level of participation,” Barnett said.

In a follow-up interview last week, Carvalho said there was no update on the Navy’s involvement.

The Navy has for months promised transparency and collaboration, and the roundtable aims to facilitate information sharing with key agencies that have a stake in water protection. In addition to the EPA and the state Department of Health, which have regulatory authority over Red Hill, the committee includes the Honolulu Water Supply Board, which provides most of the water Oahu’s drinking water and is responsible for protecting the resource, the Commission on Water Resources Stewardship, which ensures that water is pumped from wells to sustainable levels that protect the aquifer, and the U.S. Geological Survey , which contributes its scientific expertise.

The Pentagon announced in March that it would permanently close the Red Hill facility, which includes 20 underground fuel tanks and a system of pipelines that stretch to Pearl Harbor. The decision came amid a public backlash against the Navy after fuel from the facility leaked in 2021 and contaminated the Navy’s drinking water system, which serves approximately 93,000 customers in and around the Navy. Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

Closure of the facility triggers environmental requirements, including an investigation of historical fuel releases at the site and an analysis of necessary corrective actions.

Navy documents and records dating back to the 1940s when the facility was built indicate there may have been at least 76 fuel leaks from Red Hill over the decades, totaling 180,000 gallons of fuel . However, the files are irregular.

Some of the remediation efforts began in 2015, when the Navy signed an Administrative Consent Order with the EPA and DOH following a 27,000 gallon fuel leak from the facility. According to the EPA, other cleanup requirements are governed by an interagency drinking water team formed to address the immediate emergency of drinking water contamination in 2021 and other regulatory requirements of the state.

The roundtable “is really a way to sit down and meet with these leading water protection and public trust agencies to share information and make sure that, while the work is going on, as it l ‘was, to address contamination, these key stakeholders have the opportunity to provide feedback early and often throughout the process,’ Carvalho told the Star-Advertiser.

Part of the remediation effort includes drilling monitoring wells to determine where fuel contamination may be migrating. While most of these wells are supervised by the Navy, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply also installs monitoring wells.

“The Navy has been very open in sharing potential locations with us recently, and we’re trying to collaborate on that, so we’re working together,” Lau said. “But I think regulators need to be on board as well, and I think this roundtable needs to happen as soon as possible.”