![]() “I guess they’re going to wait until something really has to get done when they’re leaking badly,” said Ernie Lau, chief engineer for the Board of Water Supply. They say the risk of poisoning Oahu’s drinking water supply is too great. Christina Jedra/Civil Beat/2020Ĭritics want the Navy to pursue a “tank within a tank” solution or move its fueling facility elsewhere. Marc DeLao says the Red Hill fuel tanks are “in good shape” and don’t require rapid replacement projects like one in California. Marc DeLao, the commanding officer of Naval Facilities Engineering Command Hawaii. “It’s decades old, but it’s in good shape,” said Navy Capt. Despite concerns from the community, environmental activists, the Board of Water Supply and others, the Navy has no plans to follow the model of Point Loma. That project could start as soon as 2021, according to a 2018 environmental assessment.īut at Red Hill, it’s a different story. The site in Manchester, a community abutting Puget Sound, experienced two “significant” fuel spills in 1990 totaling up to 50,000 gallons, according to a Navy report. The completed project is now serving as a model for the modernization of another fuel depot at Naval Base Kitsap in Washington, which has its own underground fuel storage system dating back to the beginning of World War II. The Navy said 54 underground and above-ground storage tanks were replaced with eight tanks, all above ground. “When the Point Loma project began, most of the existing above-ground and underground tanks had been in service for more than 70 years and were posing safety and environmental hazards,” engineers involved with the replacement wrote in Military Engineer magazine.Ī $194 million overhaul began in 2005 and was finished in 2013. That leak – which the Navy blamed on human error by a contractor – followed an estimated 1.2 million gallons spilled in dozens of leaks over the years, according to Navy estimates.īut what happened next at Point Loma is something that has baffled environmental advocates in Hawaii who have long demanded fortification or removal of the Red Hill facility: The Navy replaced the tanks. ![]() In 2014, the corroding steel-lined tanks expelled over 27,000 gallons of JP-8, a kerosene-based jet fuel. The facility lies underground just 100 feet above Oahu’s drinking water aquifer. It’s a story that mirrors the tale of Honolulu’s own World War II-era fuel tanks at Red Hill. Len Hering, commander of Navy Region Southwest, delivers remarks during the 2013 groundbreaking ceremony at Naval Base Point Loma. “Once the petroleum goes in the ground and it’s such a large area with very tight soils, it’s very difficult to remove,” he said. The mess is still being cleaned up today, and true remediation will likely take decades or more, according to Sean McClain, a senior engineering geologist with the San Diego Water Board. With repeated discharges since 1999, a massive plume of fuel was sitting above the water table. So, perhaps it wasn’t surprising when military officials announced in 2006 that up to 1.5 million gallons of fuel had leaked into the ground. Racial segregation was still the law on the mainland and Hawaii wasn’t yet a state.īy the early 2000s, the San Diego area tanks were more than 40 years beyond their life expectancy, the Navy told the California Coastal Commission. The Navy’s fuel tanks in Point Loma, California were old.īuilt between 19, the tanks were installed during an era encompassing the Great Depression and the years following World War II.
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