It’s been a year and a half since the Navy began flushing close to 5 million gallons of water each day from its Red Hill shaft and into the Halawa Stream to get rid of any fuel contaminants in the military's water system — and to prevent fuel from spreading throughout the aquifer.
The water travels through granular activated carbon filters before reaching the stream, and eventually Pearl Harbor.
After reporting decreased fuel contamination in the Red Hill shaft, the military got approval from the state Department of Health to reduce its pumping volume to just under 2 million gallons a day on May 23.
"We'll be doing that until June 20, at which point, we'll submit the data to the Department of Health and the EPA for them to review and make a final decision if we can permanently go to that 1.8 million," said Sarah Moody, the environmental deputy for strategic operations at Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command.
"The current plan is if we can get agreement that the 1.8 million average is sufficient, we'll hold at that value at least until the tanks are defueled. And then we will reevaluate as the Department of Health decides what's next with the emergency order," she said.
Moody said the water is sampled every four hours to make sure it is clean and meets safety standards for the environment. She said there's been no indication of any contamination going into the stream.
"We have seen a significant reduction of any TPH (total petroleum hydrocarbon) or any petroleum products being detected at the Red Hill shaft over the last year," she added.
She said the Navy has also completed nine of the 22 additional monitoring wells it committed to installing in the Red Hill area by next February.
The Red Hill shaft was taken offline in November 2021 after the Red Hill fuel tank facility leaked jet fuel and poisoned people on the Navy water system. The military has proposed an October start date to start draining 104 million gallons of fuel from the fuel facility.
This interview aired on The Conversation on June 8, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. This interview was adapted for the web by Sophia McCullough.
