HONOLULU– The US military said it has finished draining millions of gallons of fuel from an underground fuel tank complex in Hawaii that poisoned 6,000 people in 2021 when jet fuel leaked into Pearl Harbor’s drinking water.
Joint Task Force Red Hill began pumping out the tanks in October after completing months of repairs to an aging network of pipes to prevent the World War II-era facility from causing more leaks while 104 million (393 .6 million liters) of fuel was drained from the tanks. .
The task force was expected to transfer responsibility for the tanks to Navy Closure Task Force-Red Hill on Thursday. This new command, led by Admiral Stephen D. Barnett, is charged with permanently decommissioning the tanks, clearing the area and restoring the aquifer below.
Vice Adm. John Wade, the commander of the task force that emptied the tanks, said in a video released Wednesday that Barnett understands “the enormity and importance” of the job.
Wade said the mission of the new task force was to “close the facility safely and quickly to ensure clean water and to conduct the necessary long-term environmental cleanup.”
The military agreed to drain the tanks after the 2021 spill sparked outrage in Hawaii and concerns about the threat the tanks posed to Honolulu’s water supply. The tanks are located above an aquifer that supplies water to 400,000 people in the city of Honolulu, including Waikiki and downtown.
The Army built the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility into the side of a mountain ridge to protect the fuel tanks from air raids. Each of the twenty tanks is equivalent in height to a 25-storey building and can hold 47.3 million litres.
A Navy investigation shows that a series of errors caused thousands of gallons of fuel to seep into the Navy’s water system that serves 93,000 people at and around the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in 2021. Water users reported nausea, vomiting and rashes.
The Navy reprimanded three now-retired military officers for their roles in the spill but did not fire or suspend anyone.
Shortly after learning of the spill, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply stopped pumping water from the aquifer that lies beneath the fuel tanks to prevent leaked fuel from entering the municipal water system. The utility is looking for alternative water sources, but Pearl Harbor’s aquifer was the most productive, providing about 20% of the city’s water use.
