[ad_1]
In November last year, people living on and nearby US Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickham on the Hawaiian island of Oahu had to leave their homes after petroleum was discovered in their tap water.
This week, a new investigation from the US Navy puts the blame on human error and poor management, the Associated Press reports.
The source was the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, which leaked jet fuel into the water supply for the base and nearby military housing.
On 6 May of last year, an error caused a pipe to break and spill 21,000 gallons (80,000 litres) of fuel during a transfer between tanks. That fuel mostly ended up in a fire suppression line, which released 20,000 gallons of fuel six months later — on 20 November — after a cart rammed into it.
Since that line wasn’t supposed to have fuel, the team that responded didn’t have the right tools to clean it up.
“The team incorrectly assumes that all of the fuel has been sopped up,” Admiral Sam Paparo, the commander of the US Pacific Fleet, told reporters at a news conference.
“Meanwhile, over the course of eight days, that fuel enters into this French drain that is under the concrete and seeps slowly and quietly into the Red Hill well. And that fuel into the Red Hill well is then pumped into the Navy system.”
Officials for the fuel tank had assumed that most of the missing fuel from the May leak had entered the pipes, not the fire suppression line, and didn’t report the error to senior leadership.
The November leak only affected the Navy’s water supply, not the nearby system for the city of Honolulu. But the city’s water officials have shut down one of their wells in light of concerns about fuel leakage through the aquifer.
Mr Paparo also said that this kind of issue could be occurring at other military fuel tanks around the world and suggested a review of those locations.
The military has already agreed to defuel the Red Hill facility this spring. A plan released on Thursday said that the earliest this could occur is December 2024.
The US Environmental Protection Agency says that drinking water service had been restored by March.
This isn’t the only water contamination issue surrounding the base recently, either. In April, Military.com reported that a sink at an elementary school in the area contained elevated levels of mercury, a neurotoxin.
The sink was apparently “not regularly used by students”. Other water contaminants like beryllium and lead have been found at other sinks in nearby buildings as well, Military.com reports.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
[ad_2]
Source link
