Major repairs required for Crimson Hill fuel to be drained

The Navy’s Crimson Hill fuel facility will will need to undertake substantial repairs in get for the fuel in the enormous underground tanks to be drained properly and to avoid a catastrophic launch that could further pollute the groundwater, result in a main hearth or likely injure or destroy personnel, according to an 880-web page report unveiled Friday by the Navy.

The assessment done by Simpson Gumpertz &Heger, a Navy contractor, does not present an estimate for how very long the repairs may possibly choose. The condition Department of Health and fitness, which regulates the facility, claimed a timeline is expected from
the Navy by June 30.

The Navy has indicated it will get a yr to defuel the 18 active Red Hill tanks right after the repairs are designed. It is not obvious what that timeline is dependent on. Navy officers previously stated that a tank can be drained in a handful of days.

Navy officials did not respond to questions about the report Friday.

On March 7, Secretary
of Protection Lloyd Austin
purchased the Navy’s Pink Hill gasoline facility to be drained and completely shut down. The conclusion came
right after jet fuel from the facility leaked into a Navy ingesting h2o well, sickening inhabitants in neighborhoods around Joint Base Pearl
Harbor-Hickam and spurring a political firestorm and calls for the Planet War II-
period facility to be shut down.

The Navy has been shifting ahead on programs to close the facility and remove the fuel. But environmental groups and officials with the Honolulu Board of Drinking water Provide have fretted about the time it will get to last but not least eliminate the gasoline that sits just 100 ft earlier mentioned an aquifer that also materials drinking drinking water to southern Oahu.

The report, which paints an alarming image of deteriorating and growing old pipelines, corrosion and defective valves, is possible to exacerbate those people concerns.

David Kimo Frankel, an lawyer for the Hawaii Sierra Club, mentioned the report was surprising, though similar to prior Navy stories on the facility.

“This 2022 report is as head-spinning as the others,” Frankel explained by email. “It describes a facility that really should have been shut down many years back. It reveals truths about the facility that the Navy covered up for three yrs through (a condition listening to). Heads really should roll.”

The assessment was furnished to DOH on May well 13 but selected as “critical stability facts,” preventing state officials from releasing it publicly. DOH, underneath an unexpected emergency order, essential the Navy to present a redacted edition for general public
release.

Amid the redactions are estimates of the price of repairs and what parts of the do the job are previously funded.

“This report describes intensive and important repairs that are necessary to safely defuel and decommission Red Hill,” reported
Kathleen Ho, DOH deputy director of environmental wellbeing, in a statement. “While the need to have to defuel Red Hill is urgent, general public and environmental protection keep on being the to start with priority.”

The report, which was contracted prior to the Pentagon’s buy to shut down Purple Hill, particulars additional than 200 repairs that would be desired to safely work the facility, together with about 3 dozen that are significant before defueling.

The desired fixes are extensive and involve major structural repairs in the pipelines and distribution method.

The facility incorporates 20 steel-lined tanks encased in concrete that ended up carved into basalt rock. Every tank
is approximately the height of an 18-tale setting up and can keep up to 12.5 million gallons of fuel. The tanks are connected to a few pipelines that run via an underground tunnel and guide to fueling piers at Pearl Harbor and Hickam Airfield.

The Navy demands to drain the 18 tanks that up till 2021’s gasoline contamination were active.

The most major recommendations that need to be done before defueling entail the decreased obtain tunnel adjacent to the Red Hill tanks, in accordance to the report. The assessment identified that a surge assessment wanted to be done alongside the pipelines dresser couplings, which are utilized to join pipes, needed to be safeguarded corroded piping wanted to be repaired and harmed coating and pipe supports necessary to be mounted, in addition to a prolonged record of other repairs.

The report also suggests the Navy wants to acquire extra created treatments for regular and unexpected emergency functions, and that workforce have to have a lot more education to protect against spills and react to emergencies.

The assessment located that numerous of the advised fixes are required to stop incidents equivalent to the Might 6, 2021, and Nov. 20 gas spills that led to the
Navy’s ingesting h2o program staying polluted with jet fuel. The report also lists required repairs to stay clear of what it refers to as a Sept. 29 “near-miss celebration.”

The report does not clarify what Sept. 29 party it is referring to. But the Honolulu Star-Advertiser very last 12 months reported that on Sept. 29 there had been a force surge in a pipeline similar
to the just one that caused the May possibly 6 gas leak, and that Navy officers were so concerned that they shut down Red Hill functions for nine days even though they investigated.

The Star-Advertiser reporting, based mostly on an internal e-mail despatched to superior-stage Navy officials and received by the newspaper, warned there could be numerous valves all through Purple Hill’s pipeline method that could be leaking, and referred to sagging strain ailments that were being comparable to the Might 6 spill.

DOH officers, at the
time, stated the Navy had not educated them of the Sept. 29 incident or that Pink Hill
operations had been suspended. In the meantime, the Navy brushed off considerations about the incident and claimed the shutdown was a routine response and represented the “abundance of warning used in the qualified management of sophisticated fuel operations at Red Hill.”

The report released Friday, even so, describes what took place as a “near-miss event” and implies very similar incidents could induce a fireplace, asphyxiate workers and pollute the groundwater with gas. It lists a amount of linked
recommendations to reduce these types of an event.

The report defines a “near-miss” occasion as what could have been a catastrophic launch of a hugely dangerous chemical and identified there was no process in spot to report or investigate this kind of incidents.

To read the entire report, check out 808ne.ws/redhillreport.