The Navy's Red Hill closure task force is cleaning up miles of pipelines in preparation for their eventual removal, a key step in efforts to shut down the facility for good.
"We're on path, you know, making good progress, " said Rear Adm. Marc Williams, the naval engineer that has been tasked with the day-to-day operations of the closure task force. "We're now into seven of the 14 tanks that were operational."
The underground fuel farm contains 20 massive tanks that were built to collectively store up to 250 million gallons of fuel at full capacity. Built during World War II, the facility was meant to protect the military's Pacific fuel reserve from enemy attacks. A series of pipelines connect the tanks to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, in what's regarded as an engineering marvel.
But the unique underground nature of the facility also posed unique operating and maintenance challenges as it aged over eight decades. Those challenges persist as the Navy works to shut it down.
The Navy is currently working to remove residual fuel sludge from the pipeline through a process known as "pigging." Steven Chow, an engineer with Naval Facilities Engineering Command Hawaii, explained the process gets its name from the "squealing " sound it produces as teams work through the pipes.
"How this works, is like a squeegee, " explained Chow as he showed a massive sponge-like object that Navy teams pull through the pipe with machinery to clear it out. He said "at the receiving end is where actually you're going to have containment center. So as you pull the fluid through, it'll be captured."
Drew Suesse, an Environmental Protection Agency facilities engineer who lives in Kaimuki, has been checking the Navy's work as it goes about the massive closure effort. He said "EPA has staff in the tunnels on-site, kind of continuously keeping an eye on the Navy's progress."
Suesse said that they are "continuing to address some of the unexpected site conditions that might be coming up, " noting that with a facility that's over 80 years old, "there's always little quirks."
The facility was built just 100 feet over a critical aquifer most of Oahu relies on for drinking water. For years the Navy insisted that wasn't a problem, arguing that the facility was well maintained and that it was critical for national security despite several spills and mishaps.
But in 2021, fuel from the facility contaminated the Navy's Oahu water supply that serves more than 93, 000 people. Thousands of residents reported serious rashes, gastrointestinal issues and other ailments.
Not long after, reports emerged showing that several military officials and personnel who had worked at the site had raised concerns about poor maintenance. The pipelines were badly corroded and many of the tanks hadn't been inspected in years. Military officials admitted that the facility and pipeline would need heavy repairs and renovations to safely remove the millions of gallons of fuel inside.
The military established a task force of experts from across each military branch led by Vice Adm. John Wade that officially began operations in October 2022. Between repairs, planning and defueling, the mission took 18 months and removed the 104, 703, 574 gallons inside.
But the long-term closure and remediation is a whole separate beast.
"Every time we enter a tank, every time, it's a learning evolution, " Williams said. "We learn something new and use that to carry forward (and ) try to go faster, but we're not worried about going faster for the sake of going faster ... we're not sacrificing thoroughness for expediency."
Suesse said that "we're kind of finding that every tank is a little bit of a snowflake, every one is a little bit different and unique ... some of those tanks haven't been opened in a number of years and so they've opened up the tanks and they found the kind of infrastructure that needs to be verified that it's clean (and ) make sure there's no fuel left in those tanks."
A report released in November by the Pentagon's Inspector General office on Red Hill found that records on the facility were, at best, spotty.
When Pentagon investigators visited JBPHH in 2022 and asked to see engineering drawings and schematics for the interconnected fuel system, they were directed to a technical library. Their report described it as "disorganized, with documents overflowing into the hallway, a lack of labeling, and piles of engineering drawings scattered on various tables."
A Navy contractor told investigators there was no one on staff to "collect and integrate drawings from projects that changed the (fuel ) infrastructure over time." Investigators wrote that they ultimately "determined that Navy officials did not have accurate and up to date as-built drawings of ... tanks, pipelines, and supporting infrastructure."
"There are some old legacy instrument wells that, you know, maybe we're not made aware of, or didn't have the greatest record keeping over 80 years, " Suesse said. "So it is really important that we're keeping an eye on that and making sure that those, like, originally unidentified things are drained or removed."
Williams said that the pigging is taking care of much of the last immediate concerns. He said that "the remaining threat to the environment inside the facility is the trapped fuel in the pipeline, and that operation is capturing the vast majority of that. And then, really all that's left from an environmental risk standpoint is the sludge, and sludge is immobile."
But he added that it's not something he's taking lightly.
"It's really just a matter of not letting complacency slip in, " Williams said. "Because we're going to be cutting pipeline out 5 to 10 feet at a time -- 10 miles of it."
The long-term impact of Red Hill's operations is hard to quantify. The ongoing closure is being watched carefully by local agencies and community groups.
Last month the Honolulu Board of Water Supply filed a federal civil tort complaint in the U.S. District Court of Hawaii in which it said it is suing the Navy over its handling of the leaks at and around Red Hill, particular harm that may have come to the aquifer. BWS has estimated the cost of past, current and future impacts from fuel leaks at $1.2 billion.
"The hard part is, is people want to see things go faster, but there is a very detailed process, " Williams said. "There's gonna be more data to collect, so that will drive decisions on the environmental side going forward ... the environmental processes is a lengthy process now that that's going to be measured in decades, not years."