It’s been almost two years since a fuel leak at the military's Red Hill fuel storage facility contaminated drinking water for approximately 93,000 users of the Navy water system.
The military is in the process of draining 104 million gallons from the World War II-era underground fuel tanks. Removing the fuel is a key step toward shutting down the facility as demanded by the state.
Nearly 94 million gallons of jet fuel have been removed from the facility so far, as of Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Joint Task Force-Red Hill, the entity responsible for defueling, announced an upcoming administrative and organizational transition.
The shutdown mission remains the same, but the people in charge will be shuffled around in 2024. The defueling task force will wrap up in March to make way for the new Navy Closure Task Force-Red Hill.
The new task force “will deliver on Secretary Austin’s commitment to permanently close the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility," said Brendan Owens, the assistant secretary of defense for energy installations, and environment, in a statement.
Once most of the fuel finishes draining downhill via gravity to Pearl Harbor and awaiting tankers, any remaining fuel will need to be removed.
Joint Task Force-Red Hill will sunset after it finishes removing some 60,000 gallons of residual fuel that can be removed through "non-destructive means." The new task force will work on the fuel removal that requires "destructive means" — about 4,000 gallons.
The closure task force is also responsible for removing the pipelines, plus about 28,000 gallons of sludge left in the tanks, according to a news release.
Navy Rear Adm. Stephen Barnett, the commander of Navy Region Hawaiʻi, will be in charge of the closure task force. The commander of Joint Task Force-Red Hill is Navy Vice Adm. John Wade.
The state Department of Health held a public meeting Wednesday afternoon to share updates about Red Hill. The Fuel Tank Advisory Committee meeting included representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the military.
The military has said it plans to close the Red Hill facility by January 2027.
In December 2022, an independent contractor recommended a closure-in-place plan for the 20 concrete tanks at Red Hill, an estimated $119 million project that would take about three years once the facility is defueled. The plan requires DOH approval.
