A fuel spill from the U.S. Navy poisons the water of thousands in Hawaiʻi

https://orionmagazine.org/article/voices-from-the-aquifer/

252 95 5 years ago

There is a perspective [in Hawaiʻi] that we are reliant on the military for our jobs, economy, and security, so the state has not questioned the assertions of the military in a lot of ways, including with regards to Red Hill. . . . I’m hoping that recent events have demonstrated to our legislators that the navy can’t be trusted with our water, this foundation of our lives. They have promised us time and again that they are somehow able to think of everything to protect us and this irreplaceable water source, yet they have failed time and again to do just that.

Military protection at the expense of essential services is some of the more sobering irony I've seen. What's the point of having the biggest, baddest military in the world if they make your community uninhabitable in the process?

micromacrofoot• 5 years ago

Based on its historical role as a pacific garrison, the military likely cares more about it being theirs rather than it being habitable at all.

bpodgursky2• 5 years ago

Calling Honolulu uninhabitable is kind of silly.

Pearl Harbor is an enormous base. Incidents like this tell basically nothing about the base rate of military vs business vs residential environmental accidents.

And it's not about "military protection" as much as "the US military pumps ridiculous amounts of money into the local area".

thr0wawayf002• 5 years ago

I don't think it's that silly since there's a very real risk to water supply contamination. As we saw in Flint, MI, apathy absolutely allows mass degradation of important infrastructure to the point of failure. But we accept it because it's not happening in our community.

AniseAbyss2• 5 years ago

Interesting I'd have thought tourism is the economic engine of Hawaii.

brian_cloutier• 5 years ago

Most important questions have multi-causal answers, without additional information I would guess that both "tourism is the economic engine" and "military bases are the economic engine" are likely to be incorrect.

Hawaiian GDP seems to have dropped ~8% in 2020 [1] where tourism spending plummeted let's say 50% [2]. I would expect that Hawaiian military payroll has stayed roughly fixed during the pandemic.

This seems to put an upper bound on tourism at ~20% GDP. Quite high! You would not want to lose it, but not the sole engine of economic success.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/187859/gdp-of-the-us-fed... [2]: https://www.hawaiitourismauthority.org/news/news-releases/20...

drjasonharrison2• 5 years ago

If anyone has a breakdown of this that fits into these (or other) nice categories please share. Based on my searches: (1) Tourism (this includes real estate rentals, entertainment, travel) (2) Government (defense) (3) Ocean surface transportation

hindsightbias• 5 years ago

Take out the rich non-natives and federal employees/contractors and Hawaii is a poor state. The per capita income does not account for the very high cost of living there.

Tourist dollars tend towards maintaining that industry and the state just doesn’t have the funds to support large infrastructure projects without heavy federal funding (water, power, ports, roads, airports, IT backbone). Many of islands run on shoestring budgets.

8note2• 5 years ago

I thought Hawaii was more occupation than protection? The protection is for the mainland US

sam_goody• 5 years ago

Meanwhile, the FSO Safer is sitting off the coast of Yemen, ready to kill everything in the Red Sea, contaminate hundreds of miles of ocean (with oil) and land (with poisonous fumes), and stop much of the world's shipping.

It is already slowly leaking, but could explode any minute.

People forget that these theoretical disasters can become reality.

p0cc• 5 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSO_Safer

This is a disaster waiting to happen. If it spilled, it would disrupt the Suez Canal and jeopardize the livelihoods of 1.7 million people who depend on fish.

nerdponx2• 5 years ago

Maybe they should've considered that before they decided to depend on fish and not American businesses, thereby making themselves expendable! There really is no respect for personal responsibility in the world these days.

gruez• 5 years ago

new yorker article that discuses this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28824890

404mm• 5 years ago

And https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSO_Nabarima

We (humans) really suck at not turning this planet shit.

sofixa• 5 years ago

Apparently there's also the FSO Nabarima off the coast of Venezuela in a similar state.

gesticulator• 5 years ago

Are they unable to tow it out of the environment for some reason?

encryptluks2• 5 years ago

And this is where people will learn that even if the US government contaminated the water supply of the entire US or accidentally detonated a nuclear bomb of Manhattan killing millions, the response will be... we had a systematic failure, sorry for your loss, we'll try to do better next time.

hammock2• 5 years ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted.. this comment seems to have a ring of truth. You could even apply it to the coronavirus

0xbadcafebee• 5 years ago

Ugh.... this is tragic. The legacy of the US's impact on Hawai'ians is already bad, and there's still resentment towards the way non-native people treat the island and its people. Of all the things to destroy, the beaches and the water.... not only are they basically sacred, they're also the lifeblood of tourism (which the military couldn't care less about, but it's pretty damn significant to the local economy)

xbar• 5 years ago

Every US Navy base is a toxic waste catastrophe, even the ones that have long been closed.

Systemic problems in waste management on military base land stem from defense budgets that go to fun, sexy projects and toxic waste cleanup budgets that are for civilian sites only.

Expect all 20th century Navy bases to pollute indefinitely. Hawai'i particularly sad because everyone knows what a loss it is. The death of places like the San Francisco Bay ecosystems are less visible.

mistrial95• 5 years ago

the San Francisco Bay ecosystems

pointers?

Spooky232• 5 years ago

Almost every military base and aerospace contractor. A nearby high school is going to be a superfund site soon because after WW2, some jackass decided to just dump toxic chemicals, and the underground plume is migrating faster than the remediation efforts.

If you look at a map of pollution sites, it’s pretty easy to see where defense related stuff was active 1940-1980. Look around Stanford, the old Grumman facilities on Long Island and Burlington, MA.

Spooky232• 5 years ago

Almost every military base and aerospace contractor, not just navy. A nearby high school is going to be a superfund site soon because after WW2, some jackass decided to just dump toxic chemicals, and the underground plume is migrating faster than the remediation efforts.

mistrial95• 5 years ago

resentment towards the way non-native people treat the island and its people

you forgot, giant, muscular and overweight guys who rule by being the biggest and baddest on the Island. Its a thing, but they lost. Not to the USA, but to a series of really exploitive, unimaginably exploitive settlers, who then were thrown back to their own lands by force by other people that had industrial arms, uniforms, ships larger than your village, compass and other things. The result being a democratic government, but also the Bishop Museum scandal and you know, Larry Ellison (edit almost) owning an Island. The novel 'Hawaii' by James Michner is a palatable retelling of some of that. (spoiler: death and cruelty in the most beautiful place imaginable)

the real story is quite disturbing all around.. I agree with the anti-pollution part, however.. toxics are also no joke.

mbg721• 5 years ago

So, about the success of Samoans in football...

vmception3• 5 years ago

The US state of Hawai’i sold an island to Larry Ellison 10 years ago

I really have doubts that the independent sovereign kingdom would have done it any differently

I think it dilutes the independence message as its the worst example of colonization

RosanaAnaDana• 5 years ago

Its not tourists dumping fridges and cars on the side of the road and along the highway. Its not tourists polluting the beaches or driving over turtles with their fishing boats. There is a real misconception around the issues in hawaii and where the sources and sinks of environmental damage are found.

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

It is tourists creating the local economic conditions (tourism industry lobby) that preclude running any sort of real industry which is why those fridges are on the side of the road and not crushed and in a dumpster at the local scrap metal recycler.

The fisherman running over turtles (and all the other "fuck everyone but me) behavior is just how things work anywhere tourism is a major industry. When a large chunk of the local economy is dependent on single time transactions with outsiders it creates an massive trickle down incentive to behave that way. You see this same shit in base towns, college towns or any other dump where most of the monetary input is lifted from the pockets of short term transient residents that there is no incentive to do honest business with.

Source: lived it, but not on Hawaii

dukeofdoom2• 5 years ago

Hawaii needs its independence back

cronix3• 5 years ago

How long do you think that would last given the prime strategic location? Do you think any other countries would like a large base 1/2 way between Asia and the US mainland? It's sure a lot easier to take over an existing stable island than build your own, which China has been doing. https://www.newsweek.com/china-south-china-sea-islands-build...

sudosysgen2• 5 years ago

Lol, there is zero chance that China can take Hawaii. This is meaningless fearmongering. The Chinese are going to have a hell of a tough time if they tried to invade Taiwan, 200km away (but they might succeed), what makes you think Hawaii, 10,000km away would be feasible?

Also, before taking Hawaii, they'd have to take Guam, which they don't even remotely plan to.

Absolute bollocks. The Chinese are never going to be economically or militarily dominant enough to pull it off. For the US to do it, they had to get in a position where they were >40% of the global economy. Even if every Chinese citizen was three times richer and that the average American didn't get any richer, they still wouldn't get to that kind of dominant position.

dukeofdoom2• 5 years ago

Hmm...I remember this same logic being used before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqozQ8uaV8

Just because someone else would steel it, does not mean it belongs to you. What is this...kindergarten level morality.

CyanBird• 5 years ago

Ahh yes, the classic hackernews with its US jingoism, "if we weren't an imperial power, then others would take our imperial holdings!!"

Right...

bpodgursky2• 5 years ago

Hawaii would not vote for independence, so this is a dumb hypothetical.

DantesKite5• 5 years ago

Why I always recommend reverse osmosis water filters. Failing infrastructure and systemic human error are abundant.

resoluteteeth• 5 years ago

Note that reverse osmosis can't remove some chemicals so it's not necessarily a replacement for the government doing its job.

DantesKite5• 5 years ago

Really? Which chemicals can it not remove? If true, I might be better off getting a distiller then.

technotarek2• 5 years ago

Reverse osmosis creates something like 4 to 6 parts waste for every one part of filtered water. It doesn’t seem sustainable or responsible on scale.

[1] https://inspectapedia.com/septic/RO_Waste_in_Septic_Systems....

DantesKite5• 5 years ago

I use a Brondell water filter that solves this problem. It uses less pressure and wastes less water. They have a white paper that goes into more detail about how they accomplished it if you want to Google it.

Otherwise I agree with you. RO technology has mostly stagnated.

ZhongDongLong• 5 years ago

One time I emailed the Hawaii Department of Public Health and asked for latest PFAS measurements.

They sent me an excel sheet (fron 2013?) with information about tested sites. With the curious omission of measured levels.

It was explained as "levels are too low to be required for disclosure"

Hmmmm...

burlesona• 5 years ago

Summary at the top:

This well, the Red Hill shaft, is one of three that provides water to residents on the Joint Base Pearl Harbor and Hickam (JBPHH) on the island of Oʻahu. For weeks, families living on the base registered complaints of a gasoline smell and taste in their water and illnesses ranging from vomiting to headaches, stomach pain, burning skin, and diarrhea. Initially, the navy dismissed residents’ concerns, but later admitted the water was unsafe for consumption and relocated more than 3,000 families to hotels. Because the navy shares an aquifer with the Board of Water Supply, officials worry that contamination in navy water wells could affect the city of Honolulu’s drinking water as well.

So: the people currently affected all live on the navy base. But the concern (not yet proven) is that this spill may affect the city water supply. Certainly concerning... do we know how to clean an aquifer if it becomes contaminated like this?

giantg2• 5 years ago

Not that I'm aware of. I guess they'll probably end up with special filtration or a desalination plant before they could ever clean an aquifer.

warner252• 5 years ago

This is essentially right.

I'll add the caveat that the Navy's water system apparently reaches many houses and businesses that you wouldn't call "on the navy base." Watching that unfold was painful, like when a network goes down and the operators clearly don't know their own network. This includes housing neighborhoods for other military service members (i.e. Army, Coast Guard) who work elsewhere, run by a different property manager, and neighborhoods that were transferred back to the civilian community 10-20 years ago.

As mentioned in my other comment, what's most scary is that there's still no solid theory of what happened and when. We aren't sure of the chemicals, the amounts, the timeline, or the mechanism by which the chemicals got into the water. The story keeps changing, and never really adds up. So it does seem quite possible that the whole aquifer is at risk. The city plans to avoid drawing from this portion of the aquifer for several years now.

philips• 5 years ago

The leak rate of fueling stations and tanks is rather alarming. Oregon DEQ reports a 3% yearly rate which includes tanks, dispensers, and piping.[1]

It seems any petroleum fueling infrastructure needs to be moved far far away from ground or surface water infrastructure.

I started a site at postpump.org to encourage land use updates to do this-- many municipalities have done it already.

It is a tragedy this keeps happening and the I am sure the federal government likes to play by different rules. Hopefully one day we can stop storing tens of thousands of gallons of petroleum right next to fresh water sources.

[1] https://www.postpump.org/reports/

jimrandomh• 5 years ago

I think it's well past time to make reverse-osmosis filters standard equipment for every residential kitchen sink. Water pollution is bad and we should still try to prevent it, but, given the actual rates of water pollution observed, the cost-benefit is completely overwhelming.

azinman22• 5 years ago

Which also takes out minerals and fluoride which you do want. It also is a big expense, and in many parts of the world, the municipal water is tasked with doing this kind of quality assurance for you.

paulryanrogers• 5 years ago

Minerals in water are unnecessary. Fluoride is better obtained by brushing ones teeth.

xahrepap2• 5 years ago

There was an even near me a couple years ago:

https://kutv.com/news/local/sandy-estimates-600-homes-affect...

And a follow up a year later:

https://kutv.com/amp/news/local/exclusive-cause-of-sandys-wa...

This is of course cherry-picked. And having a million smaller deployments is harder than one big centralized one. But the anecdote here is that even in a well-off, large suburb like Sandy, the infrastructure that is meant to “protect” the residents actually poisoned them.

It’s hard to say, IMO, that municipal run water on its own it guaranteed to be safe.

technotarek2• 5 years ago

I don’t have a citation ready for this, but I recall reading that reverse osmosis creates something like 4 to 6 parts waste for every one part of filtered water. If that’s correct, it doesn’t seem sustainable or responsible on scale.

Edit: adding potential reliable source: https://inspectapedia.com/septic/RO_Waste_in_Septic_Systems....

WalterBright3• 5 years ago

If the US Navy was a profit seeking company, this spill never would have happened.

jonathanlb2• 5 years ago

Forgot a sarcasm tag there? Or did you forget about the Exxon, BP, and Union Carbide spills?

WalterBright3• 5 years ago

Just pointing out that whenever a profit seeking company has a disaster, or pollutes, etc., it's blamed on profit seeking. As if something magical happens without profits. Just what does one blame government disasters on?

gregors• 5 years ago

I've been following this story for over a month now. What strikes me is that the state has been asking for the tanks to be drained for while now with the Navy pushing back saying it isn't necessary. I do think they have recently stated the tanks will be drained into a nearby stream.

Here's a local news station's story on it, that might shine a human picture on what's happening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvtbPAJ2hiQ

mistrial95• 5 years ago

wow - ten seconds in and there is a woman with cancer in bed crying.. If anyone has been close to that, it is really upsetting. I can't tell which is more extreme, a Navy that won't answer, or news drama with a closeup of a dying woman crying. Is this situation harder on the people subjected to this news, or the people whom it is trying to sway..

In my opinion, please know that what the dot-mil says in public may or may not have anything to do with their internal reasoning. The responsible parties internal discussion is shielded, and that leads to all sorts of results. There are hundreds of reasons, real or imagined, that might lead to "stalling" .. and don't forget, stalling is addictive, and accumulates!

warner252• 5 years ago

My family is one of those 3,000+ immersed in this event. It was surreal seeing it on the front page of HN earlier today. We haven't touched the water in our house for about six weeks now, spending lots of time going back and forth between our house and hotels and laundromats and fast food places for daily needs, while trying to figure out what to do next. We're discarding most of our kitchen items and appliances that touched the water, and trying to move elsewhere.

At first, I figured that this was no big deal. We've dealt with water quality issues before in various places, using bottled water or boiling for a couple days, or just running the water until there was no visible sediment. I realized that this was more serious when other residents started reporting symptoms consistent with things that my family had experienced over the preceding weeks and months. The symptoms were mysterious and generally low-level, the kind that you would mention to your spouse but then write-off, rather than taking a sick day to see a doctor until they persist for a month. So we know that we were exposed to something nasty that we couldn't see, taste, or smell until it reached some peak around Thanksgiving.

What's most disconcerting is that we really have no idea how long we were exposed, to what chemicals, and in what amounts. I don't think we'll ever know, since rigorous sampling and testing and monitoring didn't start until after the Navy facilities folks started drawing water from a different well and flushing the pipes. Furthermore, there has been a pattern of Navy officials telling a story that everything is fine, and being evasive about the details, and then revising the story and releasing not-so-fine details later as a result of public outcry. Repeat several times. I don't even know what the working version of the official story is at this point. The Navy, Army (which also has many affected residents), and Hawaii Department of Health have issued starkly different guidance, forcing the Environmental Protection Agency to step in and mediate.

I actually considered submitting something on this to HN a few weeks ago, hoping to get opinions on the situation from some disinterested experts that hang out here. How bad might this be for us? Does any version of the story make sense?

The financial costs to the government will be staggering. Affected residents are getting paid for months of hotels, meals, and incidentals. We're submitting claims for damaged property items. The Navy has acquired dozens of huge filtration devices and flown them here overnight along with contractors to do remediation and consultants to inject expertise. All of this was over Christmas and the peak tourist season in Hawaii, plus COVID supply chain issues, at the highest possible prices.

supperburg• 5 years ago

Literally moments before reading this I was debating about using tap water instead of running to the store for bottled water to take my pills in my hotel on the island that this article is about. I’m here on vacation. I drank the tap water with hesitation and was pleased to find that it didn’t taste weird at all. After probably about a liter of it I am feeling fine. I am available to do more experiments if anyone wants.

A fuel spill from the U.S. Navy poisons the water of thousands in Hawaiʻi

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