The potential threat to Honolulu's water supply lurking underground

60 Minutes Overtime we live on an island we have limited freshwater resources we need to take care of those resources if they're contaminated by a facility like Red Hill we all suffer the consequence of that this week on 60 Minutes we report on an environmental and Public Health crisis at Hawaii's Pearl Harbor for decades there an underground facility called Red Hill stored millions of gallons of fuel for the US military in November 2021 a pipe cracked leaking thousands of gallons of jet fuel into the drinking water on the base at Pearl Harbor the tanks at Red Hill have the capacity to store 250 million gallons of jet fuel and Marine Diesel now empty those tanks were built into porest volcanic rock and no one knows if the jet fuel may still be trapped within that rock that's a potential problem not just for pearl Harbor but also for neighboring Honolulu whose primary water supply is 100 ft below the Navy complex I was in front of a hearing of multiple Committees of our state legislature and I believe I use the phrase this facility was a disaster waiting to happen Ernie Lao is the engineer in charge of honolulu's water system he worries that dozens of past leaks at Red Hill including a 27,000 gallon leak in 2014 could contaminate the water supply of the Honolulu metropolitan area in years to come putting a million people at risk what was it about the facility that concerned you just a sheer volume of fuel right over a drinking water aquafer the bottoms of these tanks only 100 ft above the water table of that aquifer or the top of the aquifer and how might the geology play a role and how the fuel kind of spilled and moved around just imagine this mountain having these Lava Tubes these fractures this uh uh areas between lava flows that allow uh fuel or water to move in different directions very complicated the Navy wants everybody to think that fuel leaking out of the Red Hill fuel storage facility would flow from the mountains toward the ocean or toward Pearl Harbor and not flow across the valley toward our wells with the underground aquafer but we don't believe that that is true and there's no actual evidence yet that doesn't rule out that flow across the valley toward our wells on the other side of the valley what do we know about the potential impact or effects of ingesting jet fuel you know that's something that is not regulated by the uscpa there's no drinking water standard for fuel and fuel is a mixture of different chemicals the other thing that is in this fuel or was in this fuel at the time of the leaks were probably additives that the military adds to the fuel to keep the fuel from freezing when it gets cold uh so it stays in a liquid form and can be used in their jet fighters or jet aircraft right now there's no evidence leaked jet fuel has gone into honolulu's water supply but as a precaution the city shuttered the well closest to Red Hill now Honolulu is asking for $1.2 billion from the federal government to replace it on the islands of Hawaii fresh water is considered precious a native Hawaiian is called VI and the word for wealth is Viv or water water now after everything that's happened at Red Hill Ernie Lao wants the US Navy to protect his City's most important natural resource earning trust is more than words it's more than rhetoric you approve and you earn trust by your actions so for the Navy to build trusts they have to demonstrate it by action they need to locate where fuel is at not just Monitor and test for contamination but also actively try to clean it up to try to remove some of it uh from the environment or all of it why because if not this is the Legacy we leave beyond my lifetime for generations to come because this fuel is not going to disappear magically this is deep underground and it's in the cracks and crevices of this Paris lava rock but it's going to reside there for a long long time

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 104,628

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, navy, honolulu, pearl harbor

Id: CE929JgQxYg

Length: 4min 48sec (288 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024