BWS Consultants: Thousands Of Navy Water Tests After The Red Fuel Leak Are Invalid

Navy personnel assist residents at Halsey Terrace Community Center with filling containers full of clean, usable water following the Red Hill fuel spill. Consultants hired by BWS say subsequent test results that the Navy relied on to say its water system was safe were invalid. (Cory Lum/Civil Beat/2021)

Residents who use the water system affected by that spill say the experts’ findings support their concerns that there’s still something in the water.

Two separate lab-testing consultants hired by the Honolulu Board of Water Supply are challenging the Navy’s assertion that the elevated levels of petroleum it detected in drinking water samples last year around Pearl Harbor were merely false positives.

Further, those outside experts say a full two years’ worth of water quality testing conducted by the Navy is invalid because it had failed to follow a key step laid out by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Navy collected those 8,000 or so water samples after the 2021 jet fuel leaks from its massive, underground tanks at Red Hill. The spill contaminated the military’s nearby water system used by more than 90,000 people to drink, bathe and clean.

“We all know what we’re seeing, tasting, living” regarding the water system.

Jamie Simic, Navy wife

The goal of that Navy testing, done in 2022 and 2023, was to ensure that the water had been fully flushed of the pollutants that caused debilitating health problems to many of those who used the military-run water system around Pearl Harbor. 

Throughout that testing period, Navy officials said their results proved the water system to be safe again even as residents there continued to report problems with their health and the condition of the water.

At Monday’s BWS meeting, board Chair Na’alehu Anthony asked Paul Winkler, a Colorado-based analytical laboratory consultant, whether the Navy’s 8,000 sample’s were valid.

“From a technically compliant position, I would say they are not,” Winkler said.

Two other consultants with Analytical Quality Associates, an environmental chemistry data firm, supported Winkler’s view when they presented their own, separate analysis at the meeting. 

For some Navy water users impacted by the contamination, the lab consultants’ testimony validated their ongoing concerns about the Navy water system and whether it’s safe to use – as well as their frustration over how the Navy has handled the aftermath of the Red Hill leak.

“It is very much validating,” said Jamie Simic, the wife of a senior chief petty officer in the Navy.  “We all know what we’re seeing, tasting, living” regarding the water system.

The Navy in April released a 434-page technical memorandum that concluded the elevated levels of total petroleum hydrocarbons, or TPHs, found in its samples from July to December to 2023 were actually caused by laboratory contamination.

“It didn’t make sense,” military spouse and veteran Lacey Quintero told the board Monday, because families relying on the water system continued to report skin burns, foul smells, migraine headaches and […]

Full article: www.civilbeat.org