The final merchant tanker to receive fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility (RHBFSF), Yosemite Trader, departs Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. The tanker departed with approximately 5 million gallons of usable fuel from the RHBFSF to Subic Bay, Philippines. (John Linzmeier/U.S. Air Force)
(Tribune News Service) — The last tanker participating in the defueling of the Navy’s underground Red Hill facility sailed out of Pearl Harbor on Wednesday morning.
As rain fell, the Yosemite Trader sailed out to the Pacific bound for the Philippines — one of several locations the military has been using to redistribute the more than 104 million gallons of fuel that sat in tanks just 100 feet above a critical aquifer most of Honolulu relies on for drinking water.
The Pentagon established Joint Task Force Red Hill last year to drain the tanks and set the stage for the eventual closure of the facility as it faced increased scrutiny after fuel tainted the Navy’s Oahu water system, which serves 93,000 people, in November 2021. The tainted water affected service members, military families and civilians living in former military housing areas.
“From a professional level, my team and I are extremely proud that we’ve been able to remove over 104 million gallons of fuel from above the aquifer,“ said JTF-RH commander Vice Adm. John Wade. “From a personal level. Honestly, I’m relieved. Because you know, that fuel sitting above the aquifer was a threat to the community and the environment.”
But Wade said there’s still work to do. The facility still holds 64,000 gallons of “residual fuel“ that will require different techniques to remove. JTF-RH will remove 60,000 gallons of it, while the rest will be removed by a new Navy task force being formed to ultimately close the facility.
Wade explained that “there’s 4,000 gallons that are in areas you just cannot access without cutting into the pipe or literally lowering like a 500 pound valve and then getting out that fuel. And you can’t just do that quickly because you have to synchronize that activity with the cleaning of the tanks and the removal of the sludge. So it has to be a symphony of activity to ensure safety and that we don’t impact the environment.”
Wade said that JTF-RH will remove 60,000 gallons from mid-January through the end of March, during which it will be working with the closure task force “so they can learn our processes for safety, for security, and for continued engagement with the community.”
The closure task force also will be responsible for removing several thousand gallons of concentrated firefighting suppressant containing toxic “forever chemicals.” The firefighting system was disabled after a spill in December 2022 drew public outrage.
JTF-RH is currently waiting for approval from the state Department of Health for its plan to extract the residual fuel. In a statement, DOH said that it “continues to review the updated Joint Task Force-Red Hill (JTF-RH) proposed concept of operations that we received December 14, 2023, for the safe and expeditious removal of the 60,000 gallons of residual fuel in January. Our priority remains the safety of the people and environment of Hawaii.”
Wade formally took over JTF-RH in September 2022. At the time he said it was his first military assignment that didn’t have an official end date. Originally the projected end date was summer 2024, though Wade pledged he would actively look for ways to expedite the process.
The World War II-era Red Hill facility, which had been built underground to protect it from enemy attacks, had fallen into deep disrepair over the years — as had the series of pipelines that connected the tanks to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Despite years of insisting the facility was safe and critical to national security, Navy officials admitted in 2022 that it required extensive repairs and upgrades before the fuel could be removed to ensure there wouldn’t be further leaks or spills.
The defueling finally began in October. Early on during the process three gallons of fuel leaked, but military officials insisted it was contained and collected on the spot and that the process has been largely incident-free.
JTF-RH is made up of service members and civilians from across all the military branches that were pulled together for the defueling mission. As its mission enters its final phase, it is still unclear what’s next for Wade, who had been serving as director of operations for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command before being tapped to lead the defueling effort.
“We’re going to transition by the end of March, (but) I still owe an obligation to my team to ensure that they get back to their parent commands safely,“ said Wade. “You know, there are people from as far as Japan and Europe and Bahrain that are a part of this team. So I want to make sure they’re taken care of.”
The Yosemite Trader will be spending about three weeks at sea as it makes its way to the Philippines, where it will be delivering fuel to Subic Bay as part of a “distributed“ fueling strategy with stocks in several locations. That fuel is expected to support operations in the South China Sea, where tensions have been on the rise.
Wade said that in his opinion as the former director of operations for INDO PACOM “having a more distributed fuel inventory, makes us more agile and flexible to deter and ensure peace and stability. And then if required, better able to respond to a crisis.”
One third of all international shipping moves through the South China Sea, which China considers to be its exclusive sovereign territory over the objections of neighboring countries.
Beijing and Manila have been locked in a bitter dispute over maritime territorial and navigation rights. In 2016 an international court ruled in the Philippines’ favor and declared that China’s territorial claims had “no legal basis.” But the Chinese military has doubled down, building bases on disputed reefs and islands and frequently attacking Filipino fishermen and other maritime workers.
During a visit to Honolulu last month Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in a speech in Waikiki, “Unfortunately, I cannot report that the situation is improving. The situation has become more dire than it was before. The nearest reefs that the (Chinese military) have started to show interest in, in terms of slowly using these atolls and shoals for building bases ... are approaching closer and closer to the Philippine coastline. And the nearest one is now around 60 nautical miles from the nearest Philippine coast.”
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