A massive U.S. government fuel storage facility, hidden inside a mountain ridge overlooking Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, has been supplying fuel to military ships and planes crisscrossing the Pacific Ocean since World War II. The Hawaiian government is ordering the draining of the fuel tanks. Now, the military is dealing with a public health crisis with a fuel leak into well-water.
“Frankly, it’s been a nightmare and a disaster. A total disaster,” said U.S. Rep. Kaiali’i Kahele.
The facility’s existence was kept hidden for years. Even after it was declassified, few people knew about it until late last year, when a jet fuel leak occurred poisoning well-water and made its way into tap water and sickened thousands of military personnel.
According to Yahoo News, attorneys for the United States Navy filed an appeal on February 2 against Hawaii’s order to drain massive fuel tanks in the hills above Pearl Harbor, claiming that the state erred in concluding that the tanks posed an imminent threat requiring immediate action. A complaint filed in Honolulu’s U.S. District Court requests that the order be overturned.
According to the motion, the Navy hopes to resolve its differences with Hawaii through negotiation, but it filed a complaint anyway due to time constraints imposed by Hawaii law. According to the filing, the Navy’s lawyers filed a similar motion in state court if a federal judge refuses to act on its complaint.
According to one U.S. lawmaker, the Navy is now scrambling to contain a “crisis of astronomical proportions,” the Associated Press reports. Despite the Navy’s claim that the tanks are necessary for national security, people across Hawaii are pushing to decommission the tanks.
Military medical teams examined more than 5,900 people who had the symptoms of nausea, headaches, and rashes. About 4,000 military families have been relocated to hotels, and water treatment systems have been flown in from the mainland of the United States. The Navy spent more than $250 million in the first six weeks of the water crisis to address the public health situation.