The Honolulu Board of Water Supply's top official expressed concern Wednesday that the Navy might try to revive its underground Red Hill storage tanks at some point in the future for fuel use, despite the Department of Defense's assurances to the contrary.
The Navy is planning to conduct extensive repairs to the pipelines in preparation for defueling the facility at an estimated cost of $280 million. After thoroughly cleaning the pipelines and tanks, the Navy said last week that it hopes to keep the tanks in place as part of its plans for closing the facility and potentially find another nonfuel use for them, such as turning Red Hill into a hydroelectric facility.
But the Navy's “closure in place” plan, one of several that is being evaluated, is causing unease.
Ernie Lau, manager and chief engineer of the Board of Water Supply, said that the chance of using Red Hill again for fuel storage should be completely eliminated.
“If there is a beneficial non-fuel reuse that goes on for a while (and ) at some point in the future there is a need for fuel storage, then could the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility be resurrected from the dead ?” he said during a Wednesday meeting of the Red Hill Fuel Tank Advisory Committee.
“If the tank liners are still there, the pipes that move fuel to and from Pearl Harbor, if everything is still there in place, we are only one degree of freedom from getting back to fuel storage…
