Rep. Case calls for Jones Act waiver for Red Hill defueling

Kevin Knodell, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser
·3 min read

Apr. 19—U.S. Rep. Ed Case is urging the Biden administration to grant Hawaii a Jones Act waiver to aid in the defueling of the Navy's underground Red Hill Fuel Storage Facility.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case is urging the Biden administration to grant Hawaii a Jones Act waiver to aid in the defueling of the Navy's underground Red Hill Fuel Storage Facility.

Case, D-Hawaii, wrote in a letter dated Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that "the current plan will require ten bulk petroleum tankers to ship the fuel from a pier at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-­Hickam to various points, ranging in distance from ten miles away at Kalaeloa to various replacement storage sites thousands of miles overseas ... Under existing law, these tanker movements for the simple transport of fuel ten miles from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam to Kalaeloa are subject to Jones Act requirements."

The Jones Act, a section of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires cargo shipped between U.S. ports to be transported on ships that are American-flagged, American-built, American-­owned and majority American-crewed. There are currently fewer than 100 Jones Act vessels in service.

Joint Task Force Red Hill, the military organization tasked with defueling the Red Hill facility, hopes to complete the defueling process by summer 2024.

The Department of Defense plans to move the 104 million gallons of fuel in the tanks around the Pacific region in a new "distributed " posture to support its operations. But even when the Pentagon announced in March 2022 that it would shutter Red Hill, officials admitted they weren't sure they had enough tankers available.

"As a practical matter, Jones Act ships are functionally unavailable for (the defueling ) timeframe and prohibitively expensive due to the very limited number of fuel tankers in the Jones Act fleet, which are fully committed elsewhere, " Case wrote. "It is critical to DoD and the people of Hawai 'i that an advance waiver from the Jones Act and government-­impelled cargo requirement be issued to provide DoD with the fullest possible range of options to contract internationally available fuel tanker transport on a predictable and cost-effective basis."

Red Hill has proved to be a political lightning rod, particularly since 2021, when fuel from the facility tainted the Navy's Oahu water system, which serves 93, 000 people, including both military and local families. The Honolulu Board of Water Supply and environmental groups like the Sierra Club have long warned that the facility, which sits just 100 feet above a key aquifer that most of Honolulu depends on for clean water, posed a threat to the environment and public health.

Since the 2021 leak, numerous details on just how badly the World War II-era fuel farm has aged have become public. These included badly corroded piping systems, shoddy work in its fire suppression system and a litany of other problems—many of which the Navy had documented extensively in internal documents well before jet fuel got into its Oahu water system.

JTF Red Hill is tasked in part with a series of repairs and upgrades to make the facility safe enough to move fuel out of. JTF Red Hill announced Monday that it had begun "dewatering " the Red Hill fuel tanks, a process that centers around separating water from fuel in the tanks to prevent corrosion.

"Because the Red Hill fuel tanks vent into the atmosphere, condensation accumulates, resulting in water sinking to the bottom of the tanks, " said a JTF Red Hill spokesperson. "The water is removed through the tank's bottom drain where it is constantly monitored through a sight glass so operators will know when the dewatering process is complete. This extensive preparatory work will help ensure the safe and expeditious defueling of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility."