Chief Engineer Ernest News Today

The Honolulu City Council approved Wednesday the first reading of a bill that would give the city oversight of large underground storage tanks such as those at the Navy Red Hill facility. As HPR’s Scott Kim reports, the action comes as residents of military housing and elsewhere continue to struggle with contamination of their drinking water.

The U.S. Navy believes that a spill of JP-5 jet fuel that occurred at the Red Hill tank farm last mo...

Water from the Navy’s Red Hill shaft contains high levels of gasoline and diesel fuel hydrocarbons, the Hawaiʻi Department of Health confirmed, saying the results are consistent with odors detected at the sample sites.

The Navy said last week that it has detected petroleum in water from its Red Hill shaft. As a precaution, Oʻahu’s water authority shut down a shaft pulling from the same aquifer, HPR’s Jason Ubay reports. The water utility has reviewed data from the Navy’s monitor wells in the lower access tunnel and found that fuel has affected the aquifer.

The Conversation talks to Honolulu Board of Water Supply Manager and Chief Engineer Ernest "Ernie" Lau and Erwin Kawata, the water quality program administrator. They had just learned petroleum was detected in a Department of Health water sample from Red Hill Elementary.