'Swarm team' investigates increasing chemical detections in Pearl Harbor's drinking water - Hawaii News Now

'Swarm team' investigates increasing chemical detections in Pearl Harbor's drinking water

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Chris Waldron is an engineer who represents the Navy Marine Corps Force Health Protection Command. He’s part of a “swarm team” of more than 20 experts from across the U.S. to investigate the Navy’s drinking water. He was also probing the water during the 2021 Red Hill disaster where fuel leaked from the Navy’s Red Hill fuel tanks and sickened more than 6,000 people.

HNN Investigate asked how contaminated was the water in the various neighborhoods?

“The water based on the testing results in the neighborhoods had very low levels of TPH contamination. It wasn’t very contaminated at that time,” said Waldron.

Since 2022, the Navy has regularly tested the water from homes as part of long-term monitoring and has seen ‘low level detections of TPH periodically within the system’ even after the state’s health advisory was lifted.

“We’ve had low level detections in some percentage of houses,” said Waldron.

“The percentage has increased. Initially it was around 10 percent. It’s trickled up to 20 percent. In the latest round we’ve had upwards of about 60 percent,” he added.

“There is a level of concern there,” said Waldron.

A Navy map shows the trace detections in and around Pearl Harbor... but the Navy and its regulators continue to say the water meets federal and state safe drinking water standards.

“The water is safe and it’s protective,” said Waldron.

HNN Investigates asked is TPH, total petroleum hydrocarbons, fuel?

“It can be, It’s not one to one. We can have naturally occurring TPH hydrocarbons that is not fuel related,” said Waldron.

Waldron says he believes it’s not water heaters or fuel sticking to the pipes possibly causing the low level detections, but he says chlorine could be a clue.

“It’s pointing toward it’s the interaction of chlorine in these samples with the lab,” said Waldron.

Days after the fuel leaks, the Navy stopped using water from the Red Hill shaft and has since gotten water from Waiawa shaft which is 6 miles away.

“We’ve had a number of samples from Waiawa shaft. We’ve had 2 low level detections of TPH of all the samples we’ve collected,” said Waldron.

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply and its drinking water experts disagree with the Navy’s assessment.

Erwin Kawata, Board of Water Supply deputy manager and a chemist says total petroleum hydrocarbons is fuel.

“It it one of the major components of all types of fuel,” said Kawata.

He said TPH is not in BWS drinking water and it should never be there.

“It is not indigenous to the environment,” said Kawata.

“It is fuel, okay. Think about what happened in 2021,” he added.

The swarm team’s final report is expected to be completed in 2 to 3 weeks.

“There are no multiple lines of evidence to date to support the conclusion that the carbon in the samples, with detection in the diesel or oil range organics, were fuel based,” said the State Department of Health in a statement.

“The Navy reported that all of the chromatograms it reviewed exhibited patterns not consistent with either JP-5 or any other common fuel contaminants,” it added.

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