Navy Groundwater Sampling Plan Is Insufficient, Hawaii Health Officials Say
The Navy’s third attempt at a plan did not include key steps that the state wants to see.
State health officials have rejected the Navy’s latest groundwater sampling plan to test for contamination in the aquifer at Red Hill, saying that the proposal still isn’t robust enough and doesn’t address the concerns they’ve previously aired.
The Navy’s third attempt at a so-called Consolidated Groundwater Sampling Plan was supposed to reduce the amount of water discharged into Halawa Stream for testing from 4.5 million gallons a day to 1.8 million gallons while still taking the proper steps to remain effective, according to the Department of Health.
The Navy, however, still isn’t including the proper steps in its plan, despite “multiple rounds of regulatory review,” the DOH said in a press release Tuesday.
“That鈥檚 why we are taking the unusual step to reject the Navy鈥檚 plan and impose conditions necessary to protect public health and our environment,” DOH Deputy Director for Environmental Health Kathleen Ho said in a statement Tuesday.
Those steps include more rigorous testing, providing testing data to DOH more quickly, and providing a plan for how the Navy would respond if it finds that plume contamination is migrating within the aquifer around Red Hill, according to the DOH.
The state health agency demanded in an April 22 letter that the Navy implement those steps this week while also reducing the water discharged to 1.8 million gallons a day to help conserve the water being lost in the testing process.
