Pentagon announces permanent closure of Red Hill fuel facility in Hawaii

A fuel tank at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility is shown in an undated photo supplied by the Hawaii Department of Health.

March 7 (UPI) -- The Pentagon announced Monday it will permanently close the 250 million-gallon Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Hawaii after a jet fuel leak last year forced thousands to evacuate.

"After close consultation with senior civilian and military leaders, I have decided to defuel and permanently close the Red Hill bulk fuel storage facility in Hawaii," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement, adding, "This is the right thing to do."

Mammoth, centrally-located bulk fuel storage facilities like Red Hill "likely made sense in 1943, when [it] was built," but make "a lot less sense now," he said.

Because U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific are now so widely distributed and the technology to refuel them on the go has advanced, the need for the Red Hill facility has diminished.

"To a large degree, we already avail ourselves of dispersed fueling at sea and ashore, permanent and rotational," the Pentagon chief said. "We will now expand and accelerate that strategic distribution."

Under the plans, the Navy and the Defense Logistics Agency will defuel the facility, with an action plan to be delivered by no later than May 31 and defueling to commence "as soon as practicable." The target for completion is within 12 months.

In connection with the permanent closure of Red Hill, the Secretary of the Navy has been instructed to plan and budget "for all necessary corrective action" for any prior releases from the facility, the Pentagon said.

The Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility is unlike any other in the United States, consisting of 20 steel-lined tanks, each with a capacity of 12.5 million gallons. It was built during World War II into cavities mined about 2.5 miles east of Pearl Harbor.

The tanks are connected to three pipelines running through a tunnel to fueling piers at the naval facility. Eighteen of the tanks are currently operational, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Each of the 20 tanks at Red Hill measures 100 feet in diameter and is 250 feet in height, with the cavity built under approximately 100 feet of rock.

It has been plagued by leaks in recent years.

In January 2014 the Navy reported an estimated fuel release of up to 27,000 gallons of JP-8 jet fuel from one of the tanks during refilling.

Another fuel leak in November required the relocation of more than 4,000 families after they were left without safe drinking water. Red Hill was temporarily closed after that incident, which came shortly after the Hawaii Department of Health had cited the Navy for violations related to the operation and maintenance of the Red Hill facility.

The state agency ordered that the tanks be emptied. The Navy could have appealed the order, but Rear Adm. Blake Converse, deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told a congressional hearing in January the order would be carried out.