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Welcome to The Executive Exchange, a premier podcast series for on-the-go senior executives. Each episode features short, impactful podcasts where industry leaders share key insights and experiences from the water industry.
[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange, 15 minute podcast, in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, inform, and educate other water sector leaders from around the globe .
[00:00:11] Piers Clark: My name is Piers Clark, and my guest today is Mr. Ernie Lau, Chief Engineer and Managing Director at Honolulu Board of Water Supply.
[00:00:21] Piers Clark: Ernie, it's wonderful to connect with you again.
[00:00:23] Ernie Lau: I am glad to be here Piers, aloha!
[00:00:26] Piers Clark: Now, we actually did a podcast with you six months ago. It was our special 50th podcast where you talked about the Red Hill spill disaster and this podcast is to have a bit of an update on what's happened with Red Hill, but also to talk about some of the other challenges that you are facing in Honolulu.
[00:00:44] Piers Clark: So, can we have a little bit of your background? Can you summarize in 30 seconds Ernie Lau's career to date?
[00:00:52] Ernie Lau: I've always been in public service. This year I'll make 47 years working for a government agency. I'm a civil engineer by training, went to the University of Hawaii here in Honolulu, Hawaii, and very privileged to take on this role as the manager and chief engineer of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply.
[00:01:10] Piers Clark: Excellent. Now, on our 50th episode, you talked about the Red Hill oil spill.
[00:01:14] Piers Clark: Ernie, for the benefit of listeners who didn't hear the previous episode, could you just summarize the situation at Red Hill please?
[00:01:23] Ernie Lau: The Red Hill fuel storage facility is a underground fuel storage facility built by the US Navy.
20 large tanks constructed in place, 250 feet high and a 100 feet in diameter, and each could hold 12.5 million gallons of fuel.
[00:01:41] Ernie Lau: They're vertically oriented. The bottoms of the tanks are only about a 100 feet above the top of the sole source drinking water aquifer.
[00:01:50] Ernie Lau: It was built during the time of preparation for war and put into operation 1943.
[00:01:56] Piers Clark: And there were two incidents where you had contamination of the water supply?
[00:02:01] Ernie Lau: The first spill that I became aware of was back in January of 2014. That was a spill around 27,000 gallons of jet fuel.
[00:02:09] Ernie Lau: Fast forward to 2021, there's another spill of about 19 to 20,000 gallons of jet fuel also. And in this case it actually contaminated their drinking water source called Red Hill Shaft, which is actually built in place with the rest of the fuel facility.
[00:02:28] Ernie Lau: So, the spill that occurred in November of 2021, was right above their drinking water source for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. It eventually, very quickly probably within a few weeks or even days, seeped down through the porous volcanic rock, got into their drinking water source which taps the aquifer and it was pumped into their water system - a system that they operate that serves nearly a hundred thousand people.
[00:02:55] Ernie Lau: And they basically were exposed directly on base with jet fuel contaminated drinking water. They bathed in it, they cooked with it, they were made sick by it. Unfortunately, it's a very sad situation where the Navy service personnel and also their families were exposed directly with fuel contaminated drinking water.
[00:03:18] Piers Clark: Do I hear you correctly there, the population affected by this was a hundred thousand. So it's not just a small community, this is a big part of the Honolulu community?
[00:03:27] Ernie Lau: I would say this is maybe around 10% of the population of the island. The Navy's water system is separate from the Board of Water Supply System, fortunately. But a hundred thousand people is the equivalent of the population of Flint, Michigan, where you heard in the past about the lead contaminated drinking water.
[00:03:47] Ernie Lau: I am very grateful the Navy and the Secretary of Defense at the time, Lloyd Austin Jr., made the decision to shut down this fuel facility which had been in operation for over 80 years.
[00:04:00] Ernie Lau: And they defueled or remove the fuel. They actually, in that defueling, took out 114 million gallons of fuel. And right now they're in process of cleaning all the tanks that contain residual fuel and sludge, and removing about 10 miles of steel pipe that carried fuel to and from this facility, which is about three miles inland from Pearl Harbor, from the dock where the ships would come up, unload and load up with fuel.
[00:04:29] Piers Clark: And do you think this is going to solve the problem? Do you feel reassured these actions mean that this won't repeat?
[00:04:36] Ernie Lau: Hopefully it won't repeat and I would feel much more comfortable if they filled all these 20 tanks with concrete. And that would make it even more difficult to try to restore the facility. And by removing 114 million gallons of fuel out of the facility, they took away the largest threat of having all that fuel exists in World War 2 vintage tanks with quarter inch steel plate liners that were corroding. Have that sit right above our drinking water resource, the underground aquifer.
[00:05:05] Ernie Lau: But that now becomes the more difficult part of actually locating where past spills may have occurred over this 80 year history, and how to clean that up in the aquifer and maybe in the volcanic rock, just above the aquifer, because remember it could act like a sponge, and hold releases of past contaminants from this facility.
[00:05:28] Ernie Lau: One estimate is maybe at least a million up to a 2 million gallons of fuel might have been released and that's only what little we know about this facility. There's probably a lot of information that we have not been given access to that might make the problem even worse.
[00:05:45] Piers Clark: Yeah. Well, you didn't know that Red Hill existed.
[00:05:48] Ernie Lau: Yeah . It was declassified, I think in 1995. So, up to then it was basically a very secret facility not made available to the public.
[00:05:58] Piers Clark: Now, I want to move on to some of the other challenges and opportunities that you face in Honolulu. But before we do, is there a figure that is bandied around as to how much this has cost and who bears that cost?
[00:06:09] Ernie Lau: Right now it's our federal government. So, ultimately it's taxpayers across the US are paying for this through their taxes. But, at the time they were called the Department of Defense, now they're the Department of War, the one estimate is that perhaps up to $2 billion has been spent and will be spent on this facility to address the contamination event.
[00:06:31] Ernie Lau: They are planning right now to install treatment systems, water treatment systems for two of their sources: their Red Hill Shaft, which is the one that contaminated the whole base' drinking water system, and also the Navy Aiea/Halawa Shaft. And the estimated cost, I think for the Red Hill shaft alone for petroleum and for PFAS is around $505 million for that water treatment system.
[00:06:56] Ernie Lau: I really insisted that they test for PFAS after they spilled PFAS concentrate liquid one year after the 2021 event at the Red Hill facility.
[00:07:07] Piers Clark: Wow. And sorry, the PFAS spill was a separate incident that happened 12 months after the Red Hill spill?
[00:07:14] Ernie Lau: Yeah, so the first petroleum release that contaminated their water system occurred in November of 2021. And about one year later, the following November of 2022, this being an underground fuel storage facility, they had a AFFF or Aqueous Film Forming Foam system to fight petroleum fires. That AFFF system contained PFAS in it.
[00:07:39] Ernie Lau: They spilled 1,300 gallons of the concentrate liquid that would've made tens of thousands of gallons of AFFF, spilled right near the entrance of one of the tunnels that get into the facility and was released into the environment. And that 1300 gallons has not been recovered.
[00:07:58] Ernie Lau: I remember writing a letter to the Secretary of Defense, asking them to test for PFAS at all their monitor well locations or their test well locations at the Red Hill facility. They've started that effort and unfortunately they're finding PFAS contamination not only near that tunnel entrance where the spill of AFFF concentrate occurred, but they're finding it around the tunnel entrance to get to the Red Hill shaft area. They're finding different locations on their property and off their property.
[00:08:29] Ernie Lau: Petroleum was our initial concern and now it's also forever chemicals from this facility.
[00:08:36] Piers Clark: This is heartbreaking. I'm 11 hours time distance from you in London and many people around the world look to Hawaii and think of it as a paradise. And your paradise is being polluted and destroyed. It must be heartbreaking for you.
[00:08:53] Ernie Lau: You know, Piers, when the AFFF concentrate liquid spill occurred, I got a call from one of the Navy's admirals, and I appreciated that person calling me. He was even outta state, but he called me to alert me of that spill.
[00:09:06] Ernie Lau: I'll tell you that night I couldn't sleep. And early in the morning, from my home , which is miles away from the Red Hill facility, I could almost hear a woman weeping, coming from the Red Hill area. Crying over the damage, the hurt, that had been inflicted upon the freshwater resources of the area.
[00:09:25] Ernie Lau: In Hawaii, freshwater resources are very important to our native Hawaiian people, our Kānaka Maoli. It is culturally important and it's part of their belief system.
[00:09:36] Ernie Lau: "Wai" in Hawaiian is the word for water. "Waiwai" is the word for wealth or abundance in Hawaiian. So, you can see the importance of freshwater resources, especially when you live on an island in the middle of the ocean, a salty ocean.
[00:09:52] Piers Clark: Just to be clear, no one who is claiming that this isn't their responsibility - the people who made these spills are holding their hands up and moving forward, that at least is something to cling to, I assume?
[00:10:05] Ernie Lau: That is correct. You know, they are still subject to the regulations of the federal government, the USCP, a Environmental Protection Agency, and our own Hawaii State Department of Health.
[00:10:16] Ernie Lau: I just would like the regulators to hold the Navy's feet closer to the fire so that they are aggressive about the remediation of the problems they've created from this facility.
There is a real, I think, need for greater transparency on what has happened at the Red Hill facility, what kind of releases have occurred of not only fuel, but maybe other substances, like, for example, AFFF or other types of materials that could have contained forever chemicals in it. There's a need for greater transparency with our community.
[00:10:51] Ernie Lau: We are in a intergenerational effort here. This is not gonna end with my generation but it'll go on to the generations that come because these resources, these freshwater resources that have been damaged are, what we call in Hawaii, "Public Trust Resources". They don't belong to any individual, private company or even a federal entity like the Department of War.
[00:11:16] Ernie Lau: They belong to the people of Hawaii and they're held in trust to be protected and preserved for the benefit of the people of Hawaii, and that's in our state constitution.
[00:11:27] Piers Clark: Excellent. Ernie, we always finish by asking people a personal question. You might remember last time I asked you the question , if you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
[00:11:38] Piers Clark: And I was listening to it and I'll quote you here, you said, "If I could go back to my younger self, I'd tell myself to hang in there, don't get discouraged, protect the water resources." And this was the key bit you said "protect the water resources with your life". And I remember listening to that and a quiver went down my spine as I heard you say that.
[00:12:00] Piers Clark: We are running out of time now and I'd like you to go forward. I'd like you to go forward to two generations time and what advice would you hope to be giving the people working in the water sector then?
[00:12:11] Ernie Lau: Learn from history. Learn from this Red Hill experience as an example of how fragile our freshwater resources are for our island community, and how diligent we all need to be to protect and preserve these resources. So, be strong and of good courage.
[00:12:31] Ernie Lau: Do not get frustrated and give up because you make decisions not only for the generation that you see around us in our community today, but the generations that are still to be born and still to come. These resources are gonna be as valuable as gold for their future generations.
[00:12:50] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Ernie Lau, Chief Engineer at the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, and we've been talking about not just the Red Hill spillage, but a number of other catastrophic spills that have been affecting the water supply on that paradise island of Hawaii.
[00:13:12] Piers Clark: Thank you to our sponsors, and until next time, keep asking questions, keep sharing and keep safe.