A grand jury has indicted two civilian workers on charges they caused the Navy to provide the Hawaii Department of Health with false information about jet fuel that spilled from a Pearl Harbor storage facility that later seeped into drinking water and sickened 6,000 people over Thanksgiving in 2021. The indictments are the first to result from the fuel spill that angered Hawaii residents, lawmakers, and military service members and their families, reports the AP. The military decided to close the aging World War II-era fuel tanks after the spill.
A Navy investigation in 2022 found shoddy management and human error caused the leak at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. The Defense Department's inspector general last year found Navy officials lacked sufficient understanding of the risks of maintaining massive fuel storage tanks on top of a Pearl Harbor drinking water well. The Navy issued written reprimands to three retired military officers for their roles. The indictment alleges John Floyd and Nelson Wu provided the Navy with inaccurate information about a May 2021 spill that occurred six months before the fuel got in the drinking water.
This caused the Navy to tell the department in the months after that 1,618 gallons leaked instead of 20,000 gallons and fail to report that it was unable to find 18,000 gallons, prosecutors say. The indictment alleges Floyd and Wu redacted data from records provided. Floyd and Wu were each indicted on one count of conspiracy and one count of making false statements. The Navy's investigation found fuel gushed from a ruptured pipe on May 6, 2021. Most of it flowed into a fire suppression drain system, where it sat unnoticed for six months until a cart rammed a sagging line and caused fuel to pour out. Crews believed they mopped up most of this fuel, but failed to get it all and some flowed into a drain and drinking water well that supplied water to 90,000 people at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
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Wayne Tanaka, the director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii, said culpability extended beyond the alleged actions of the two civilians. He said the Navy's own investigation showed officials knew some 20,000 gallons were unaccounted for after the May incident and yet it didn't inform the community or regulators. He said Navy leaders sidelined a whistleblower.
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