Hawaii

Navy ‘urgently’ needs to fix new Hawaii water issues, lawmaker says

Published

2 years ago

February 7, 2024

Navy ‘urgently’ needs to fix new Hawaii water issues, lawmaker says

A Hawaii congresswoman is pressing for answers in the wake of new complaints about residents’ drinking water — a fuel sheen, strong odors, and a chemical taste — nearly two years after the Navy finished its massive effort to flush out and clean up 19,000 gallons of fuel that had leaked into their water supply at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

“Where is the possible contamination even coming from? The public deserves to know,” said Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, during a hearing for the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel on Wednesday. “Our service members and their families deserve to know that their water is safe and clean to drink. The Navy has a public health responsibility to urgently get to the bottom of this and make sure people know that the water that they drink, that they give to their families, is safe.”

Tokuda said the Hawaii Department of Health has received about 50 complaints over tap water and air quality from people using the Navy water system. In addition, water samples that were tested in the fall had trace amounts of diesel.

“While the chemical signatures don’t correspond with the jet fuel that was stored at [Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility], where we had 19,000 gallons emptied into our drinking water system, impacting service members, their families and civilians, it is disturbing that we’re talking about chemical traces in our drinking water, “she said.

“We’re concerned, too,” said Meredith Berger, assistant secretary of the Navy for installations, energy and environment. “Any time that we hear there is a report of something that is wrong, especially when it comes to water, we are taking action and responding.”

The Navy has put together a team of scientists and communications experts to research the problem, and to share the information with residents, said Berger, testifying before the panel. Navy officials have visited the homes or locations identified and gathered information from those individuals, provided bottled water and have tested the water, Berger said. “Significantly, we have seen that every indication is below the 266 [parts per billion of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons]” threshold for safe drinking water that the Hawaii Department of Health has set, she said.

However, she added, “there is something wrong, and we need to see what is causing people to report that they are having an impact.”

According to a Jan. 8 Navy press release, the results of tests of water samples ranged from nothing detected to 144 parts per billion for Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH). An analysis of each sample that showed Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons showed no signs of JP-5 jet fuel, officials said.

But Tokuda questioned the effects of even lower levels of TPH.

“We do not know what exposure to lower levels of TPH in our drinking water … what that could mean to both service members and their families, and to civilians that are being exposed through these water system leakages and whatnot,” she said.

“But at the end of the day,” continued Tokuda, “if there’s a sheen on your water, and a smell coming from it, would you pick up that glass and drink it?”

Meanwhile, a recent lawsuit filed alleging the Navy was negligent in its actions surrounding the fuel leaks in 2021 also alleges that there are ongoing problems with the water, citing reports from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2022 where traces of petroleum were found in three of four homes tested. In October 2023, the EPA investigators observed an oily sheen in the water and ongoing health symptoms, such as rashes, and called for inspections and sampling of water heaters and plumbing.

The lawsuit was filed Feb. 5 in federal court in Hawaii, with 2,212 military family members and civilians. Two other lawsuits were filed earlier with a total of 301 plaintiffs.

The lawsuit also cites data from the Navy’s continued testing of the water that showed continued detections of TPH in the Navy water system. According to Kristina Baehr, one of the attorneys representing families, more than 50% of the samples taken — 1,453 out of 3,045 in 2023 — detected TPH.

All told, more than 93,000 individuals were affected when their water was contaminated in 2021 by the jet fuel spill at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. There were 9,715 households in 19 different communities on the Navy water system of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam who were affected. They include residents of two Army communities and Air Force communities in the Hickam side. Some Hawaiian civilians were also affected, living in homes supplied by Navy water.

On Nov. 28, 2021, military families reported smelling fuel odors and seeing an oily film in their tap water. But some had reported mysterious abdominal pain, vomiting, memory loss, skin rashes, eye irritation, and teeth and gum issues even before the signs of fuel appeared. At first, Navy officials told residents it was okay to drink the water.

Since Dec. 3, 2021, the Hawaii Navy water system has been sourced only by the Waiawa Shaft. Water from the Waiawa Shaft, located 6.2 miles from Red Hill, is monitored to make sure it meets Hawaii Department of Health and Environmental Protection Agency standards for safe drinking water, according to the Navy.

The latest lawsuit highlights the experiences of eight families out of the 2,212 plaintiffs. Of those, 1,197 are filing medical negligence claims. The case is named for the Hughes family. Jaclyn Hughes gave birth to their third child in mid-November of 2021, and her Navy husband returned to Hawaii from Japan, where he was stationed, to be with the family.

But around Thanksgiving, their water had an oily sheen and smelled of gasoline. Their newborn son was covered in red rashes, and Jaclyn’s throat was sore and burned. Their middle child, 4 years old at the time, once with “a vivacious spirit, turned into a whirl of confusion and rage,” according to the lawsuit.

By February 2022, the child had become self-injurious and violent, clawing at her skin and pulling her hair out, according to the lawsuit. Costs piled up for the family, including costs of care and testing from out-of-network doctors. Plans to move to Japan to join her Navy husband became impossible, as the child’s new diagnoses, including level one autism spectrum disorder, made the family ineligible for orders outside the continental U.S. The husband was granted compassionate reassignment to return to Hawaii; and the family was reassigned for humanitarian reasons to California in 2023.

Now, the child has slowly stabilized, with support from an extensive care team, according to the lawsuit. “Despite this, the trauma experienced and fear of what the future holds has created suffering the family may never be able to escape,” the lawsuit alleges.

The Hughes family’s lawsuit, and two others allege that while the Navy has taken responsibility for the fuel leaks, they haven’t taken responsibility for failure to warn residents about the fuel release.

Meanwhile, the Navy is in the process of draining and shutting down the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. By November, the Navy had removed more than 104 million gallons of fuel, or 99.5% of the fuel previously stored there.

They have since removed about 25,000 gallons of residual fuel as the next step. The facility, which has been providing fuel to the military in the Pacific since World War II, had the capacity to hold 250 million gallons of fuel, but was at less than half the capacity.

Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book “A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families.” She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.

Source link

Click to comment

Hawaii

Hawaii’s JJ Mandaquit took roundabout route to reunite with Tommy Lloyd

Published

3 hours ago

July 12, 2026

Press Room

Hawaii’s JJ Mandaquit took roundabout route to reunite with Tommy Lloyd

Bruce Pascoe
| Arizona Daily Star

If point guard JJ Mandaquit’s job at Arizona next season looks tricky and challenging, having to glue together a lineup full of potential NBA draft picks under the pressure of playing for a returning Final Four team, it might be worth considering what his grandfather and father have been up to.

They’ve been running a roofing company … in Hilo, Hawaii. The rainiest city in the country, on the windward side of the Big Island. Where some 130 inches of rain hit buildings every year, creating slick working conditions, and where, even in drier moments, there’s high humidity and trade winds to deal with.

“I had to go on the roof a couple of times,” Mandaquit said, chuckling. “But not in the rain.”

He had other things to do. With his basketball skills overshadowing the local level of play since his elementary school years, Mandaquit left Hilo as a sixth-grader to begin a higher-level basketball journey that put him in Tucson this year.

His family came with him to Oahu, where he transferred to the Iolani School of Honolulu. His father, Jason Sr., commuted back and forth between Oahu and the Big Island while still roofing, though his mother was able to transfer from Hilo to Honolulu within her job at Hawaiian Electric.

Everyone thought that was the plan for a while.

“It was a better opportunity, better education and more opportunity,” Mandaquit said. “When we left from Big Island to Oahu, that was a huge move for my family, a lot of sacrifice that went into it. I’m super grateful to my parents. When we made that move in the sixth grade, we thought that was going to be the move, that it was just going to end there, I’d go to high school there.”

It still wasn’t enough. Mandaquit outgrew the basketball scene again. By ninth grade, he moved on to Real Salt Lake Academy, which turned into Utah Prep.

In Hawaii, he found players have also been kept from high-profile West Coast clubs because of a quirky club-ball residency rule in which players are typically allowed to play only for a club in their state or a bordering one — and Hawaii borders only an ocean. So Mandaquit said he and other locals started their own “Sons of Hawaii” club to play on the “MADE Hoops” circuit.

It still wasn’t enough. Utah was next.

“We felt it was best to get out of Hawaii and chase this dream,” Mandaquit said. “It wasn’t an easy choice to leave home, but we felt looking at the big picture, if I want to play at the high Division I level, we almost felt that it was a necessity to get out of the islands, surround myself with better competition, be somewhere that allows me to be more exposed.”

That move paid off. Mandaquit grew into a high-major prospect at Utah Prep and became a mainstay with USA Basketball junior teams. He won three gold medals at FIBA events: At the 2023 U16 AmeriCup, the 2024 U17 World Cup and, on a team led by UA coach Tommy Lloyd, the 2025 U19 World Cup.

Only a secondary recruiting target of Arizona’s before he committed to Washington in November 2024, Mandaquit jumped out at Lloyd while playing for USA Basketball last summer. Mandaquit averaged 6.1 points and 5.4 assists — with nearly a 4-to-1 assist-turnover ratio — while hitting 6 of 10 3-pointers over USA’s seven-game romp.

“I had only seen him play a few times before (last summer), but I was just so impressed with his character, but also his tenacity and the effort he played with. Just how he impacted winning,” Lloyd said. “So obviously, when we saw his name on the transfer portal, it piqued my interest right away.”

Lloyd said he considered Mandaquit out of high school, but the Wildcats were also pursuing Brayden Burries and had Jaden Bradley projected to stay through last season. Lloyd said he also took a cautious recruiting approach in 2025 because “you just didn’t know” how rev-share and NIL were going to work out, since 2025-26 was the first year schools could pay players.

So Mandaquit chose the Huskies over USC and Creighton. He started the Huskies’ first five games but wound up playing off the bench for most of his 22 appearances, averaging 5.2 points and 2.1 rebounds while shooting 28.2% from 3-point range.

Mandaquit struggled with a foot issue in the preseason and eventually missed the Huskies’ last 11 games because of it, though he has since had corrective surgery and returned to the court at Arizona.

“It was a great learning experience,” Mandaquit said of Washington. “I didn’t have the year that I wanted to have, but just going through that experience is gonna be huge for me and my future. I’ve got one year of college basketball under my belt, and the Big Ten was awesome last year.”

After he left Seattle, SI’s Huskies website wrote that UW coach Danny Sprinkle “has to be reeling by Mandaquit’s departure,” saying Mandaquit’s playing style “seemed to match Sprinkle’s hard-nosed personality.”

Instead, Mandaquit will be playing for the same coach he said he loved playing under last summer in Switzerland. Mandaquit joined a team that included former UA forward Koa Peat, incoming UA freshman Caleb Holt and No. 1 NBA Draft pick A.J. Dybantsa, among others.

They were all stars, forced together to play team ball during the world’s highest-profile junior tournament.

Gold was the expectation.

“What he was able to do with our group in such a short amount of time, I just loved,” Mandaquit said of Lloyd. It was “just the culture that he was able to build. Obviously, it’s not the easiest job as a coach to be able to manage all of the star players and egos that we had. It was just the way that he was able to get everyone to just buy in and focus on a common goal, and ultimately go and reach that goal.

“It was amazing. It was the most fun I ever had playing basketball.”

Despite their bond, Mandaquit said he couldn’t have a recruiting conversation with Lloyd until after he entered the portal this spring. But that might have been a formality anyway.

Both Lloyd and Mandaquit knew plenty about each other at that point.

“This time it was fast,” Lloyd said. “We both knew what we wanted on both sides.”

Lloyd needed a true point guard to join North Carolina transfer Derek Dixon and Holt in a reloaded backcourt that lost NBA Draft picks in Burries and Bradley.

Mandaquit wanted to be under Lloyd for more than a few weeks.

Official elapsed time between Mandaquit’s early April entry into the transfer portal and his commitment to Arizona: Ten days.

“When this opportunity came back around, I couldn’t pass it up,” Mandaquit said. “I knew this is the place that I wanted to be, and I knew I wanted to be coached by Tommy.”

During an interview at McKale Center last month, Mandaquit said he’s since arrived at Arizona to find high-character guys around him, and that coaches are pushing him the way he wants to be pushed.

“I’m loving it so far,” Mandaquit said.

As a bonus, Mandaquit’s first season with the Wildcats will also take him nearly full circle. Not to Hilo and the Big Island, but to the Maui Invitational, the prestigious early-season event that Mandaquit said he routinely watched on television even if the inter-island hop and high ticket prices kept him out of the Lahaina Civic Center to watch in person.

This time, he’ll be in the building — and soaking up the atmosphere outside it. His parents, now living back in Hilo, can make the easy flight over to watch, too.

It probably won’t rain much, if at all, Lahaina being on the leeward side of Maui and all.

But, for Mandaquit, it’s still home.

“Hawaii means everything to me,” Mandaquit said. “I try to get back there as much as possible, and I feel the support of the state behind me. I feel their love, so it pushes me to work harder.”

Source link

Hawaii

Puna man on probation accused of sex assault – West Hawaii Today

Published

13 hours ago

July 12, 2026

Press Room

Puna man on probation accused of sex assault – West Hawaii Today

A 32-year-old Pahoa man on probation for auto theft pleaded not guilty Thursday to sex assault charges.

Hilo Circuit Judge Peter Kubota maintained Brandon K.C. Sanchez’s bail at $108,000 and ordered him to return to court for further proceedings on Oct. 9.

A Hilo grand jury on Wednesday returned a five-count indictment charging Sanchez with second-degree sexual assault and four counts of fourth-degree sexual assault. He was also charged with five counts of violating probation.

According to court documents filed by police, the alleged offenses took place on the evening of June 15 and the victim was a 21-year-old woman.

The woman reportedly told police she had just met Sanchez when he was a customer at the Hilo fast-food restaurant where she worked. She agreed to hang out with him and allowed him to drive her car.

Sanchez drove to Honolii, and at one point told the woman he had recently gotten out of jail and wanted to have sex with her, which led to her telling him no multiple times, according to the documents.

Sanchez allegedly then asked if she’d kiss him, to which she assented under the condition that he stop the pressure to have sex.

On the way back to Hilo, Sanchez reportedly touched the woman’s breast and genitals through her clothing, put his mouth on her breast, and slipped a finger inside her genitals — all against her will.

Documents state that Sanchez admitted to police that he touched the woman’s breast through her clothing once, but denied all other allegations.

Second-degree sexual assault is a Class B felony offense that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment. Fourth-degree sexual assault is a misdemeanor that carries a potential one-year jail term.

Sanchez remains in custody at Hawaii Community Correctional Center in lieu of bail.

Email John Burnett at john.burnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.

Source link