Qualla: Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility

Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility: Introduction

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Mawhinney, CC BY-SA 2.5. There is nothing to see from above. No smokestacks, no tank farms, no visible infrastructure at all. Beneath a volcanic ridge near Honolulu, twenty steel-lined tanks encased in concrete sit inside cavities mined out of basalt rock, each one 100 feet in diameter and 250 feet tall, collectively holding up to 250 million gallons of military fuel. The Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility was built to be invisible to enemy bombers. Eighty years later, it became visible for an entirely different reason: the fuel it was built to protect began leaking into the drinking water of the families it was built to defend.

Image: Derek Mawhinney | CC BY-SA 2.5

Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility: An Engineering Marvel Born of Fear

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. Before Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Roosevelt Administration was already worried about the vulnerability of the harbor's above-ground fuel storage tanks. In 1940, the decision was made to build something unprecedented: an underground fuel depot that could survive aerial bombard...

Image: USN | Public domain

Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility: Decades of Quiet Leaking

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. By the late 1990s, Navy and state health officials knew that fuel constituents were appearing in the groundwater around Red Hill. Thousands of pages of reports documented the contamination. Yet officials from Honolulu's Board of Water Supply -- the agency responsible for the city...

Image: USN | Public domain

Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility: The Water Crisis of 2021

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. On November 20, 2021, another jet fuel leak contaminated the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam water system, which supplies approximately 10,000 civilian and military households and schools. Residents reported foul-smelling tap water with an oily sheen. Symptoms followed: nausea, di...

Image: USN | Public domain

Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility: Closure

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. On March 7, 2022, the Department of Defense announced that Red Hill would be closed. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated plainly: "Defueling and closing Red Hill is the right thing to do -- for our service members, our families, the people of Hawaii, the environment, and our...

Image: USN | Public domain