HSTA’s forum exposes severity of negative effects on schools, families
Posted: January 25, 2022
Hickam Elementary teacher Michele Sasaki says her kindergarten students are showing up to school in their pajamas, without having had breakfast, and begging for extra snacks. They’re frequently late, have meltdowns in class, and worry about their pets, she notes.
Sasaki and other educators from seven Hawaii public schools affected by contaminated water from the U.S. Navy’s Red Hill fuel tanks spoke at an HSTA virtual forum Monday night to share their experiences. The event also included presentations from the Board of Water Supply and Sierra Club of Hawaii.
At the forum, teachers explained some of the dire realities they and their students face on a day-to-day basis.
Sasaki said when the news broke about the water contamination, no one told her school, so they collectively decided to err on the side of caution and not use the water.
“We need to be safe for our students and families and our teachers,” Sasaki said, adding the school had to spend its own money to rush out to Costco and purchase water, hand sanitizer, and baby wipes.
“That’s what we were running on for weeks, you know, in the middle of COVID. Aren’t you supposed to be washing your hands with soap and water?” she asked.
She also said families and students are “left to guess, ‘Is it safe enough to wash my clothes or not?’” contributing to added stress at home.
Leilani Ngumezi, a sixth-grade teacher at Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary, expressed concern about the sustainability of their efforts to provide students fresh water to wash their hands. Once their three-to-five gallon jugs run out, she has to unscrew and empty smaller water bottles and dump them into the jugs as fast as she can.
Displaced families staying in Waikiki have limited access to laundry facilities and resources to get school work done, educators said.
“They can’t do laundry like they were,” Ngumezi said. “We also canceled our uniforms in order for the students to be able to just be at school. I swear one of them was in pajamas. I did not say a word, because I was just happy she was there.
“We have students who are late, but again, we are happy they are there,” Ngumezi said. “We have had a lot of absences, because either one of the kids was sick from stomach pains, things like that, that they’re attributing to the water.”
Ngumezi said students are having a hard time getting their work done as they can’t take their home computer to the hotel. She also said students are unable to concentrate due to a lack of privacy in the hotels.
“They don’t have that privacy that they are used to at their own house,” Ngumezi said.
A call to defuel and close the tanks
HSTA President Osa Tui, Jr. once again called for the defueling and decommissioning of the tanks at Red Hill.
“When this fuel affects our entire water supply, what are we going to do?” Tui said. “There’s not going to be hotels for the entire island to run to in order to get what we need.
“This is about making sure that our keiki have some normalcy and making sure that our keiki have a future here on Oahu and in Hawaii. If this fuel gets into our water stream, this is going to affect all of us severely,” he continued.
Recently, HSTA’s Board of Directors unanimously approved a proposal calling on the U.S. Navy to empty its Red Hill fuel tanks and close them indefinitely.
Board of Education Chair Catherine Payne, who attended Monday’s forum, asked if it would be safe to defuel the aging tanks.
Wayne Tanaka, chapter director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii, said that without a safety assessment, defueling the tanks immediately could potentially lead to further contamination. However, the possibility of 180 million gallons of fuel entering Oahu’s drinking water is far more grave.
“We want to make sure that the Navy complies in good faith or as best as it can to expeditiously do its assessment, come up with a work plan for any corrective actions necessary to safely defuel and then defuel as expeditiously as possible,” Tanaka said.
Board of Water Supply Information Officer Kathleen Pahinui confirmed Tanaka’s recommendation, saying that the tanks can be defueled one third at a time, starting with the oldest ones first.
“I do believe it can be done,” Pahinui said. “This is an active fuel tank. They are using that fuel constantly. They’re always refueling and fuel’s going in and out on a regular basis… There are immediate mitigation measures that could be done, and it needs to be planned well, but… I think it can be done safely and effectively.”
Pahinui said that the only way to prevent water contamination to the rest of the island is to completely remove the tanks. She added that the Navy has identified at least two locations on Joint Base Pearl Harbor where they could construct above-ground tanks over the caprock with a double wall lining that would be, “extremely safe, and we would not have to worry about our freshwater resources being contaminated.”
BOE Chair Payne did not confirm whether an action item on the Red Hill water contamination will be placed on the board’s February agenda. However, Payne said she hopes her information gathering “will help us (BOE members) make some determinations of what we can do to support what’s already been stated by the governor, the Department of Health, and others in leadership in this community.”
The Navy has until Feb. 2 to submit a plan to the Hawaii State Department of Health that details fixes that need to be completed to safely drain the tanks. After the DOH approves that plan, the Navy must make necessary repairs and defuel the tanks within 30 days.