Navy updates Red Hill closure plan; says monitoring shows no off‑site fuel migration

Rear Admiral Lester Ortiz, deputy commander of the Navy Closure Task Force Red Hill, and Navy technical staff briefed the Commission on Water Resource Management on March 24 about progress on decommissioning the Red Hill bulk fuel storage facility and related environmental cleanup.

The Navy described a four‑step cleaning process for tanks (degassing, interior inspection/sludge removal, pressure washing and regulatory verification). Capt. Rob Kleiman, decommissioning director, said 14 of the facility’s 20 tanks had held fuel when defueling began; 10 tanks are currently in a step of the cleaning process, tank 15 has been degassed and tank 12 began degassing last week. The Navy reported 390 gallons of sludge removed from eight tanks so far and described pressure‑washing and rinse‑capture systems designed to avoid introducing additional water to the aquifer.

"We took up 104,000,000 gallons of fuel from the facility," Kleiman said, adding that "99.9999% of the fuel is out" and that the small residual…