The Defense Department subsequent month will start draining a storage facility close to Pearl Harbor that had leaked gasoline into Hawaii’s consuming water, Pentagon officers stated Tuesday.

The remaining gasoline on the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility shall be repositioned all through the Indo-Pacific area when the draining begins Oct. 16, officers stated.

“The Defense Logistics Agency has taken actions to reposition fuel within the theater, where it can better support [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] fuel requirements,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, instructed Pentagon reporters on Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the closure of Red Hill in March 2022 following a November 2021 leak that prompted gasoline to seep into Hawaii’s water provide.

The 20 steel-lined gasoline tanks that make up Red Hill can retailer as much as 250 million gallons of gasoline. They are related to pipelines that run 2.5 miles via a tunnel to fueling piers on the Pearl Harbor naval base.

The Navy has been storing gasoline inside caverns dug out of Red Hill since World War II. Japan didn't knock out the navy’s gasoline provide in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, largely as a result of it was so effectively protected.

But the Defense Department’s opinion of the ability modified in 2021 after a spill launched greater than 19,000 gallons of JP-5 jet gasoline into the native water provide.

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