HOW SERIOUS IS HONOLULU'S WATER PROBLEM?

The Omicron variant is causing record shattering new cases in the U.S. and Europe.  Nearly a year ago on January 11, we reached the record seven-day average of 252,00 daily cases.  Yesterday, it was 265,427. Tomorrow, more details.

However, the good news from Dr. Matthew Bai of Mount Sinai Queens in New York City:

The general trend that I’m seeing is, if you’re boosted and you get Covid, you really just at worst end up with bad cold symptoms. It’s not like before where you were coughing, couldn’t say sentences and were short of breath.

Further:

Dr. Joseph Varon, chief of critical care services and the Covid-19 unit at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center, said of the roughly 50 patients admitted to the hospital’s Covid unit in the last four weeks, 100 percent of them were unvaccinated.

The bottom line is that if you were vaccinated with a booster, and got infected, the ailment was minor.  If unvaccinated, the Omicron variant seems to be more effective in inducing pneumonia.  And, as the UK experienced their record peak caused by Omicron two weeks ago:

And last week, reports out of the United Kingdom found that people who were infected with omicron in November and December were about two-thirds less likely to be hospitalized, compared with the delta variant.

REALLY, A SIMPLE SOLUTION:  GET VACCINATED AND BOOSTED!

About the topic of the day, Honolulu has been relatively safe since I was born.  There was December 7 in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked.  My mother said she pointed to the smoke carrying me in her arms when I was 1-year old.  

From 1983 to 2018 the Pu'i'o'o Eruption regularly wafted considerable vog, natural air pollution, from the Big Island to Hawaii.  So bad I remained at home in air condition comfort.  Interestingly enough, I was golfing on the Volcano Golf Course on 3January1983 when the ground shook, we looked to our right, and not that far away we could see fountains of lava.  That was the beginning.

We have regular hurricanes that approach, but not one has come close to devastating my island, Oahu. Tsunamis have struck certain coastal areas, but nothing close to Waikiki, downtown or where I lived.  Earthquakes worry me a bit.  Just yesterday the Star Advertiser reported on the updated Seismic Hazard Model for the state:

• There is a 90% chance that Hawaii and Maui could experience damaging levels of shaking during the next century.
• Honolulu was in the 50% to 75% range.
• There were two large earthquakes on the south flank of Mauna Loa in 1868 of up to 8.1 magnitude.  There were 79 deaths from a tsunami and mudflow to the biggest one.
• The Kilauea south flank had a 7.2 earthquake in 1975.
• So looks like Honolulu should be relatively safe from any earthquakes in my few years to come.

While drinking water is not a normal danger to anyone in the U.S. not living in Flint, Michigan, and other similar areas, it has become a serious issue in Honolulu.  Water can be an interesting topic.  For example:

• Let's look at a 20-ounce bottle of water, which costs around $1.50, or $9.60 per gallon.
• Drinking water costs 0.004/gallon in the U.S.
• Do the math, and bottled water costs 2400 times more than tap water.
• 
  Well, I too made a calculation and found out that you can get from Amazon 40 bottles of 16.9 fluid ounce Kirkland Signature bottled water for $25.69.  This turned out to be 5.3 gallons, or $4.77/gallon.  Thus, compared to drinking water at $0.004/gallon, the factor is 1192.  However, the Board of Water Supply here charges closer to $0.005/gallon, so, make that 954.

In other words, by drinking the cheapest bottle water I can find, I am paying around a thousand times more than tap water...where I do detect a bit of chlorine. 

More:

• The bottled water market jumped past $200 billion annually, half in the U.S.
• According to this article, everything counted, bottled water costs 2000 times more than drinking water from the tap, whatever that means.
• The plastic bottles eat up 17 million barrels of oil/year.
• Less than a quarter of those bottles get recycled.
• Spring water means it needs to originate underground.
• Glacier  or mountain water can be anything.
• Bottle water may contain excess bacteria, benzene and arsenic.
• Filtered water means the water is run through a filter, any filter.  Tap water is also filtered.
• Purified water does go through a more stringent process, but there is no regulation.
• Enhanced water adds something like vitamins.
• Alkaline water has a higher pH than tap water.
• 100% pure does not mean devoid of impurities.
• One advantage of tap water is that you don't need to buy it and lug it home, which can strain your back.

All that analysis leads to the most serious problem facing Honolulu today, next to the pandemic.  Yesterday, the Star Advertiser reported that the Navy's Red Hill fuel facility was a ticking time bomb.  There is a fight going on where State authorities want the 20 fuel tanks which power military operations in the Pacific to be emptied and moved.  After all, they are above the aquifer that supplies water to Honolulu.   The U.S. Navy has been evasive and uncooperative, with empty words of concern. 

• 
  Perhaps as early as May 6, or maybe it was November 20, 19,000 gallons of fuel spilled from a fire suppression drain line from the Red Hill storage site.
• Later it was announced that only 14 of the 20 tanks had fuel, and some of them had not been inspected for up to 40 years.
• On December 8 Secretary of Navy Carlos Del Toro ordered the suspension of operations at this location.
• But on December 20, James Balocki, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, testified that this was not an emergency or crisis, and was unaware of people getting sick. 
• On December 23 the Navy confirmed that more than 5,000 reported illnesses, 3.000 families were displaced and 93,000 were told not to drink the water.

All this obfuscation and downright lying have been ongoing since World War II.  The Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility:

• Can store up to 250 million gallons of fuel.
• Each of the tanks can store 12.5 million gallons.
• They are 100 feet in diameter and 250 in height.
• The facility began to be built in 1940.
• 3900 worked every day to build tunnels and space for 20 tanks.
• The facility was still under construction when Japan attacked on December 7, 1941.
• The site was used to bury the dead from the attack.  Many were later identified and moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Punchbowl, meaning that graves must still remain there.
• In December 2013 into 2014 27,000 gallons of jet fuel leaked from tank #5.
• 
  The nearest drinking water shaft operated by the Navy was 3,000 feet away and provides water to military families.
• The Halawa shaft of the city is only one mile away.
• Groundwater showed 17 parts per billion contamination, well below the 100 parts per billion requirement.
• In December 2021 drinking water contamination was found after military families reported symptoms of nausea, diarrhea and intense headaches, foul-smelling tap water bearing an oily sheen.

The concern about this ticking time bomb is especially serious, for if fuel has been leaking away from the facility for almost 80 years, this will mean that at some point all the aquifers will in time become contaminated.  I taught Environmental Engineering at the University of Hawaii and told my students that all island systems have something called a Ghyben-Herzberg lens, a convex-shaped layer of fresh groundwater that floats above the denser seawater.  The aquifer of freshwater is recharged through precipitation that infiltrates the top layer of soil and cracks in the rock formation, percolating downward until it reached the freshwater zone.  I might add that sea level rise caused by global warming will also adversely affect the lens.

In other words, the real calamity about the Red Hill fuel storage tank matter is that jet fuel, which has had a long history of leaks, could have from a long time ago been permeating down to the freshwater lens.  If that were to happen, the entire water supply of Honolulu will forever become contaminated!  Crude oil can be removed in a water treatment process, but that will just add to the already troublesome situation, adding a burdensome cost.

Less than 8% of water used in the U.S. goes to the residential sector:

Surprising to learn that electricity production uses the most.  A small amount of petroleum in this water should not materially affect this use.  More needs to be learned about some contamination of irrigation water.  I did not realize that Hawaii uses the second-most amount of water/capita, with #1 being Utah:

The average person uses 100 gallons of water per day, one gallon to drink and 2.5 gallons for washing hands/face. brushing teeth, etc.  Personal consumption is not a major problem for most, as bottled water seems to be taking over anyway.  In a typical home:

• 30%  outdoor watering
• 19%  toilets
• 15%  washing machines
• 11%  faucets (including showering)
• 10% leaks

From the EPA:

Of course, if the worse happens, the city can desalinate water, but it might just as well pump contaminated water for most of home and industry use, with customers surviving on bottled water for drinking and cooking.  Depending on location, it can be cheaper to ship water from an available source than pay for desalination.  This is why the rich Middle East countries are contemplating using icebergs.  A few points:

• The average price of water in the USA costs $1.50/1000 gallons.  I think this is too low.  Maybe it includes ag water.
• So I went city by city across the USA and calculated costs from $0.003 to $0.014/gallon.
• Water in Honolulu costs around $5/1000 gallons, or $0.005/gallon.
• Desalination of seawater costs $1/cubic meter, or $0.004 cents/gallon.
• Desalination of brackish water costs $0.6/cubic meter, or $0.0022 cents/gallon.
• Transport costs a few cents/meter if only horizontally.
• A 100 meter vertical lift is about as costly as taking this water 100 km horizontally.

So it comes down to how dangerous will it be to shower and the possible spread of oil products when watering plants and lawns.  Here is a Nigerian study showing how petroleum can be a problem.  There, people have been drinking water as much as 1800 times higher in petroleum than U.S. drinking standards.  Petroleum contains benzene and other unsafe compounds.  In short, local people showed the same type of symptoms as the military families.  Other studies have shown long-term health effects like respiratory and skin disorders and cancer.

So how serious is Honolulu's water problem?  

• In a worst case scenario, no one should die.  
• In a short transition, a few will get ill, as has already occurred.  
• Bottled water sales will rise.  
• Honolulu will be tainted by reputation as a location with bad water, like Flint, Michigan.
• Waikiki might lose tourists, which will be a gain for other islands.  
• Home values might be compromised, plus people will leave and fewer will come here to live.  
• In short, not so serious.  
• We'll learn to live at a slightly higher cost of living and forever be pissed off with the Navy.  
• Still the best place on Planet Earth, while awaiting a possible serious hurricane, tsunami or earthquake, which has not been a problem in my 81 years here in on Oahu.

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