A Hawaii military family avoids tap water at home. They are among those prosecuting the 2021 jet fuel spill

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii – Richelle Dietz, mother of two and wife of a U.S. Navy petty officer, always thinks about water.

The family, who lives in Honolulu, spends more than $120 a month on jugs of bottled water for drinking, cooking and cleaning, as well as filters for showers and sinks. Every night, the children, ages 13 and 5, take glasses of bottled water upstairs to the bathrooms to brush their teeth.

“I hope one day I won’t be able to think about water all the time,” Dietz said. “But now it’s a constant.”

That vigilance is aimed at preventing more vomiting, diarrhea, rashes and other illnesses, which they said they began experiencing in 2021, when jet fuel leaked into the Navy’s water system serving 93,000 people on and around the Pearl Harbor base. He sickened thousands of people in military housing, including, says Dietz, his own family.

She is one of 17 relatives of U.S. military personnel who are suing the United States over leaking World War II storage tanks. She said her entire family — including her dog Rocket — continues to suffer from health problems associated with the contaminated water. Her husband declined to be interviewed by the Associated Press because he fears retaliation from the Navy.

The 17 are considered “nominee” plaintiffs, representing more than 7,500 other civilian and military family members in three federal lawsuits. The outcome of the trial, which begins Monday, will help determine the success of the other cases and the damages that may be awarded.

Kristina Baehr, one of his lawyers, said she already considers it a success because the U.S. government admitted responsibility.

U.S. Justice Department lawyers wrote in court documents that the government admits the Nov. 20, 2021, spill at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility “caused a nuisance” to the plaintiffs, which the United States “ breached their duty of care” and that the plaintiffs suffered compensable injuries.

But they dispute that the plaintiffs were exposed to jet fuel at levels high enough to cause their alleged health problems. The persistent problems the plaintiffs say they are battling include seizures, memory loss, anxiety, eczema and asthma.

When the Dietz family arrived in Hawaii in February 2021, “we thought we were moving to heaven on earth,” Dietz wrote in an affidavit filed in the case.

But around Thanksgiving — right after the spill — they couldn’t understand the stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea. Other families in the neighborhood also got sick. Then they developed rashes.

“My throat is burning. I feel like I just drank gasoline,” Dietz remembers telling her husband on Nov. 27.

The next night, his Facebook timeline was full of neighbors complaining about the smell of fuel in the water. The Dietzes ran to the taps and also smelled fuel. They noticed that the tap water also had an oily sheen.

Lawyers representing the families say the trial will show that Navy officials failed to warn residents after learning about the fuel in the water, and even claimed that employees were drinking the water.

Navy representatives and government attorneys did not respond to an email seeking comment on the lawsuit.

Fuel storage tanks have been a flashpoint in Hawaii, with Native Hawaiians and other residents raising concerns over the past decade about leaks threatening the overall water supply. The tanks sit above an aquifer that supplies water to 400,000 people in urban Honolulu.

At first, the Navy said it had not determined how the oil got into the water, but its own investigation ultimately attributed the cause to a cascading series of errors.

On May 6, 2021, a pipeline ruptured due to operator error and caused 21,000 gallons (80,000 liters) of fuel that was being transferred between tanks to spill. Most of the fuel, however, entered a fire suppression line and remained there until six months later, when a cart crashed into the line and released 20,000 gallons (75,700 liters) that ended up entering the water system.

Red Hill workers noticed that one of the tanks was missing this amount, but did not report the discrepancy to senior leadership.

Dietz didn’t want to risk her husband’s career by asking to leave Hawaii. So they stayed and committed to avoiding tap water while they figured out their next steps.

“They’re going to put another family in this house,” she said. “So we need to stay here and try to fight to fix this.”

In doing so, Dietz says he found unexpected allies among Native Hawaiians, who revere water as a sacred resource and already distrust the U.S. military, dating back to at least 1893, when a group of American businessmen, with the support of US Marines, overthrew the Hawaiian kingdom.

Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapahua — a Hawaii native political science doctoral student and one of the activists who pushed to close the tanks — said the water crisis has forged a sense of solidarity with affected military families. It also fostered relationships within a military community of members who often move quickly in and out of the islands, he said.

When families felt abandoned by the military, “the people who showed up to support them were the indigenous community,” Kapahua said.

Dietz agreed. “They gave us a seat at the table,” she said through tears.

Eventually, on orders from state authorities, under pressure from the protests and ongoing protests, the military drained the tanks.

Later, Dietz’s husband received new orders and the family is moving to Jacksonville, Florida, this summer. They do not plan to live in military housing there.

As he prepares to leave a home where the ice maker has remained unplugged since 2021, Dietz hopes the essay will renew awareness about what happened to the water.

“Someone is moving in,” she said, “and I’m worried they’re going to turn on the ice machine.”

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This story has been updated to correct that Dietz’s husband is a noncommissioned officer, not an officer.