Hawaii military family sues over jet fuel leak into Navy water system
JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AP) — Richelle Dietz, a mother of two and wife of a U.S. Navy officer, often thinks about water.
The family, stationed in Honolulu, spends more than $120 a month on jugs of bottled water for drinking, cooking and cleaning, as well as showerhead and sink filters. Each night the children, ages 13 and 5, carry cups of bottled water upstairs to their bathrooms to brush their teeth.
“I hope that one day I can not think about water all the time,” Dietz said. “But right now it’s a constant.”
That vigilance is to avoid more vomiting, diarrhea, rashes and other ailments, which they said they started experiencing 2021, when jet fuel leaked into the Navy water system serving 93,000 people on and around the Pearl Harbor base. It sickened thousands in military housing, including, Dietz says, her own family.