JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii — Senior naval officers gathered for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration at the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility, where they spilled green-tinted diesel over a key aquifer that supplies the island of Oahu with fresh water.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday, Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, and retired Captain Erik Spitzer used ceremonial gas pump handles to splash the ground with green-dyed fuel obtained from the Navy Exchange gas station on Namur Road using a gift card supplied by Navy Exchange Service Command.
The annual St. Patrick’s Day ceremony follows a naval tradition of spilling fuel into Hawaii’s water supplies. Gilday told the crowd of attendees and reporters, “They say ‘oil and water don’t mix,’ but the United States Navy is bent on proving them wrong.”
Naval Academy midshipmen lathered in green vegetable shortening distributed glasses of green-tinted water and matchsticks to attendees while chief petty officers distributed pamphlets detailing the many side effects of drinking tap water in and around Pearl Harbor. Spitzer grabbed a microphone to assure the audience they were holding “clean, safe drinking water” that even newborns can tolerate. “I know what’s tainted, and this ain’t it,” he said.
