A Congressional Senate bill would add a new health care center on Oahu to help improve services for veterans.

The 180,000-square foot facility, to be called the Advance Leeward Outpatient Health Access (ALOHA) Center, would be built on the Ewa plain. It would double the VA’s existing clinical capacity on the island and expected to provide health services for about 15,000 island veterans.

The other facility on Oahu is the Spark M. Matsunaga VA Medical Center at Tripler Army Medical Center.

The fight against the further spread of the Little Fire Ants on Oahu is being fought out in a field in Waimanalo.

On Thursday, workers with the state Agriculture Department took University of Hawaii ant researcher Dr. Cas Vanderwoude to the four-acre state parcel where the infestation was confirmed earlier this week. They also laid baits around the perimeter laced with peanut butter to determine whether the ants have spread out from the infested area.

The most recent fuel spill at the Red Hill underground fuel storage facility took a backseat Friday when Deputy Health Director Gary Gill announced to a joint briefing of House and Senate lawmakers that the historical impact of past spills may be greater than initially thought.

A decade before 27,000 gallons of jet fuel spilled from the Red Hill fuel storage facility, the state agency wanted to know if any leak detection systems were in place.
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