Pictures released to WHRO by the mother of a sailor serving on board the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford shows backed up toilets and waste spilt onto the floor.
The problem became worse over the course of a week onboard the aircraft carrier, which left Norfolk on June 24, she said.
“The concern is this is hazardous. If it’s overflowing onto the floor then this is not sanitary. How are they letting them live like this?” she asked.
The mother asked not to be identified for fear of causing repercussions for her sailor. She said the photos were taken within the last week. They show the problem worsening.
Potential issues with the toilets were flagged by federal officials years ago, and the mother said clogged toilets were also a problem on the carrier’s nine-month-long deployment to Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean which ended in January 2024, she said.
“At least once a month (during their first deployment) they would wake up to poop on the floor and have to mop it up,” she said.
WHRO asked the Navy to comment on the situation on board USS Ford, but officials did not reply Thursday.
USS Ford carries a crew of 4,500, including the air crews. Each berthing area houses 40 sailors, and has a toilet and shower area. She did not know many berthing areas were affected.
“Why is this being allowed to persist?” she said.
The Government Accountability Office said in 2020 that the pipes for the toilets onboard the $13 billion carrier were undersized. It uses a vacuum system similar to commercial aircraft.
The pipes must be cleaned with an acid flush that costs $400,000 each time it is used, according to GAO.
USS George H.W. Bush was the first carrier to use the system. In 2011, Navy Times reported that all of its toilets stopped working for a time while the carrier was at sea. At the time, the Navy blamed the outages on sailors putting inappropriate material into the toilets.
The Ford is the first carrier in its class and cost $13 billion. It suffered several setbacks before starting its first full deployment in May 2023, which included being one of the U.S. carriers on scene during the early days of the Israeli war in Gaza.
In 2020, GAO said the second carrier in the Ford class, the USS John F. Kennedy also uses the same sewage system and that the Navy had no plans to change the design.
The Kennedy was originally scheduled to enter the fleet this month, but production delays have pushed the due date back to 2027. All of the carriers are built at Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipyard.
