Major plumbing problem haunts $13 billion U.S. carrier off Venezuela coast: NPR

New documents show that the crew aboard America’s newest aircraft carrier are growing increasingly frustrated by design flaws that are leading to regular breakdowns in the ship’s toilet system.

The USS Gerald R. Ford has been deployed for seven months since departing Norfolk in June. The aircraft carrier is currently the center of the Trump administration’s fleet of Navy ships in the Caribbean. Since the raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, the carrier continues to work with the Coast Guard as the United States bans oil tankers linked to Venezuela.

Aboard the carrier, the crew is struggling with a toilet system that the General Accountability Office said in 2020 was undersized and poorly designed. The system continues to fail during deployment, forcing the crew of 4,600 sailors to live with a system that fails randomly during their months at sea.

NPR obtained documents including a series of emails detailing the ship’s efforts to deal with the outages. Problems with the vacuum collection, retention and transfer (VCHT) system increased in 2025. The vacuum system has been adopted in part by the cruise ship industry. It uses less water, but the system used by the USS Ford is more complex. Outages have been reported since the $13 billion carrier’s first deployment in 2023.

“Each day that the entire crew is present on the ship, an emergency call is made for ship force personnel to repair or unclog a portion of the VCHT system, since June 2023,” reads an undated document provided by the Navy, via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The carrier has called for help off the ship 42 times since 2023. The rate of calls is increasing, with 32 calls in 2025; 12 calls were made after the carrier began its recent deployment in June.

A March 18, 2025 engineering department email sent to all ship leaders indicated there had been 205 failures in four days. Sailors who work on the sewage system, called hull maintenance technicians (HTs), have fallen behind schedule in the months leading up to the USS Ford’s planned deployment.

“Our sewer system is abused and destroyed by mariners on a daily basis. My HTs are currently working 19 hour days trying to keep up with the demand,” according to the email.

The average age aboard the USS Ford is similar to that on a college campus. For many sailors, this is their first extended stay away from home. At times, the emails are almost reminiscent of a floating dorm, revealing that everything from T-shirts to a four-foot piece of rope has been removed from the system. Vacuum hoses are narrow. Brown paper towels and even commercial toilet paper also cause breakdowns. The most common problem is a valve on the back of the toilet that can become loose and cause all toilets (which the Navy calls heads) in any of the 10 zones to lose suction.

“For your information, if you need to use the head, go now. At 1:30 p.m., expect the system to shut down for approximately two hours. We are looking for a vacuum leak in Area 6,” read a March 18 email from the USS Ford’s chief engineer.

A month after the carrier departed Norfolk on July 24, 2025, initially bound for Europe and the Mediterranean, a sailor’s mother contacted NPR to complain about unsanitary conditions aboard the carrier. Around the same time, emails from the USS Ford show that the Ford’s general manager was demanding answers from the engineering department regarding the failures.

The most costly problem is calcium buildup, which clogs narrow pipes, especially in the ship’s lower decks. The 2020 GAO report says the Navy is spending $400,000 on an acid flush to restore the system. A document shows the ship has been acid rinsed at least 10 times since 2023. The work can only be done in port. A month after the USS Ford’s departure from Norfolk, the engineering department had difficulty explaining the problem to management.

“That’s just the nature of VCHT. It’s a closed system and thousands of components ship-wide fail daily. With a toilet control valve failure, depending on the location, it brings down the entire area,” according to an Aug. 15, 2025, email from the engineering department.

The crew contacted Newport News Shipbuilding’s A1B Propulsion Plant planning yard in Virginia for answers, according to an email chain between the carrier and the planning yard. The planning yard is part of Huntington Ingalls Industries, which is the only shipyard in the world building Ford-class aircraft carriers. The Navy’s In-Service Aircraft Carrier Program Office (PMS312) is responsible for aircraft carrier maintenance.

“What we want to do is give you a temporary solution to allow you to use your head in somewhat functional use until, in over 10 years, the PMS312 finally decides to pay for a redesign,” reads a July 24 email to the carrier from the planning yard.

Long-standing problem

Whenever the USS Ford completes its missions in the Caribbean, the aircraft carrier is expected to enter maintenance this year at the Navy’s public shipyard, Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia, according to emails. The Navy has known for more than a decade that the system is undersized and riddled with problems. A similar vacuum system was installed on the later Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush. In 2013, the carrier experienced similar problems, with toilets out of service.

The Navy said Ford would eventually get an upgrade.

“The GRF (USS Gerald R. Ford) is scheduled to receive VCHT system upgrades during upcoming maintenance availability. Similar upgrades on CVN 77 (the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush) have resulted in fewer VCHT maintenance issues,” said Lt. Cmdr. David Carter, a spokesman for Fleet Forces Command, said in a statement to NPR.

The series of emails provided through the Navy ends in August, before the USS Ford sets sail for the Caribbean in November to help build up U.S. forces around Venezuela.

Without providing details, Carter said problems with toilets have improved as the deployment continues. The average outage lasts between half an hour and two hours and the problems have had “no operational impact”, he said.

Experts say a long-term solution is not expected this year.

Problems with the carrier’s waste management system were known long before it was handed over to the Navy. Part of the solution could be putting more sailors aboard the ship to make repairs, even though the ship was actually designed to require fewer sailors to operate it than older Nimitz carriers, said Shelby Oakley, GAO director.

“It is important to think about this, because we are asking you, the sailors, to live in these conditions,” she said. “We should at least be able to provide them with living facilities, so that they don’t have to struggle in this regard. And it’s unfortunate that we are here.”

The aircraft carrier USS Ford was already the most expensive ship the Navy had ever built. It is full of new technology and many systems have not been field-proven, driving up the cost and delaying its delivery to the Navy. Borrowing the sewer system from commercial cruise ships may have been a mistake, said Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute.

“Maybe this is an example where they should have kept the old system rather than tackling the new technology,” Clark said.

A cruise ship has a very different mission from a nuclear-powered warship, designed to stay at sea for months. It’s a cautionary tale as the Trump administration plans to accelerate the pace of shipbuilding, including a battleship project that would potentially have even more systems that haven’t been field-tested, Clark said.