AP Features, July 18th, 2007
Military officials should directly inform hundreds of thousands of Marine families and workers that they drank and washed in toxin-contaminated water at their U.S. base, a U.S. lawmaker says.
Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, whose state, North Carolina is home to Camp Lejeune, wants to force the secretary of the Navy to locate and notify Marines and civilians who were exposed to the water until the mid-1980s when the base sealed contaminated wells.
The notification requirement was in an amendment Dole offered Wednesday to a broad military money bill before the legislation was pulled from the floor in a showdown over Iraq. The larger bill may be back as early as September.
Government health officials have estimated as many as 1 million people may have been exposed during three decades of water contamination going back to 1957, a situation that was examined in a recent Associated Press investigation. The numbers include Marines in barracks and military families living on the sprawling Atlantic training and deployment base, as well as civilians who worked there.
"We cannot correct a past mistake by pretending that this contamination did not take place, and we cannot avoid the hard and unpleasant facts associated with this tragic situation," Dole said.
Declining to comment specifically on Dole's proposal, spokeswoman Capt. Amy Malugani said the Marines "continue to work closely" with Dole and other lawmakers on the issue.
The Corps is seeking "ways to improve and enhance our communications and notification processes," she said. The base told residents in 1985 about "minute, trace amounts" of contamination, when some levels had reached more than 200 times today's safe drinking water standards.
The groundwater contamination stemmed from industrial activity and hazardous waste on the base and from a neighboring dry cleaner. Trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene, solvents used for degreasing and dry cleaning, and other toxic chemicals were identified in water sampling that eventually led to the well closures.
Studies have linked the chemicals to leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, birth defects and several other cancers.
"Enough is enough," Dole said. "Our Marines and their families must be notified of what has happened."
