More than three years after lawmakers gave the go-ahead to people sickened by decades of toxic drinking water aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville to sue the federal government for illnesses caused by the contamination, thousands are still waiting for their cases to move forward.
She asked that we not use her name, but a woman sickened by the toxic water at Camp Lejeune – a civilian whose husband was drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps in the Vietnam War era and was stationed at Camp Lejeune in 1966 and 1967 – is sharing her story, in the hope that it will draw more attention to the ongoing fight for justice.
The couple initially settled at Camp Geiger, a satellite training facility for the School of Infantry-East, known historically for its early tent camps and later as a family housing area with trailers. “We were living at Geiger Trailer Park, which were these little bitty trailers that I think Eleanor Roosevelt had arranged for World War II vets to live in,” she said, “And when we found out that we would get a house in Tarawa Terrace, we were so excited about it, because then we could get out of the little bitty trailer.
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Tarawa Terrace was Camp Lejeune's first post-WWII dependent housing, named to honor the WWII battle -- a pivotal battle in the Pacific where U.S. Marines stormed the heavily fortified Japanese-held Betio Island in the Gilbert Islands.
However, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Marines and their families who lived in Tarawa Terrace family housing units from November 1957 through February 1987 received drinking water primarily contaminated with the dry-cleaning solvent tetrachloroethylene (PCE) from a nearby off-base dry cleaner.
“While we were there, I was pregnant with our son and I was morning sick for the entire pregnancy,” she explained, “I had assumed it was --since it was my first time, I didn't really know. But I just figured, well, that's just the way it is. But I wouldn't be surprised if the toxic water had something to do with my being ill for the whole pregnancy.”
She breastfed her son – in an era where that wasn’t common practice for new moms – and while her supply was plentiful, the baby often slept through feedings. She said a visiting nurse stopped by and cautioned that he was underweight. “I would have to shake him a little bit to wake him up, to get him to eat,” she said, “And I never realized, even after years and years, I didn't realize that something was really wrong there. And I'm wondering if my milk supply was passing along something to him, but I’d never know for sure. But you know, you wonder.”
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While the family lived aboard Camp Lejeune, she said the base delivered a load of dirt to their home – and she was excited at the prospect of growing flowers. But she said, “That dirt kind of sat there because my husband never got around to doing anything with it. But that's okay because the dirt never did anything either. Nothing ever grew in it. No weeds, no grass, no nothing. It was like dead dirt. And it's like it was just a symptom of (the) toxic place that we were living in, perhaps.”
The first claim she made connected to the water at Camp Lejeune was filed after an endometriosis diagnosis, because at the time female infertility was listed as a possible impact, and it came as she was supporting the family while her now-retired husband attended college. “It was a partial oophorectomy because of endometriosis,” she said. “And I was, like, so shocked when I woke up because I couldn't go back to work for six weeks.”
Her next set of symptoms began to appear in about 1980 – extreme fatigue and weakness -- but a diagnosis didn’t come for another 10 years. She said, “The second claim is for M.S. (Multiple Sclerosis) which has been a continuing problem for the remainder of my life, for sure.”
While some people who were exposed to the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune were notified at various times, beginning in the mid-1980s through base newsletters, notification to former residents began much later – in 1999 -- with Congress requiring broader notification in 2008, long after the contamination ended in 1987. She said they were not among those notified, “Never by the Marine Corps or by the Department of Navy. Our daughter found out, noticed it on the internet, in like 2010.”
The Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022, part of the PACT Act, allowed veterans and others exposed to contaminated water at the base between 1953-1987 to file lawsuits against the U.S. government for related health issues, seeking damages for illnesses like cancers, kidney disease, neurological illnesses, and more.
She was initially relieved to learn that filing a claim against the government for the damage the exposure to the contaminated water caused was possible, but said filing that claim on a website established for that purpose was not a simple matter. “Such a nightmare,” she said, “It is so complicated when it was first set up. It took me months and months and months to establish an account that I could open.”
Hearings and motions continue to drag out the more than 400,000 claims that have been filed, with motions that are attempting to exclude expert testimony, testimony of the experts themselves, arguments over proof that the toxic water caused plaintiff illnesses, and discard other evidence.
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She said given the fact that contamination of the wells that served the base housing where she and her family lived is estimated to have begun as early as 1953, causation should be a given rather than placing the burden of proof on those that were sickened. “With Tarawa Terrace, where we were, I don't even understand why we'd have to prove anything,” she said, “Just the address alone and the time of exposure alone, you'd think would be enough to qualify because it's so well documented in the end after all these years, how terrible. this whole toxic pollution has been.”
And she feels forgotten by the government and the U.S. Military. “The cruelty and disregard for the lives of the people who lived and worked there, it's just it's overwhelming to me.”
She asked that we not use her name amid fears that speaking out would jeopardize her claim for compensation.
