Senator touts wider probe of base water

[CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

North Carolina
THE DAILY NEWS
Senator touts wider probe of base water
Thomas Dail
February 11,2004

A U.S. senator Tuesday called for expansion of a federal study into the
possible health hazards of drinking water contamination that could have
exposed 200,000 people who lived or worked aboard Camp Lejeune until
1985.

U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., also is seeking congressional hearings
into the contamination and asked the Navy to notify former residents of
base housing areas affected about their possible exposure to
trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene, two volatile organic
compounds suspected of causing cancer, birth defects and other ailments.

The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is currently
studying whether unborn children exposed to the water while they were
carried in the womb are at greater risk for a host of childhood cancers
and birth defects. Jeffords proposed expanding the study to adults and
children.

There is no current known threat to water systems on Camp Lejeune.

A nearby dry-cleaning operation began contaminating Tarawa Terrace wells
with tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, in the 1960s. Leaking underground
storage tanks aboard the base allowed trichloroethylene, or TCE, to seep
into the wells that supplied the Hadnot Point water system.

The contamination was discovered in 1980. The dry-cleaning operation was
declared a Superfund cleanup site by the Environmental Protection
Agency.

"We have only begun to explore the full extent of the devastating
effects of the drinking water contamination at Camp Lejeune," Jeffords
said in a prepared statement.

This summer, ATSDR released a progress report from a survey that found
103 cases of childhood cancer and birth defects among children whose
mothers drank the contaminated water while pregnant. The agency said
that was enough evidence to begin a large-scale study. The Marine Corps
pledged its full cooperation.

Jerry Ensminger's daughter, Janey, was one of the children the survey
found. She was conceived while the family lived on Camp Lejeune and died
from childhood leukemia in 1985, the same year Camp Lejeune stopped
using the contaminated wells. She was 9.

Ensminger, who now lives in Richlands, has been asking questions about
the contamination for years and said he wants congressional hearings and
an expanded study.

"There are people out there who still don't know that they have been
exposed to this stuff," he said. "The Marine Corps has a motto, Semper
Fidelis. The Marine Corps does not want to live up to its own motto."

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