LAW FROM THE CENTER

As Erin Brokovich's fight for the residents of Hinckley, CA still looms large in our conscience, word from the Washington Post today on the Marine Corps' startling admission about contaminated water that Marines and their families have drank, bathed in, and been exposed to FIVE YEARS after the initial findings:

A military engineer assigned in 1980 to test the drinking water at this sprawling Marine Corps base punctuated his findings with a handwritten exclamation point.

"WATER HIGHLY CONTAMINATED WITH . . . CHLORINATED HYDROCARBONS (SOLVENTS)!" William C. Neal wrote in capital letters on one of his surveillance reports in early 1981.

A private firm followed up with tests the next year. One of its samples showed an astonishing result: 1,400 parts per billion -- 280 times the level now considered safe for drinking water -- of trichloroethylene, a likely cancer-causing chemical used for degreasing machinery that can impair the development of fetuses, weaken the immune system, and damage kidneys and livers. Other samples showed as little as 1 part per billion to as many as 104 parts per billion -- more than 20 times the level now considered safe -- of tetrachloroethylene, a toxic dry-cleaning chemical that can seep into body fat and slowly release cancer-causing compounds.

The number of people who may have drunk the tainted water, bathed in it, had water fights with it is staggering: The Marine Corps estimates 50,000 Marines and their families lived in base housing areas that may have been fed by the wells before they were closed in 1985. Victim advocacy groups place the figure even higher, at 200,000, which would make Camp Lejeune one of the largest contaminated-water cases in U.S. history. [emphasis added.]

Already, more than 270 tort claims have been filed with the Navy's judge advocate general's office by former residents, who are required by law to file claims with the military before proceeding with any possible action in civilian courts.

This is no "harmless incident." Take the story of this Marine Air Traffic Controller, who moved to Camp Lejeune, NC, and whose family started drinking the water two years after that initial finding of harmful chemicals:

Both of his girls have been beset with a lifetime of ailments: Rachel, who is developmentally disabled, was born with a cleft palate and needed leg braces as a child. She has spina bifida; a gangly, arachnoid cyst on her spine that cannot be removed; and brittle, rotting teeth. Andrea had a rare bone marrow syndrome known as aplastic anemia and has been told by her doctors that the disease could recur if she becomes pregnant.

The federal agency responsible for studying the health effects of SUPERFUND sites like Camp Lejeune found birth defect rates to be three to five times the national average for women who lived at Camp Lejeune during the five years of known yet suppressed findings of contamination. Bad enough that the cover-up lasted five years and put thousands of Marines and families health in danger. Word now comes that, even now, the Marine Corps tried to suppress the findings of the Superfund report:

In a series of 1998 e-mails recently disclosed on the Marines' Web site, officials at Lejeune discussed how public concern about water contamination could be stoked by the release of the film "A Civil Action," which traced the legal battle over contaminated drinking-water wells in Woburn, Mass.

"Just a thought," Neal Paul, director of Lejeune's toxic cleanup program, wrote to an official at Marine headquarters. "With the movie coming out in Dec., can we delay the questionnaires until April/May time frame?" An ATSDR spokesman said the timing of the survey was not influenced by the Marines.

The pressure to let sleeping dogs lie aren't coming just from the highest levels of leadership in the Corps, but from Marine friends of the advocacy groups' members, exposing a deep close-the-ranks mentality that crushes opponents in war but leads to abuse in peacetime:

But, for all the passion, some of Ensminger's old Marine pals want him to let up.

"They say, 'Semper fidelis -- give 'em a break. Why do you want to hurt the Corps?' " said Ensminger, a former master sergeant who retired in 1994 after 241/2 years in the Corps.

But an image that rattles around inside Ensminger's stubborn, crew-cut head will not let him give up. He sees Janey, all big, brown eyes and silly smiles, watching him as her doctors advised him to stop treatment because there was no hope. Janey looked up at them, Ensminger recalls, and said: "You're talking about me. I'm not dead. You're not giving up on me."

One week later, she was gone.

Let's hope the Marine Corps stops covering this one up, pays the civilian survivors the MILLIONS(BILLIONS?) of dollars in damages they deserve WITHOUT a lengthy court battle, and gives the Marine survivors who are injured FULL disability. Those who have served our country so honorably deserve nothing less.