Did you see it?

Camp_lejeune

Last Friday, MSNBC aired the award-winning documentary Semper Fi: Always Faithful. I was so excited to watch it; however I can hardly stay past 10pm on most nights, so I DVR'd it just in case. I finally got around to watching it and was so glad I did. It was the documentary's first TV premiere on Lawrence O'Donnel's "The Last Word."

The Lejeune Water Contamination is an environmental health case in its own unique category. The first environmental health catastrophe I learned about was the Love Canal. Love Canal was the American dream model community built over an abandoned hazardous waste site that had been covered up and sold to the city for a buck in the 1950s near Niagara Falls, New York. About a decade and a half later, the dumpsite was discovered and investigated. High rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancers were brought to light. In August 1978, President Carter announced a state of emergency, the first time ever funds had been allocated other than for a natural disaster. Residents were also evacuated. Love Canal was added to the EPA's Superfund list, a federal law designed to clean up hazardous sites and to hold polluters accountable. The site has since been cleaned up and deleted from its National Priority List in 2004. You can read more about the Love Canal on the EPA's website

What is unique about the Lejeune Water Contamination, pointed out by male breast cancer survivor, Mike Partain is that unlike Love Canal, whose victims most likely lived in the same small neighborhood all their lives, their houses still standing in the same spot abandoned; Camp Lejeune is huge and its residents who had come into contact with its contaminated water (estimated to be between 750,000 to 1,000,000 people) have since left and probably only lived within their community for a few years before leaving. They now live all over the country and may not even know that they had consumed contaminated drinking water. The drinking water on Camp Lejeune was contaminated from 1957 to 1987. I moved onto the base with my family as a kindergartener in 1992. It is so mind-boggling to think of how just 4 years after contamination, I drank the water from the sink of the kitchen in our base home. I am sure this is true for thousands of others. 

If you haven't seen the documentary, it gives a face and personal story to what most view the contamination as only numbers and statistics. It also tells an incredible story of an environmental health catastrophe that took place right in the heart of where we live. Camp Lejeune is currently on the EPA's National Priority List, added in 1989.You can view the Camp Lejeune's Superfund information and progress updates at its EPA website. As Riverkeeper, I serve on the Restoration Advisory Board, an initiative with the Department of Defense, NCDENR, and the EPA, to increase community participation in the cleanup process on military installations. Community members as well as state and federal members serve on this board. If you are interested in participating, you can find out more information at their website.

There are currently two bills pending legislation in Congress that would provide health care to affected veterans and their families with exposure-related illnesses or disabilitites. Currently, the Department of Veterans' Affairs provides no benefits relating to the exposure. The bills are the Janey Ensminger Act (H.R. 1742) and the Caring for Camp Lejeune Veterans Act (S. 277). You can contact your elected official and ask them to support these bills. Sample letters and contact information is available at http://semperfialwaysfaithful.com/take-action. >

 

White Oak-New Riverkeeper

White Oak-New Riverkeeper


Posterous theme by Cory Watilo