A Trust Betrayed (20 page)

Senator James Jeffords of Vermont, a Navy veteran who left the Republican Party in 2001 to become an independent, said at a hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee in April 2003 that the Defense Department had many bases sitting on aquifers tainted by fuel and chemicals from military operations. “There are numerous potential toxic effects that may result from the contamination that
DOD
is seeking to exempt from the hazardous waste laws,” he said.
³

A few months after the hearing, in July 2003, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released its study showing that children conceived or born at Camp Lejeune between 1968 and 1985 were three times more likely to have cancer or birth defects than were children in the general public. Jeffords called the results “chilling” and vowed to get a full assessment of the problems at the base. “At a time when the Department of Defense is seeking exemptions from the environmental laws that govern hazardous waste, we must also consider the health of the soldiers and families that serve our nation,” he said.
⁴

As alarming as the
ATSDR
report was, showing more than a
hundred babies born with birth defects or cancer after their mothers drank tainted water at Camp Lejeune, the problems were actually much worse. Because of incorrect data provided by the Marine Corps, the
ATSDR
study apparently missed hundreds, if not thousands, of other pregnant women who drank contaminated water at the base. The flawed data had been uncovered by Tom Townsend in 2000 as he dug into information about the water systems at Lejeune. Townsend found that the Marines had informed the
ATSDR
that housing areas at Holcomb Boulevard, Berkeley Manor, Paradise Point, and Midway Park had all been provided with water from a treatment plant for the Holcomb Boulevard system, where contaminated wells were never discovered. In fact, the Holcomb Boulevard plant did not go online until 1972, and before that all those housing areas were served by contaminated water from the Hadnot Point system. Townsend pointed out the mistake in letters to the Marine Corps after he discovered it in 2000, but it was never corrected. Kelly Dreyer at Marine Corps headquarters sent an e-mail in November 2000 to Camp Lejeune's environmental manager, Neal Paul, ordering him to provide the
ATSDR
with corrected information on the base water systems as soon as possible. But four months later, in March 2001, Dreyer had to write another e-mail to one of Paul's assistants making the same request. And more than a year later, when Jerry Ensminger mentioned Townsend's discovery of the flawed data to one of the
ATSDR
's lead investigators, Frank Bove, it was the first time Bove had heard about it.

It took another year for the
ATSDR
to figure out how to restore some integrity to its health studies at Camp Lejeune. Wendy Kaye, the agency's chief of epidemiology and surveillance, announced in 2003 that the agency would conduct a full-scale modeling study to determine exactly what housing areas received contaminated water, in what years, and at what levels. When the
modeling was completed, scientists would have a much clearer picture of the base residents who had been exposed to tainted water. But the study would take several years, at least, since it involved developing a computer program that would re-create the flow of groundwater, the pumping of wells, and the delivery of water at the base over several decades. There was an added difficulty in that the base systems were unlike most municipal water supply operations, Kaye said. “If you lived in a town, you have a water meter attached to your house that shows how much water you use each month,” she said at the time. “That's not true on base. There are no water meters, because residents don't have to pay for their water.”
⁵

The tag team of Townsend and Ensminger was just getting started. One day in 2003, Townsend was surfing through the Camp Lejeune website from his Idaho home when he came upon a treasure trove of documents that had been posted on one of the public web pages. There were nearly two dozen folders filled with reports, memos, e-mails, and other information, all focused on the water contamination issues. Townsend called Ensminger in North Carolina and told him to take a look. But when Ensminger tried to copy one of the folders using the slow dial-up connection he had at the time, it took hours just to download one set of documents. He called Townsend back and told him to tell his grandson to use his high-speed connection and put the data on disks as soon as possible. The boy did exactly that, and just in time. Within a few days the documents disappeared from the Marine Corps website. “I think the [National Science Foundation] or the
EPA
made them put these documents up so they could have access,” Ensminger said. “And Tom got there at the right time.”

Another big break for victims of the Lejeune pollution came in January 2004, when the
Washington Post
published a long story on
page 3
under the headline, “Tainted Water in the Land of Semper
Fi; Marines Want to Know Why Base Did Not Close Wells When Toxins Were Found.” After describing the tests done in 1980 and 1981 showing the presence of solvents in the base water supply, the story, by Manuel Roig-Franzia and Catharine Skipp, reported that it wasn't until 1985 that contaminated wells were shut down.

“The battle over the water contamination at Lejeune has strained age-old loyalties, matching Marine veterans against the power structure of an organization that prides itself in the motto
Semper Fidelis
, or ‘always faithful.' The Marine Corps has not denied that contamination took place at Lejeune,” the story said. It went on to describe the problem in more detail:

In a written response to questions from the
Washington Post
, the Corps said the wells were not shut down for five years because there were no federal drinking-water regulations then for the chemicals found in Lejeune's water: trichloroethylene, or
TCE
, the metal degreaser that federal researchers say was kept in leaky underground storage tanks, and tetrachloroethylene, or
PCE
, which researchers believe leaked into the wells from a dry cleaner that still operates across the street from Lejeune's main gate. The Environmental Protection Agency had recommended levels—not enforceable standards—at the time, and the Corps said the average contamination readings for
TCE
were below those levels and that the
PCE
readings were “only slightly above” those levels.

The
Post
reported that criminal investigators at the Environmental Protection Agency were looking into what happened. Meanwhile, Senator Jeffords was calling for hearings. “I have very serious questions about why the Marine Corps, who knew the drinking-water wells were highly contaminated in 1980, didn't close them until 1985,” Jeffords told the newspaper. “Sunshine is
always the best disinfectant. . . . We have a strong obligation to provide all the information we already have to the Marines and their families.”
⁶

Jeffords kept the pressure on the Marine Corps and the federal health agency by demanding that everyone who lived in base housing at the time of the contamination be notified about it, and by requesting that the
ATSDR
's studies be expanded to include adults as well as children who may have been harmed. The Pentagon responded in February 2004 by saying it wanted to wait until the water-modeling studies (several years off) were completed so they could give people accurate information about their exposure. “Based on the
ATSDR
results, we will expeditiously consider the need for additional notification,” the Marine Corps said in a statement. (At the same time, the Royal Netherlands Navy, which had an exchange program with Camp Lejeune to train members of its Marine corps, was trying to locate and notify any of its troops who had been at the base in North Carolina before 1985. “The least you can do is this: make up a list of people who had been there in those years and try to track them down,” said Colonel Herman Dukers of the Dutch Marines.)
⁷

The
ATSDR
insisted that there was a sound reason for its initial studies to look only at babies exposed to the contaminants in the womb. “They were the place where we were most likely to get results,” said the agency's Scott Mull. “They are much more vulnerable than you or I as adults.” If the studies clearly showed that the water could be linked to birth defects or cancer, they could be expanded, he said. “It was never meant that this would be the end of it. It is really just the first step in what could be [a larger study],” Mull said.
⁸

Despite the
ATSDR
's insistence, the US Marine Corps, under pressure from Congress, federal agencies, and victims of the contamination, knew it had to do something to show it was being
responsive. In February 2004, the commandant named a three-member panel to look into how the situation had been handled and report back to him. General Mike Hagee described the handpicked trio as an independent group of “private sector professionals” who would objectively consider all the evidence and assess what had occurred at the base.
⁹

Almost immediately, there was an outcry that the blue-ribbon panel was anything but independent. The chairman of the panel was a former Republican congressman, Ron Packard of California, who had represented the district that included the largest Marine base in the West, Camp Pendleton, at the same time that Hagee was a general officer there. One of the members was former Navy administrator Robert B. Pirie Jr., who as assistant secretary for installations and environment in the Pentagon had denied that the Marines were responsible for the contamination at Camp Lejeune. The other was Richard Hearney, a retired four-star general who still served as a part-time consultant to the Marine Corps.

Jeffords was appalled by the lack of a water-quality specialist on the panel, and Republican senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina was angry about the members' close ties to the military. “The panel the Marines have chosen is outrageous,” Dole said. She had written to the top brass at the Marine Corps before the panel was formed, insisting that it must be independent and impartial. “The Marines have failed on both accounts,” she said.
¹⁰

In response to the criticism, Hagee added two scientists to the panel, Robert Tardiff and William Glaze. Tardiff was president and
CEO
of the Sapphire Group, a consulting firm on pollution issues. “This company was nothing more than environmental hired guns,” scoffed Jerry Ensminger. “They perform risk assessments on chemicals and products for the highest bidder.” In contrast, Glaze, a researcher at the Oregon Health & Science University, was cochairman of the
EPA
's Science Advisory Board and had a
sterling reputation in the research world. After just one meeting of the panel, however, Glaze quietly resigned without publicly stating his reasons. It was left to the panel chairman, Packard, to announce that Glaze had quit because he was concerned there could be a conflict of interest serving on both an
EPA
board and a Marine Corps panel. Ensminger, for one, wasn't buying it. “No, Dr. Glaze who cherished his position in the world of academia saw the handwriting on the wall after he attended the first meeting at Camp Lejeune,” Ensminger told a congressional committee a few years later. “If he wanted to retain his high standing that he had attained in academia and the scientific community, he needed to distance himself from this fiasco.”
¹¹

Ensminger was also skeptical about the limited assignment given to the Marine panel—to review only what happened from the time solvents were first discovered in the base drinking water in 1980 until the tainted wells were shut down in 1985. “I knew right then that this entire panel was nothing more than a farce,” Ensminger said. “It was akin to placing a Band-aid over a sucking chest wound: too little, too late.”
¹²

The Marines were put further on the defensive in early 2004, when aides to Congressman John Dingell of Michigan spotted the
Washington Post
's coverage of Jerry Ensminger and Camp Lejeune just as Dingell, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was preparing for a hearing on the military's requests for exemptions from environmental laws. “I saw the
Post
article and tracked Jerry down and took him in to see Mr. Dingell,” said attorney Richard Frandsen, an investigator on Dingell's staff for more than thirty years. “He turned to me and said, ‘Help 'em.'” Ensminger recalled that Dingell had started the meeting in his office by saying, “This is why we're here,” and explaining the military's exemption requests. Ensminger said he reached into his pocket and pulled out photos of his daughter Janey and her
gravesite, and said, “This is why I'm here.” A few days later, Ensminger got a call from Dingell's office asking if he would appear as a witness at an upcoming congressional hearing. “It turned out the meeting was a job interview,” Ensminger later said.
¹³

The hearing, held on April 21, 2004, had been called by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) to consider the requests from the military for exemptions from environmental laws. Unless Barton's committee approved the requests, the House Armed Services Committee would not be able to include language in legislation to authorize the exemptions. But with Republicans in control of both panels, it seemed almost a sure bet that the Defense Department would get what it wanted.