U.S. Water News Online
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. -- Decades ago, it was a simple way to dispose of high-powered cleaning solvents -- pour the liquid on the ground and let it soak into the sandy soil of eastern North Carolina.
The thousands of families that passed through Camp Lejeune over the years likewise didn't think twice about drinking water that came from that ground.
But late last year, military officials acknowledged there may be a link between the contaminated water and reports of birth defects, childhood cancers, and stunted growth.
To make sure, they're trying to find up to 16,500 children whose mothers conceived or carried them while living on the East Coast's largest Marine base between 1968 and 1985.
In a study that will cost the federal government at least $3.2 million, they will try to determine whether women who became pregnant while living on the base during that period had children with health problems.
One former resident is already sure the contamination caused the heart defect that killed her son.
``For all of those years, I blamed myself,'' Anne Townsend said. ``Now, I find that all I did was drink the water.''
While few people would think it wise to pour chemicals on the ground today, the Vietnam-era days at Lejeune were different.
Marines cleaning tanks and weapons at numerous places around the base would simply pour their solvents onto the ground or into barrels.
``It was a pretty common practice back then to throw it out back,'' said Neal Paul, director of Lejeune's environmental cleanup division.
Some 220 drums of tricholorethylene, a chemical degreaser called TCE, were left in the woods or buried at a remote spot near Wallace Creek on the 153,000-acre base.
Over time, the barrels rusted and leaked, and the chemical seeped through the soil, settling about 225 feet below the surface in a huge groundwater supply that was used for base housing.
Up the road toward Jacksonville outside the main base gate, a dry cleaning business also disposed of tetrachloroethylene (PCE), a commonly used dry cleaning solvent, by dumping it outside. That practice by ABC One-Hour Cleaners led to pollution in the groundwater supply that fed wells used by Tarawa Terrace, a housing area for enlisted Marines, and the Hospital Point officer housing area, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The compounds have been linked to birth defects, stunted growth, and childhood cancers such as leukemia.
Water wells fed by the contaminated water were shut down in the mid-'80s, and Lejeune's contamination was declared a federal Superfund site in 1989, making it eligible for federal cleanup funds.
Based on a small sampling of Camp Lejeune families, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry published a report in 1998 that identified a potential link between the contaminated water and birth defects.
Now the corps has made appeals through the news media to find families of women who were pregnant between 1968 and 1985 while living in base housing.
Recently, almost 9,700 had been contacted. The search could end if 13,200 families -- 80 percent of the total -- are interviewed.
An ad campaign may be launched in the spring if not enough participants are located by then, said Marine spokesman Capt. Steve Butler.
Marie Socha, who is in charge of the government's Lejeune survey, said further study would be warranted if the respondents reveal a birth defect rate that's higher than the national average.
Anne Townsend, now 68, and her husband, Thomas, have responded to the survey and sent 180 letters to newspapers to raise awareness of it.
Thomas Townsend, 70, hopes his lawyer can get compensation if the study shows a link between the baby's deformed heart and the chemicals in the water at their home in the Paradise Point housing area near the base officers' club.
Their son died in 1967.
Another former base resident who answered the survey isn't so sure about the danger. Col. Thomas Woodson, 49, was an artillery officer when his daughter was born 24 years ago.
``I lived at the Paradise Point officer housing area. My youngest daughter was born during the time frame while we lived in base housing,'' Woodson said. ``I cannot associate any health problems I know of with [the time] we lived there.''
While researchers try to find humans who may have been affected by the tainted water, pumps are dealing with the damaged land.
Today, the Wallace Creek site is home to a $5.5 million, windowless white building where pumps pull 350 gallons of water a minute from the aquifer, scrub it through filters to reduce the pollution, and spit it into the creek.
Just outside the gate to Tarawa Terrace, a much smaller pump-and-treat station in a red brick hut pulls water from the ground and filters it. That station is owned and operated by the EPA, which also is working to clean the soil at the cleaners.
Both pumping stations are only keeping the plumes of contamination from spreading, Paul said. ``The technology just isn't there to get the aquifer back to a pristine state.''
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