New details on toxic water at Camp Lejeune

Lejeune details under new study

BY BARBARA BARRETT - Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON -- A congressional oversight committee has begun looking into new details about historic water contamination at Camp Lejeune.

Investigators in the House Science and Technology Committee have requested hundreds of documents from the state of North Carolina that include details about underground storage tanks buried across the Marine base in past decades. The tanks contained fuel, tricholorethylene (TCE) and other chemicals.

Some of the storage tanks leaked into the groundwater, including some buried about 300 feet from a drinking well. The well was found in 1984 to be contaminated with benzene, a fuel component and a human carcinogen. It was closed in December 1984.

McClatchy has obtained the state of North Carolina documents and reported Friday that federal scientists have learned of the leaking fuel tanks near the historic well as they, too, work to understand the health effects of decades of contamination across the Marine base.

The tanks were buried beneath a former refueling station known as Building 1115; they were removed in 1993.

"That water was stunningly contaminated," said U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, chairman of the oversight panel on the science and technology committee. "It was stunningly toxic, and the fact that Marines and their families drank that water for 30 years is inexcusable."



Read more: Lejeune details under new study