Camp Lejeune

Prince William County is home of Quantico. For months a TV commercial has been playing where a lawyers are seeking victims to represent to bring a Camp Lejeune lawsuit for injuries and deaths from toxic chemicals and water contamination in the water supply at the marine corp base. In case you don't know what that is about, the story began in 1980.

At that time when in compliance with brand new regulations from the young U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, PA, the base began testing the water for trihalomehtanes. That same year, a laboratory from the U.S. Army Environmental Hygiene Agency began finding contamination from halogenated hydrocarbons in the water. In March 1981 one of the lab's reports, which was delivered to U.S. Marine officials, informed them that the drinking water was highly contaminated with other chlorinated hydrocarbons (solvents).

Possible sources of the contamination were identified as solvents from a nearby, off-base dry cleaning company, from on-base units using solvent to degrease motors and other military equipment, and leaks from underground fuel storage tanks.

In 1982 the USMC hired a private company, Grainger Laboratories, to examine the problem. They provided the base commander with a report showing that the drinking water wells supplying water for the base were contaminated with PCE and TCE, the solvents used in drycleaning and equipment maintenance. The contractor delivered repeated warnings to base officials and was fired after delivering written warnings in December 1982, March 1983, and September 1983.

In a spring 1983 report to the EPA, Lejeune officials stated that there were no environmental problems at the base- they knowingly lied. In June 1983, North Carolina's water supply agency asked Lejeune officials for the lab’s reports on the water testing. Marine officials declined to provide the reports to the state agency.

In July 1984, a different company contracted by the U.S. EPA under the Superfund review of Lejeune and other military sites found benzene in the base's water, along with PCE and TCE. Marine officials shut down one of the contaminated wells at Camp Legeune in November 1984 and the others in early 1985. The Marines notified North Carolina of the contamination in December 1984. At this time the Marines did not disclose that benzene had been discovered in the water and stated to the media that the EPA did not mandate unacceptable levels of PCE and TCE.

Ultimately, it all came out as it always does. People were hurt, exposed to chemical contamination over an additional period of years after the contamination was discovered while the Camp Lejeune denied the existence of the problem. EPA did develop limits for PCE and TCE as they are now doing with other chemicals (for example PFAS’s). The water contamination probable began in the 1950’s long before anyone was aware of it, but continued on for decades even after the problem was known by some. That is a sin.

We are far more aware of the potential for contamination now and are aware that new concerns do emerge as we learn more. People, I am afraid do not change. The current analogy for the data centers in Prince William County is that they will impact the Occoquan Watershed which is the drinking water supply for over a million people and the most urbanized watershed in the nation. No significant change should take place without performing careful study first. That is not the plan of Prince William County. Fairfax Water has taken the unusual step to ask that Prince William County convene the Occoquan Basin Policy Board and oversee a Comprehensive Study of the proposed PW Digital Gateway CPA and the 2040 Comprehensive Plan Update to evaluate their impact on water quality and quantity in the Occoquan Reservoir before any action is taken. The cost to restore the basin and treat the water is in the billions of dollars that will be borne by all of us, the residents who remain- not those who get the windfall from the sale of their land and dash off with their millions. However, Prince William County has chosen to move ahead without performing any studies first. That is malfeasance. Shana tova.