Veterans who contracted crippling diseases after drinking, cooking with and bathing in the tainted water at a North Carolina Marine Corps base were finally granted disability status from the Department of Veterans Affairs Thursday, despite the fact that the government has known about contaminants there for decades.
The VA’s decision to offer disability benefits to veterans who served at Camp Lejeune between 1953 and 1987, when the water was supposedly contaminated with a host of toxic chemicals, capped off years of struggles for veterans and their advocates to earn such compensation.
North Carolina Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis praised the long-awaited ruling Thursday.
“The VA has conceded that it will no longer deny disability benefits to Camp Lejeune victims based on ridiculous scientific claims,” Burr said.
“The VA is finally granting some justice to veterans who were exposed to contaminated drinking water while assigned to Camp Lejeune,” said Tillis. “The victims of this tragedy have waited far too long to receive disability benefits.”
The move Thursday will extend disability benefits to Camp Lejeune veterans who have one of eight illnesses linked to exposure to the base’s water, including leukemia and liver cancer.
In August, the VA began offering “presumptive disability status” to eligible veterans with a more limited range of conditions. At the time, Burr blasted the VA for only offering those benefits under intense pressure.
The Marine Corps first found evidence of toxic chemicals in the drinking water at Camp Lejeune in 1982, according to the Center for Disease Control.
A dry cleaner located off the base was not disposing of its waste properly, causing perchloroethylene and other harmful chemicals to seep into the water supply. Officials closed some contaminated water wells in 1985, but others continued to provide Marines and their families with water until 1987.
Exposure to the chemicals even affected babies conceived and born at the base during that time period.
Documents reportedly show warnings about the toxic water supply were ignored by military officials for years, even after receiving scientific evidence that the water was tainted with something harmful. That dismissal of evidence allowed toxic water to flow through the base for several additional years, sickening thousands more veterans and their family members.
In 1997, the government sponsored a study of the water contamination and misleadingly concluded that those who were exposed to it were unlikely to contract cancer.
It wasn’t until 2010 that the report was withdrawn and Congress began investigating claims from Camp Lejeune families that their cancers and other serious illnesses were linked to the time they spent on the base.
Years after the last toxic wells were shuttered, veterans hit the Marine Corps with waves of lawsuits in an attempt to seek compensation for the diseases they contracted. Some were unsuccessful, such as a major suit in North Carolina that was reportedly shut down over a law that bars legal action more than a decade after exposure to a chemical, even if the disease in question doesn’t appear in a victim for much longer.
In 2012, then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said extending health care benefits to veterans stricken by Camp Lejeune’s water supply was still “premature.”
Later that same year, President Obama signed a law offering victims VA health care benefits.
But it would take more than three more years of pushing before many affected veterans would be eligible for disability benefits given the exposure to harmful toxins they encountered while on the job.
“The water at Camp Lejeune was a hidden hazard, and it is only years later that we know how dangerous it was,” said VA Secretary Robert McDonald in response to the VA’s ruling Thursday.
While critics argue the government knew about that danger for far too long, the move marked a significant victory for families who have been fighting the VA for years in order to get the benefits they deserve.
