Camp Lejeune contaminated water to be discussed

at Camp Lejeune, said Patrick Breysse, director of the ATSDR.

“We are committed to interacting with Marines who served at Camp Lejeune wherever they are around the country,” Dr. Breysse said.

With 14,520 people, Pennsylvania is the state with the fifth most people who have officially registered to get information through the Marines Corps’ website on Camp Lejeune’s water contamination issue.

For VA disability benefits, 486 veterans in the Pittsburgh area have filed Camp Lejeune contaminated water claims. Of those, 435 veterans have completed claims and 51 have pending claims as of Wednesday.

For Camp Lejeune Veterans health benefits, 233 Pittsburgh-area residents had applied for the program as of March 31.

Nearly 200 people had registered by Thursday to attend Saturday’s meeting. Registration is not required.

Jerry Ensminger, a Marine veteran who is a longtime advocate on the Camp Lejeune water contamination issue and will be on the CAP panel in Green Tree, claims that the ATSDR “dropped the ball” by failing to give people more advance notice of the Pittsburgh meetings.

A law enacted in 2012, named the Janey Ensminger Act, provides disability aid to Marines, The Marine Corps has been asking anyone who lived in or worked at its training base at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina prior to 1988 to register to receive information on the contamination. To date, 259,300 people have registered. Here are the top 10 states with the most registrants. but not their families or other civilians, affected by the contamination. It honors Mr. Ensminger’s daughter who was conceived when he lived on the base in 1975. She died of leukemia in 1985 at age 9.

As part of that law, the military last year issued a list of eight “presumptive” diseases that, if a service member was diagnosed with one of them and served at least 30 days at Camp Lejeune, is entitled to disability financial aid. The diseases are kidney cancer, liver cancer, bladder cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, adult leukemia, multiple myeloma, Parkinson’s disease, and aplastic anemia and other myelodysplastic syndromes.

Among other efforts underway are to get funding that would make disability payments to civilians who also were impacted by the contaminated water. “That is one of my goals to get money allocated for civilians,” Mr. Ensminger said. “We’ll get it.”

More immediately, he is struggling to get the federal government to do more to get the word out about meetings like the ones in Green Tree. The contract to hold the meetings in Green Tree was signed Feb. 28, he said, but local VA officials said they didn’t receive word until last week and then spread the word.

Dr. Breysse said the delay was simply because the ATSDR has to follow prescribed “protocols” to notify groups, but he expected to talk with the CAP panel this week about the issue.

While Ms. Craver was trying to do her part at the Thursday protest to get the word out, she wants people to know that while she’s happy to have won her case over her husband’s death, it is small solace.

“You know that $1,200 check I get every month?” she said, her eyes watering. “They could have it back in a heartbeat if I could have my husband back.”