Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act passes
Veterans appreciate Blumenthal’s help with disability benefits restoration bill
HARTFORD – Veterans expressed their gratitude to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal Monday for advocating for a bill that will restore disability benefits to Vietnam War veterans who were exposed to the toxins in the herbicide Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam’s coastal waters.
Blumenthal, D-Conn., included three Vietnam veterans in a news conference at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford to celebrate passage of the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act, which is awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature.
The Agent Orange Act of 1991 allowed veterans exposed to the herbicide to receive disability compensation for the diseases designated as “presumptive” to it, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and various cancers and skin diseases. But in 2002, the Department of Veterans Affairs limited the compensation mandate to veterans with those diseases whocould prove they served as “boots on the ground” in Vietnam or in inland waterways when they were exposed to Agent Orange.
“It seeped into the waters, it was used to wash, it was supposedly purified as drinking water, but the Agent Orange remained,” Blumenthal said. “The Blue Water Navy veterans were exposed to Agent Orange just as hurtfully and harmfully as the veterans who served as boots on the ground.”
Veterans who served in the waters off the coast of Vietnam or in bays and harbors were required to file individual claims to restore their benefits. Those claims have been decided on a case-by-case basis.
Conley Monk, Gerry Wright and Paul Scappaticci thanked Blumenthal for his support of legislation to help Vietnam veterans like them. Scappaticci said he has been waiting 17 years for his benefits claims to be approved after the VA rescinded Blue Water Navy eligibility.
The VA requires veterans to file for disability compensation within a year of exposure to Agent Orange, but Wright said he did not receive a diagnosis until eight years after he left Vietnam.
“How can we be treated or given disability for something we didn’t hear about for eight or nine years?” Wright said. “I separated (from Vietnam) in 1971. There were some who separated in ’65 who didn’t hear about it for 15 years.”
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District and a memberof the House Armed Services Committee, has co-sponsored the Blue Water bill for five congressional sessions in a row, starting in 2011. He said the VA was concerned removing the 2002 eligibility restriction would cost too much money.
“Sadly, this thing has taken so long that the universe (of Vietnam veterans) has started to decline,” Courtney said. “But the VA’s job is to work with veterans and Congress to find ways to offset any cost concerns that they have.”
The bill passed the House May 14 and the Senate June 12. It was presented to Trump, who is expected to sign it, on June 19.
The Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act also expands benefit eligibility to Korean War veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange in the demilitarized zone and to children of Vietnam War veterans who served in Thailand and were born with spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spine does not develop properly.
Garry Monk, Conley Monk’s brother and the Executive Director of the National Veterans Council for Legal Redress, said he stood at the conference “with mixed emotions.” He was happy to see the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act pass Congress, but the U.S. will continue to fight wars and create veterans who will come home with physical and mental health problems, he said.
“We’re asking the powers that be to create legislation, and I know Sen. Blumenthal will probably be the person to do so, legislation that’s already on the table and done so when [veterans] come out of the war, they get the services they need,” Monk said.
Tess Vrbin can be reached at tvrbin@courant.com.