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Camp Lejeune Victims Still Waiting. [1]

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Date: 2023-07-25  

I think most of you have heard of the Flint Water crisis. It was all over the news for months. How many of you have heard of the toxic water contamination aboard Camp Lejeune, NC, between 1953-1987? Some of you may have seen the Law Firm commercials in the last year or so, since the PACT Act was signed. However, how many of you know the history or the fact that what happened aboard Camp Lejeune, was the biggest water contamination event in US history. The base was heavily contaminated with TCE, PCE, Benzine and Vinyl Chloride. There were also other chemicals found there, but those four, had the highest concentration. They are now also finding PFAS/PFOS. It affected an estimated 800,000 Marines, Navy personal, their families, civilian workers and contractors. This number does not cover subsequent generations. Thousands have already died.

While I was not at Camp Lejeune, my late husband was. He died in 2017, just a few months after his 65th birthday. We also lost what would have been his only child, to a miscarriage at around 3 months. My now partner is another Camp Lejeune Marine. He is 40% service connected to the water. They have warned us that the condition he suffers from now, has a strong chance of developing into Leukemia. Despite this, he still continues to fight for our community.

On August the 10th, 2022, President Biden signed the PACT Act into law. Section 804 of that act, contains the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022. It gives affected Veterans, their families and civilian workers, the limited right to sue the US government for the harm that they have suffered. We have a two year window, from the day it was signed, to file. That window is rapidly running out and so far there has been no resolution.

The DoN, Navy JAG and DoJ are slow walking the whole process. Despite the first anniversary of the signing of the bill being only two weeks away, no settlements have been offered. They still have not put the machinery in place to deal with the volume of claims they have received. An attorney leadership council was recently chosen, however that has bought another set of problems for us, which I will address in another diary. In the meantime, while they play their fiddles, members of our community are getting sicker and dying. Our community is suffering financial hardship, losing their homes, livelihoods, etc. We need your help.

How can you help? We have two immediate problems. Getting DoJ, DoN and JAG to stop dragging their feet over getting this resolved. We also need to ensure that attorney fees are capped. Currently there are no caps on fees. In the original bill the fees were capped at 20% for a claim that is resolved through a settlement offer and 25% for those that go to trial. An attorney employed lobbyists to have those caps removed. As a result, some attorneys are charging 40 — 60% of any settlement, plus other fees. This could result in veterans owing money. Currently Reps Jerrold Nadler and Mark Takano have a proposed bill to cap attorney fees at 20% for a settlement and 33.3% for those cases that go to trial.

newhampshirebulletin.com/…

It would be very helpful if each of you could contact your Congressional representatives, most of you have two Senators and one Representative, and ask them to please put pressure on DoN, Navy JAG and DoJ to get our claims moving. It would also be very helpful if each of you could ask them to support the bill that Reps Nadler and Takano are proposing. There is an urgency in this. These men and women served this country. They fought for all our freedoms and they did not deserve to be poisoned on American soil. Please help.

I will be writing some more diaries on Camp Lejeune and what happened there.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/25/2183317/-Camp-Lejeune-Victims-Still-Waiting

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