Government Executive - Authors - Mike Magner

Victims of Toxic Chemicals Fight for Benefits From VA

Mike Magner, National Journal — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 10:47:52 -0500

Veterans who were exposed to toxic contaminants during their service are increasingly becoming casualties in a war with the government—particularly the Veterans Affairs Department—which they say has a record of delaying and denying benefits promised to them by acts of Congress.

The list of victims is growing, especially among former Marines who spent time at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina when the drinking water was tainted with carcinogens for decades from hazardous-waste dumping at one of the largest military bases in the country.

At least two men who were assigned to Camp Lejeune when the water was contaminated died in the past year from breast cancer, which is extremely rare in males; another is dying of lung cancer his doctor says was caused by the base's poisoned water; and another says he cannot afford treatment for liver cancer he believes stems from chemical exposure at Camp Lejeune.

The tragedies are occurring despite a law signed by President Obama in 2012 providing VA health care for Marines and family members who lived at Camp Lejeune for three or more months between 1957 and 1987 and have since incurred any of 15 specific diseases, including breast, liver, and lung cancer. Not a single veteran or family member has yet received the full coverage guaranteed by the law because the VA spent two years drafting regulations for how it will be provided. The new rules were finally issued in September and went into effect this week.

"The Department of Veterans Affairs is committed to providing the best care for veterans and families related to Camp Lejeune historical drinking water contamination, as required by law," the VA said in announcing the regulations last month. The VA did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Meanwhile, victims of illnesses linked to Camp Lejeune's water who have sued the government for damages were dealt a devastating blow this month when a federal appeals court ruled that a North Carolina environmental law prevents them from filing claims more than 10 years after the last act of contamination at the base. Poisoned wells at Camp Lejeune were shut down in 1985, and even though many of the health effects from drinking the tainted water did not show up until long after 1995, the Obama administration argued that the North Carolina "statute of repose" took precedence over the federal Superfund law, which allows lawsuits against polluters for up to two years after the discovery of harm caused by their pollution. The Supreme Court sided with the government in June, effectively blocking claims filed by Camp Lejeune victims after 1995.

"Where else do you have a president who signs a law acknowledging we were poisoned by our government and then less than two years later, that same administration used a legal technicality to exempt itself from the consequences of their disregard of the environment," said Mike Partain, a Florida man who was born at Camp Lejeune in 1968 and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. "Only in America."

Male breast cancer is among the many horrible legacies of Camp Lejeune, where a dozen wells serving some of the base's most populated areas contained the industrial cleaning solvents TCE and PCE, benzene from fuel leaks, and other highly toxic chemicals from at least the mid-1950s until the tainted wells were shut down in 1985.

Hundreds of former Marines who were stationed at the base when the water was contaminated blame the pollution for premature deaths and life-threatening illnesses in their families. One of the leaders of victims seeking compensation, former drill instructor Jerry Ensminger, lost a 9-year-old daughter who was conceived at Camp Lejeune to leukemia in 1985.

As many as a million people lived and worked at Camp Lejeune over the several decades that the drinking water was contaminated, and as of this summer more than 13,600 veterans and nearly 1,200 of their family members have inquired about coverage for health problems they believe are related to their exposure, according to the VA.

Many others may not even be aware that toxic chemicals at the base caused them harm years later. More than 15,000 babies born at Camp Lejeune could have been exposed in utero or very early in their lives, but neither the Marine Corps nor the VA has attempted to notify all of them, said Chris Orris, a Denver auditor who was born at Camp Lejeune and nearly died from a heart defect that was discovered three years ago when he was 36 years old.

"Between my two parents, they did 56 years in the Marine Corps, and I'd never heard about the toxic water at Camp Lejeune until 2011, when all of a sudden I started becoming weak, and nobody could figure out why," Orris said in June when he joined a panel that is advising federal health officials studying the problems at the base.

After surgery that saved his life in 2012, Orris said he learned that Obama signed a law that August guaranteeing full health coverage through the VA for any of 15 illnesses that could be linked to the water at Camp Lejeune. But it took the VA until this month to put rules into effect for providing health care—with no copayments—to affected veterans and family members. The VA said it will now begin reimbursing veterans who paid for treatment of any of the listed illnesses after Aug. 6, 2012, the date Obama signed the law, and family members who paid for treatment after March 26, 2013, the date Congress appropriated money for the program.

The coverage would have been helpful for Peter Devereaux and Tom Gervasi, two former Marines who died in the past year from complications caused by male breast cancer. Devereaux, of North Andover, Mass., died in August at age 52 after a six-year battle with metastatic breast cancer; he was stationed at Camp Lejeune from 1980 to 1982. Gervasi, who joined the Marines out of high school in Rochester, N.Y., and served at Camp Lejeune in the mid-1950s, died last December of breast cancer that had spread to his bones; he was 77.

The two were among more than 80 men who spent time at Camp Lejeune and were later diagnosed with breast cancer, a disease that will only affect an estimated 2,360 men nationwide in 2014, according to the American Cancer Society. Devereaux and Gervasi were among the few male breast cancer victims the VA has acknowledged were sickened by the water at Camp Lejeune—both were granted disability benefits after years of appeals to the VA.

According to VA statistics, only 27 percent of former Marines who have sought disability payments for male breast cancer have been granted benefits, while 76 percent of women veterans with breast cancer have received disability benefits. The VA says it is still awaiting studies by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help determine whether male breast cancer is linked to the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune. The studies have been in the works for years.

Many other veterans are fighting the VA for help with illnesses they believe were caused by Camp Lejeune's water.

Calvin Hopper of Decatur, Ala., received a letter from an oncologist clearly stating that his small-cell lung cancer was caused by the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, where he was stationed in the early 1980s, but he has repeatedly been denied disability benefits by the VA.

Another former Marine, John Flynn, wrote to the VA in September after it published the pending rules for providing health coverage to Camp Lejeune victims. "I was stationed at Camp Lejeune for approximately two years, 77-79," wrote Flynn, who did not give his home address. "I have suffered many ailments rendering me unable to work, difficult to exist. I have been diagnosed with Liver Cancer I have been told that I am dying. I haven't seen a doctor in two years. I have no insurance or Money. I need your help ASAP. please."

A slide presentation obtained from the VA suggests that staffers there are being trained to deny benefits to Camp Lejeune victims whenever possible. "If a clinician comes to the conclusion that it is more likely than not that the patient's medical condition is due to causes other than exposure to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, then VA should not waive copayments for veterans or reimburse care for [family members]," said one of the slides prepared for staff training by Terry Walters, the VA's deputy chief consultant on post-deployment health.

Some veterans have also been met with blank stares in VA offices when they ask about reimbursement of medical costs for diseases related to Camp Lejeune.

Lea Ann Andersen, a former Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune in 1976, said she has two of the 15 illnesses covered by the 2012 law, but was told by VA officials at the office in Austin, Texas, that they had never heard about the toxic water at Camp Lejeune. She said she is still being billed for treatment costs not covered by her own private insurance.

Walters, who trains VA staffers across the country how to handle health claims, recently told the advisory panel on Camp Lejeune studies that the education process is slow and tedious. "And I have no control over separate divisions or 15 separate VA medical centers," she said.

Camp Lejeune veterans are not alone in battling the VA for health coverage and disability benefits for diseases they believe were caused by toxic chemical exposures in the military. Former Air Force crews who flew C-123 transport planes contaminated with Agent Orangeduring the Vietnam War are continuing to fight for compensation for illnesses they believe were caused by the exposure.

And thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who say they have health problems caused by breathing toxic fumes from open burn pits used during the wars say they regularly are denied disability benefits by the VA.

Mike Magner is the author of A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families.

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Four Years Later, a Sharp Divide on Gulf Oil Spill

Mike Magner, National Journal — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 11:11:34 -0400

The state of the Gulf of Mexico four years after the worst oil spill in U.S. history is as unclear as a marsh soaked with petrochemicals. The state of BP, on the other hand, is powerful and proud, with the British energy giant showing little tolerance for criticism over the incident.

A spate of reports and press releases leading up to the anniversary of the disaster, which took place April 20, 2010, sketch a picture of a region still awash in oil and tar, with fish and wildlife struggling to survive and thousands of people suffering from both economic and physical or mental distress.

Those assessments stand in stark contrast to BP's declaration last week that "active cleanup" is complete and ongoing restoration work "is helping the Gulf return to its baseline condition, which is the condition it would be in if the accident had not occurred."

An official accounting of the spill's impacts won't come until at least next year, when the government completes a Natural Resource Damage Assessment as part of its continuing litigation against BP and its partners over the spill, which released more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf, according to the government.

The trial in federal court in New Orleans is currently between phases, with a ruling pending from U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier on exactly how much oil leaked from BP's Macondo well. The company argued last fall that the amount was about 2.5 million barrels, while the Justice Department puts the figure at more than 4 million barrels. Once that issue is settled, the final phase of the trial will begin in January to determine what if any fines and penalties should be assessed.

In the meantime, residents of the five Gulf states continue to be bombarded with information about the effects of the spill, much of it dramatic and disturbing. Reports come in regularly about beaches being re-oiled by storms and tar balls washing ashore. Florida officials announced in February that about 1,250 pounds of petroleum waste was found moving through shallow waters off the coast of Pensacola.

Studies by federal scientists, university researchers, and environmental groups have documented deformities in fish embryos exposed to oil, sick and dying dolphins, and hundreds of dead turtles floating in the sea. And a documentary out on Friday, Vanishing Pearls, describes the devastating impact of the spill on African-American oystermen in coastal Louisiana.

The effects on others in the seafood and fishing industries, especially the thousands who helped with the spill cleanup in 2010, are especially troubling. A National Institutes of Health study is tracking 33,000 people who were exposed to the oil and is finding a host of respiratory problems and skin conditions. Others report that fishermen affected by the spill are more likely to have bouts with depression.

As part of the federal case against it, BP agreed in February to a settlement that will compensate as many as 200,000 cleanup workers who can document illnesses related to the spill. The amounts could be as much as $60,700 per individual, in some cases.

But the company has been far less willing to concede the harm done to natural resources, and has lashed out at its critics.

"Despite the numerous signs of progress—from record tourism to a thriving fishing industry and the end of active cleanup operations—some advocacy groups refuse to acknowledge evidence of the region's recovery," BP's Geoff Morrell said in a statement last week. "Instead, they cherry-pick the findings of scientific reports, or blithely mischaracterize them, to support their agendas."

Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, responded: "Four years after the initial explosion, the oil is not gone and it is still having an impact on wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has chosen to attack the science and its messengers instead of taking responsibility for restoring the Gulf."

So far BP says it has spent about $27 billion on claims payments, cleanup work, and restoration projects in the Gulf, and it has set aside about $15 billion more in anticipation of fines and penalties. It has also denied billions of dollars in claims that it deemed fraudulent or excessive.

"We have looked to do the right thing by those who were affected by the accident and spill," BP chief executive Robert Dudley said at the company's annual meeting April 10. "But also to do the right thing by our investors when it became clear that the system for compensating claimants was subject to a considerable number of unfounded claims."

After banning BP from new federal contracts in November 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency lifted the suspension March 13 in return for a five-year agreement by the company to make improvements in safety and corporate ethics. Less than two weeks later, a BP refinery south of Chicago leaked more than 1,600 gallons of oil into Lake Michigan, the source of fresh water for millions in the region, and howls were heard again about the company's environmental record.

"Time and again BP has shown it can't do business without putting people and wildlife at serious risk," said Jaclyn Lopez, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "How many more spills will it take for the Obama administration to say enough is enough?"

BP says that at no time has the spill affected drinking-water supplies and that all the oil has been cleaned up. The company was so mindful of its reputation after the incident that it even demanded a correction in a student newspaper at Albion College in Michigan after a columnist wrote that a BP spokesman was not well informed about the Lake Michigan spill.

The company's aggressive posture has served BP investors well. Despite the $40 billion hit from the Gulf spill that has forced it to sell off assets and cut capital expenditures, BP is getting high ratings from analysts and expects to increase its drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico, where it currently has 10 rigs operating. The company recently acquired 24 new leases in the Gulf for $41.6 million, including 11 tracts not far from the formation where the Macondo blowout occurred.

Even BP's former CEO, Tony Hayward, appears to have landed well after being dismissed by the company in the wake of the spill. A London newspaper reported this month that Hayward is likely to become chairman of the commodities giant Glencore Xstrata, while another said Hayward and his predecessor as BP CEO, Lord John Browne, are teaming up on a $281 million drilling project off the coast of Angola.

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Health Agency Chief Resigns After Clash With Marines Over Camp Lejeune Problems

Mike Magner, National Journal — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 14:18:00 -0400

The head of a federal agency that investigates health problems linked to toxic-waste sites has stepped down after a clash with former Marines who believe their families were harmed by poisoned drinking water at Camp Lejeune.

Tanja Popovic's sudden resignation followed a tumultuous seven weeks as acting director of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during which she assured West Virginia residents that their water was safe to drink after a toxic chemical spill in January, questioned the need for a study of cancers that may be linked to Camp Lejeune's tainted water, and sent scolding emails to aides of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Popovic also had some tense email exchanges with the leader of a group advocating for victims of Camp Lejeune's contamination, former Marine Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger, in which she accused Ensminger and his colleagues of sending messages that contained "disrespectful, condescending, and even offensive content."

"I take attacks on my professional and personal integrity very seriously," Popovic wrote to Ensminger on March 12, "and I am profoundly saddened to see that you will stop at nothing."

The friction culminated in a meeting on Capitol Hill last week between staff of lawmakers concerned about Popovic's handling of Camp Lejeune issues and congressional liaisons for Popovic's division, the CDC, and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees both agencies. That meeting included aides to the two senators from North Carolina, where Camp Lejeune is located, as well as Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., author of the federal law that established the agency Popovic ran.

The next business day, Popovic's resignation was announced in an email to top managers at the CDC, headquartered in Atlanta.

A spokeswoman for the CDC, Bernadette Burden, said she could only confirm that Popovic's tenure as acting director of the agency began on Jan. 26 and ended Monday. "It's a personnel matter," Burden said, so no information about the resignation would be discussed.

Reached at her home in Stone Mountain, Ga., the scientist who worked for the federal government for 25 years declined to comment. "I would not like to make any comments, thank you," Popovic said before hanging up.

Widespread dumping of military waste at Camp Lejeune over at least four decades caused drinking-water supplies at the sprawling base on the Atlantic Coast to be contaminated with toxic chemicals from the 1950s until 1985, when 10 tainted wells were finally shut down. As many as a million Marines and family members, as well as civilian employees at the base, could have been exposed to the polluted water, and many of them believe illnesses and deaths were caused by it.

Congress passed a law in 2012 providing health care for Marines and family members who have specific illnesses that can be linked to the contamination, but the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is still conducting studies of the pollution's health effects.

One of the studies sought by victims of the contamination would attempt to determine incidences of cancer among former residents of Camp Lejeune. But last month Popovic told lawmakers in a meeting called to get an update on the study that the agency had neither the authority nor expertise to conduct a cancer-incidence study.

The meeting prompted Dingell and the two senators from North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan and Republican Richard Burr, to write HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on March 12 urging that the study be done and also asking that Popovic's agency work on better relations with victims of the Camp Lejeune contamination.

"For reasons we cannot yet discern, the desire for open communication seems to have waned within ATSDR in recent months," Dingell, Hagan, and Burr wrote to Sebelius.

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Dreaded yellow light may be trap for traffic violations

Mike Magner, National Journal — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 10:21:21 -0500

The timing of yellow lights on traffic signals at many intersections is purposely set to a minimum so more drivers can be ticketed for running red lights, says the 30-year-old activist group based in Waunakee, Wis.

This past summer in New Jersey, the transportation department ordered 21 cities and towns to suspend the use of red-light cameras at 63 intersections because the timing of yellow lights at those locations was below the minimum established by state law.

Other cities—including Dallas; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Union City, Calif.—have been caught shortening yellow lights in the past decade as red-light cameras have become sources of steady revenue. The cameras snap photos of license plates on any vehicles in an intersection while the light is red, and citations, often carrying fines of $100 or more, are mailed to the registration’s address.

“Cities and for-profit camera companies maximize revenue by setting yellow-light times that are too short,” said National Motorists Association President Gary Biller. “It is a violation of the public trust, and it jeopardizes motorist, cyclist, and pedestrian safety.”

Ironically, slightly longer yellow lights can significantly increase safety by allowing more time for intersections to clear, the group says. Biller cited one study that found just one additional second of yellow time can reduce the number of collisions in an intersection by 40 percent.

Longer yellow lights also greatly reduce the number of red-light violations. A recent Texas study concluded, "Lengthening the yellow light interval by as little as 0.5 to 1.5 seconds decreases the incidence of red-light running violations by 50 percent or more,” Biller said in a Nov. 16 letter to the head of the Federal Highway Administration, Victor Mendez.

The NMA wants the FHWA to mandate minimum national standards for yellow-light duration. Currently, the federal agency offers only “guidance” suggesting that yellow lights should last between 3 and 6 seconds. “There’s an ongoing debate in the traffic-engineering community about what the standard should be,” said NMA spokesman John Bowman.

When New Jersey passed a law allowing red-light cameras in 2008, the Legislature established a formula for yellow-light duration. The minimum yellow time is 3 seconds at intersections where traffic is moving at 25 miles per hour, and the time goes up by a half-second for every 5 mph increase in traffic speed. So for intersections where traffic is approaching at 55 mph, the yellow light must be on for a minimum of 6 seconds.

“This requirement aims to ensure that the traffic signal is timed properly to provide motorists with sufficient time to avoid a violation and fine by entering an intersection when the light is red,” according to the New Jersey Transportation Department.

Chicago has locked in all of its yellow lights to last 3 seconds, even at intersections where traffic is moving at more than 40 mph, Biller said in his letter to Mendez. “It is not surprising that Chicago is able to generate annual red-light camera ticket revenue in excess of $70 million by setting its yellow lights at deficient 3.0 second intervals,” Biller wrote.

Matthew J. Weiss, a New York City lawyer who has built a practice around defending motorists in traffic cases, warns drivers on his blog, “If you see yellow and you are not already in the intersection, hit your brakes.”

But that can be a dangerous practice in some situations, according to Hesham Rakha, a Virginia Tech engineering professor who has conducted studies of driver behavior when traffic signals turn yellow.

At the moment the light turns yellow, every motorist approaching the intersection is suddenly “trapped in a dilemma zone” where an instant decision must be made whether it’s safer to stop or proceed.

“If the driver decides to stop when he or she should have proceeded, rear-end crashes could occur,” Rakha wrote in a study last year for the Virginia Transportation Department. “Alternatively, if the driver proceeds when he or she should have stopped, he or she would run the red light and a right-angle crash with side-street traffic could occur.”

Rakha’s study also found that for the safest decision-making, “in general, female drivers need longer yellow times compared to male drivers. In addition, the age slightly affects the required yellow time, where older drivers need slightly longer yellow times when compared to younger drivers.”

The bottom line for the motorists’ association is that drivers should be given as much time as reasonably possible to decide whether to brake or accelerate on yellow, regardless of what it might do to a city’s traffic-ticket revenues. “Short yellow lights force many responsible motorists to make split-second decisions that can lead to unwarranted traffic tickets, or worse, intersection collisions,” Biller said.]]>

BP agrees to $4.5 billion settlement of criminal charges in Gulf spill

Mike Magner, National Journal — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:48:00 -0500

This story has been updated with details of the agreement.

In a plea agreement with the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, British oil giant BP will pay $4 billion in penalties, including $1.256 billion in criminal fines, over five years, plus $525 million in claims to the SEC over three years, the company announced on Thursday.

As part of the agreement, BP will plead guilty to 11 felony counts related to the deaths of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon that exploded while a BP well was being drilled in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. The company also will plead guilty to a felony charge of obstruction of Congress, a misdemeanor charge of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and a misdemeanor charge of violating the Clean Water Act.

The bulk of the penalties—$2.4 billion—will go to the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation for restoration work in the Gulf of Mexico. Another $350 will go to the National Academy of Sciences for research on the effects of the spill, which dumped nearly 5 billion barrels of oil into the Gulf over 87 days.

The settlement, if accepted by a federal judge, does not end the litigation over the Gulf spill. BP and its partners in the deepwater drilling accident still face civil charges by the Justice Department.

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Patience among Camp Lejeune's military families is wearing thin

Mike Magner, National Journal — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:28:00 -0400

The largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast appears to be the site of the biggest water-contamination case in history, with more than a million people potentially exposed to carcinogens such as TCE and benzene from the 1950s to 1985, when the poisoned wells were shut down.

Evidence is mounting that hundreds, if not thousands, of cancer cases, birth defects, and other serious illnesses may be linked to degreasing fluids that were dumped on the ground and petrochemicals that spilled from fuel tanks at the coastal base over many years. The deadly chemicals often ended up seeping through the sandy soil and into the aquifer that supplied drinking water.

The government’s response to the problems—which many victims of the contamination say has been characterized by stonewalling—is now in its 27th year. And patience among the affected Marines is running very, very thin.

One of the leaders of a large group of former Marines who believe they were harmed by Camp Lejeune’s water started an online petition last month demanding that Congress and the Veterans Affairs Department compensate victims of the contamination. Within weeks,the petition on the website Change.org gained more than 117,000 signers.

“Those of us who drank the water have suffered from cancers, leukemias, miscarriages, and birth defects from the cancer-causing chemicals in the water,” wrote the petition organizer, Jerry Ensminger, a former drill instructor who spent nearly 25 years in the Marine Corps. His daughter Janey was born at the Marine base in 1976 and died of leukemia nine years later.

“Thousands of people who were poisoned at Camp Lejeune are struggling without access to the medical care they need,” Ensminger said. “It’s time for the U.S. government to provide the people who are still suffering the effects of the toxic water at Camp Lejeune with health care. We volunteered to serve and protect our nation.... We never volunteered to be poisoned by our own leaders.”

A steady series of passionate comments have been added to the petition since Ensminger posted it in mid-May.

Christy Basden: “In memory of my father Cleve J Bentle, GYSGT (RET), who served for 22 yrs and passed away at the age of 53 from prostate cancer caused by this contaminated water.”
Roseanne Debruyn: “My ex husband of 17 years is 4th stage colon cancer. served in camp Lejeune in 82 and 83. He is very sick. Feeding tube, chemo every week. He’s 48 years old!!! My 16 year old son is devastated!”
Joyce Bentle: “My grandson was born with [Duchenne muscular dystrophy]. We never had any type of MD in our family. We were told by the doctors that his cause is unknown. Normally the mother of the child is the carrier.... My daughter (his mother) was conceived at Camp Lejeune North Carolina. We think that it had to be the water on base.”

The long saga of Camp Lejeune’s water problems began around World War II, when military bases throughout the country started washing down equipment such as tanks and planes with the powerful solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, recently declared a known human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency. The chemical compound, similar to lighter fluid, was usually allowed to drain off onto the ground, and at Camp Lejeune, which opened in 1942, it often percolated down to the groundwater.

A number of documented fuel spills also sent deadly chemicals such as benzene into the aquifer. The poisons probably began reaching harmful levels in some drinking-water wells by the 1960s. When EPA began requiring testing for TCE in the early ’80s, it became clear that the water supplied to some parts of the base was unsafe for consumption.

Ensminger, who has devoted most of his time to investigating the Marine Corps’ handling of the contamination since he discovered in 1997 that it probably caused his daughter’s death, has uncovered evidence that Camp Lejeune officials were aware of the problems as early as 1980 but did not remove the tainted wells from service until 1985.

Four years later, EPA declared Camp Lejeune a Superfund cleanup site, and investigators at the Centers for Disease Control began probing whether health problems could be linked to pollution at the base.

After countless studies, reports, and hearings over the past decade, current Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki recently declared it “premature” to link specific illnesses to Camp Lejeune’s water contamination without more scientific proof. Legislation requiring the government to provide health benefits for victims of the pollution remain bottled up in both the House and the Senate.

“Since when is the burden of proof placed on the victim and not the perpetrator?” Ensminger asked in an e-mail to National Journal Daily. “Now we have members of our Congress who are doing nothing more than playing political ‘gamesmanship’ with the lives of the very veterans they all so publicly claim to support! If ever there was an issue that should be bipartisan, it would be this one ... unfortunately, that is not the case.”

This article appeared in the Monday, June 25, 2012 edition of National Journal Daily.
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Reservists boost Coast Guard's efforts to clean up Gulf

Mike Magner and Margaret Amisan — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Just as the recreational boating season was hoisting its sails this spring, the Coast Guard -- responsible for marine safety in U.S. waters -- was faced with one of its biggest challenges in its 220-year history.

The BP oil spill that began April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico required the Coast Guard -- also charged with protecting the marine environment -- to deploy more than 2,000 personnel, about 20 cutters and nearly two dozen aircraft to take charge of the cleanup.

The response has been unprecedented, and has affected every U.S. port and some overseas locations where the Coast Guard is engaged in its missions as part of the Homeland Security Department.

"This has become a mission of unparalleled proportion," Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp said in an agencywide communication in June. "As time has passed, the breadth and scope of spill impacts have significantly expanded and require long-term, coordinated action" expected to last through the year.

At the same time, Papp issued a plea for volunteers from the 30,000-strong Coast Guard Auxiliary and said he would have to call up at least 1,500 of the 8,000 Coast Guard reservists to take on one-month or two-month tours of duty in the Gulf. The auxiliary volunteers and reservists supplement the Coast Guard's 42,000 active duty personnel, many of whom were transferred from other assignments to assist with the cleanup.

The Coast Guard Cutter Fir, a 225-foot ship based in Astoria, Ore., was among the vessels ordered to the Gulf in June. Normally the cutter's 50-person crew is tending buoys and other navigational aids along the Oregon and Washington coast, as well as maintaining weather stations, enforcing fishing laws, conducting rescues and managing security.

Monday the Fir, refitted with oil booms and skimming equipment, is collecting oily sludge from the Gulf's surface with a bag-like container called a "drogue" and transferring it to a collection barge running alongside.

"I never really anticipated bringing my ship to the Gulf of Mexico, but it's a credit to the crew that we can," the Fir's commanding officer, Cmdr. Mark Vlaun, told The Daily Astorian.

The Fir's absence hasn't affected boating safety, largely due to a spirit of togetherness among Pacific Northwest boaters, said Randy Henry of the Oregon State Marine Board. "I'm not personally aware of any issues where we've needed help or assistance or service out there," Henry said. "We certainly have a lot of cooperation in the Portland area and on the waterways."

With another Coast Guard cutter deployed to the Gulf, the San Francisco-based Aspen, there are about 100 fewer personnel to work the busy California waters, but those still on duty in the region have stepped up, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Laura Williams.

"People aren't able to take vacations or go on leave," she said. "We're not short-handed; there's just fewer people doing a lot more work. ... The Auxiliary has always been really active in this area, and they have been helping us out as well."

The same is true in San Diego, said Levi Read, the Coast Guard spokesman there. "Most of the people sent [to the Gulf] have been reserves," he said. "There have been active duty members sent, but for the most part it's the reserves taking the brunt of the load, which has been leaving other sectors fully staffed. People have had to work extra hours, but our response times and other duties haven't been affected."

Coast Guard personnel from the Great Lakes are also pitching in on the Gulf cleanup. Four airboats, a rescue helicopter, a Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System and 148 crew members have been dispatched to the Gulf from small-boat stations in Belle Isle, Mich.; Saginaw River, Mich.; Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.; Sturgeon Bay, Wis.; Alexandria Bay, N.Y.; and Marblehead, Ohio, according to the Coast Guard public affairs office.

Leaders of the Coast Guard, while extolling the efforts of the rank and file, acknowledge they are concerned about the effects of the massive response.

Rear Adm. Sandy Stosz, the Coast Guard's acting reserve director, told reservists she was worried about them in a letter posted on the Coast Guard Web site: "I am very concerned about how we can fully utilize the Reserve to support this operation without burning out our Reservists -- either in terms of demands and stresses on the individual Reservists, their families and employers or the statutory caps on our recall authority," she wrote.

Both Stosz and Papp say the spill has them already rewriting the Coast Guard's readiness plans, which had been based on plans for tanker spills and pipeline ruptures closer to shore, the two told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans last month.

"In all those cases, we were facing a finite level of oil, so we could plan for the equipment we'd need," Papp told the newspaper for a July 6 story. "But we've never had in the history of our country a spill go on for 80 days like this. Literally, we're dealing with an Exxon Valdez every five days."

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Congressional Research Service veteran steps down

Mike Magner — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Few people know more about government secrets -- not the secrets themselves but how they are kept -- than Harold Relyea, a leading authority on government institutions for 37 years at the Congressional Research Service.

Relyea, who began retirement this month in northern Virginia, wrote countless reports and numerous books on national security classifications, emergency powers and government efforts to suppress information. He also specialized in freedom of information laws and counseled lawmakers on the structure and functions of government institutions.

"He showed how secrecy had deep roots in American history," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy, sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists. "In a profound sense, he was an educator to a generation of congressmen and scholars and the public at large."

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said Relyea played a key advisory role when Congress was debating creation of the Homeland Security Department in 2002. "I remember being impressed by Dr. Relyea's depth of knowledge, and his timely and thorough responses to my requests for information," Byrd said.

A native of Oneida, N.Y., Relyea earned a doctorate in government at American University in 1971 and immediately joined the CRS, which had been chartered the year before. He soon became embroiled in government secrecy issues in 1975 as an adviser for the late Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, when he chaired the Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities.

Relyea said he plans to continue editing and writing, including a book on emergency powers. "I'm just not doing the daily grind," Relyea said.

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