Vet’s plea to Corps: Step up

Tom and Anne Townsend had been waiting for six years for the Department of the Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps to take responsibility for the death of their infant son in 1967.

Now the retired Marine major waits alone in his house in Moscow, Idaho. His wife died Feb. 22 at age 73 of liver disease and exposure to volatile organic compounds in the water she drank at Camp Lejeune, N.C., nearly 40 years ago.

Up until January 2000, when the Townsends learned about the contamination at Camp Lejeune, Anne always wondered what she had done to cause her baby’s fatal cardiovascular birth defect.

“I’m very pleased to find out what it is that caused the demise of my child,” she told The Spokesman-Review two years ago, “because I always thought it was something I did. And what I did was drink water.”

Tom Townsend, 75, wonders how many more of the thousands of people who passed through the largest Marine base on the East Coast have died or lost loved ones. The Marines, he said, have never taken a count of the potential victims.

The Marine Corps, responding in writing to questions from The Spokesman-Review for a February 2004 story about the Townsends, said it “cares deeply about our current and former Marines and their families” and supports federal efforts to find out who might have been affected by contamination before there were federal drinking water standards.

But Townsend and other retired Marines and their families do not believe the Corps has done all that it can to help identify those whose health may have been affected by contaminated water in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

“They don’t seem to get it that they are ruining their own system,” Townsend said. “I’m not anti-military; I just want them to stop hurting people.”

Tests done in 1982 of the groundwater beneath the base showed levels of trichloroethylene (TCE) as high as 1,400 parts per billion, 280 times the level now considered safe. Tetrachloroethylene (PCE) was found as high as 43 times what’s considered safe.

TCE, a chemical degreaser, leaked or was poured into soil at the base. PCE was dumped into the ground by a dry-cleaning business across the street from the base. Both compounds have been linked to birth defects, stunted growth, damaged kidneys and livers, weakened immune systems and childhood cancers, including leukemia.

The Los Angeles Times reported recently that the Marine Corps knew about water contamination at Camp Lejeune in 1980, but waited until 1985 to disclose it or make changes.

The Marine Corps told The Spokesman-Review in 2004 that it informed the state of North Carolina of volatile organic compounds in Lejeune water as early as December 1984. Since then, the Corps said, it has assisted the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in identifying potential participants in its studies of health effects.

The Government Accountability Office is investigating allegations that the Marine Corps covered up the water contamination. A study of more than 12,000 children born at the base from 1968 to 1985 remains unfinished. A study of the effects of contamination on adult Marines and their spouses has never been started, Townsend said.

After Anne Townsend’s death, her husband found a letter she had written in March 2001 to Newsweek after the family became aware of the contamination. It was never published, and she never told him she had written it. She describes being a Marine bride in the 1950s: “During the early years, there was one underlying message,” she wrote. “Do what’s expected and the Corps will take care of you.”

She had three children. Her daughter, Aimee Bancroft, lives in Bend, Ore. Her son, Mark Townsend, lives in Moscow, Idaho. Christopher, the one born while the family lived at Camp Lejeune, lived only three and a half months. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

“I spent the next thirty-three years wondering what I had done to cause this genetic misfortune,” she wrote. “Not until early Spring, year 2000, did I learn of the role of the Marine Corps in this long-ago event.

“For those thousands of affected people – you are not alone. All you did was drink the water.”