Over 500,000 people are asking the US military to pay for damages caused by contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base in North Carolina. The problem with the water was first discovered in 1982, but the contamination had been going on for decades before that. The toxic water may have harmed about a million people between 1953 and 1987, leading to serious health issues like kidney cancer, bladder cancer, and leukemia.
According to recent reports, the US Navy has received more than 546,500 claims from people who say they were affected. This number might change a bit as the Navy checks for duplicate claims. To be eligible for compensation, people had to submit their claims by August 10, which was the deadline set by a law called the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, signed into law two years ago.
The Navy is currently reviewing each claim and promises to handle them fairly and quickly. So far, more than 2,000 lawsuits have been filed in a federal court in North Carolina by those who didn’t get a resolution through the administrative process. The first court trials might start next year, but only about 150 claims have been resolved so far through administrative means.
If all the administrative claims end up going to court, this could become one of the largest compensation cases in history, similar to the 3M earplugs scandal. In that case, 390,000 troops sued 3M over faulty earplugs that caused hearing loss. 3M ended up paying over $6 billion to settle the claims.
Now, the Camp Lejeune water contamination case is shaping up to be a massive legal battle, with potentially huge payouts and many people seeking justice for the harm they’ve suffered.
