Congress pushes military to release data on Camp Lejeune water

[unhappycamper]

Congress pushes military to release data on Camp Lejeune water
By Barbara Barrett | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, May 28, 2010

WASHINGTON — Angered by what they consider the military's reticence to reveal all it knows about decades of water contamination on a North Carolina Marine base, lawmakers want to force the Marine Corps and the Navy to produce an inventory of all the documentation scientists need to understand the contamination.

Senators and members of the House of Representatives have inserted language into the 2011 defense authorization bill that would require Defense Secretary Robert Gates to certify that the military has done so.

More than a million people are thought to have been exposed to the contaminated water from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. Some 156,000 people from all 50 states have registered with the Marines to get information on the contamination, which many say has caused a variety of cancers and other ailments.

The House version of the bill gives the Defense Department 180 days to act; the Senate version offers 90 days.

For the past year, federal scientists have complained that the Marine Corps and its parent agency, the Department of the Navy, haven't been fully open about the reams of documentation the military holds on the tainted water.

[Scuba]

1. No, that would be supporting the troops....

...in a way that goes beyond a little yellow ribbon.