Former residents beg for results in suspected contamination

ATLANTA - Federal scientists said Wednesday they could be months away from wrapping up a long-awaited study on whether contaminated water affected children at Camp Lejeune, the North Carolina Marine Corps' base where hundreds of thousands of residents may have been exposed to the tainted water supply over a 30-year span.

The news was little solace to members of a panel representing the former residents, who blasted government officials through a daylong meeting at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meeting in Atlanta.

"Nothing is happening here," said a frustrated Terry Dyer, who has a litany of health problems from living for 15 years on the base, where her father was a school principal.

"I'm tired of coming here," she said. "I'm tired of time away from my family. I'm tired of not knowing from day to day whether I'm going to die. I don't want to waste this time here because I want to be with my family."

The government's study is considered likely to influence the Pentagon's response to at least 850 pending legal claims by former residents of the Marine base who say their families were afflicted by the water before the tainted wells were shut off in the mid-1980s.

But the study can't be completed until a complex water modeling project tracking the contaminants' spread is completed, which could take another six weeks, scientists said.
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