By William R. Levesque, Times Staff Writer
Friday, November 6, 2009

The National Research Council released a controversial report in June that said science could not link polluted water at Camp Lejeune to illnesses suffered by thousands of residents who lived on the Marine Corps base.

The NRC, an arm of the nonprofit National Academies of Science that often advises government agencies, said no further study would prove such a link.

The Corps, under fire from veterans and family who say the water sickened them, sent news of the report to the 145,000 people on a health registry of former residents of the North Carolina base.

But there was something the Marine Corps didn't reveal.

It had quietly negotiated a $600,000 contract with the NRC in the months before the report's release, an agreement finalized on May 1. It called for the NRC to provide ongoing consultation on water contamination at Camp Lejeune.

Federal scientists and critics of the Marine Corps say the contract, obtained by the St. Petersburg Times on Friday, is a blatant conflict of interest, and some critics say it calls into question the accuracy of an NRC report that already has been criticized by some scientists.

"They've beaten us to death with the NRC report and pulled the wool over everybody's eyes," said Mike Partain, a Tallahassee resident who was born at Camp Lejeune in 1968 and was later diagnosed with a rare breast cancer he thinks is linked to bad water.

"The NRC report smelled rotten," he said, "and now we have a deal that smells even worse."

News of the contract is even causing anger at the usually staid Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the federal office spearheading health research at the base.

The ATSDR says drinking water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated for 30 years ending in 1987 by industrial solvents that are suspected carcinogens.