The Justice Department announced Tuesday it has approved a historic number of settlements for victims of contaminated water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, approving 649 Elective Option offers worth $175 million over the past three weeks alone.
Since Jan. 20, 2025, the department has paid out more than $421 million in settlements to service members and others harmed by toxic water exposure at the base. The total number of approved settlement offers since the Elective Option program launched in 2023 has reached 2,531, amounting to more than $708 million, according to the department.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said the increase reflects a reprioritization of approving settlements for Camp Lejeune victims and families. “At the direction of the President and Attorney General, this Department of Justice has reprioritized approving settlements for Camp Lejeune victims and families, many of whom sadly had to wait years for justice,” Woodward said, adding that the department would continue approving settlements on a weekly basis.
The legal basis for the payouts is the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022, Section 804 of the broader PACT Act signed into law on Aug. 10, 2022. The law was designed to compensate service members and others exposed at the base between 1953 and 1987 who developed cancer or other illnesses that were at least as likely as not caused by water contamination. Two of the eight water supply systems at Camp Lejeune were contaminated during that period, with a third intermittently receiving contaminated water during shortages.
The Elective Option program, created jointly by the Justice Department and the Department of the Navy in 2023, was intended as an alternative to litigation, offering a faster and less costly path to compensation for qualifying claimants. Individual payouts under the program range from $100,000 to $550,000 and are available regardless of whether a claimant was present in a part of the base that received contaminated water.
The estimated face value of all claims submitted to the Department of the Navy exceeds $335 trillion, the department said.
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