Camp Lejeune Digital Community Archive Project
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University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- 2021 Camp Lejeune Digital Community Archive Project: An Analysis of Digital Public History Efforts to Achieve Social Justice for the Camp Lejeune Drinking Water Contamination 1999-2017 Michael Partain University of Central Florida Part of the United States History Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020 University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Partain, Michael, "Camp Lejeune Digital Community Archive Project: An Analysis of Digital Public History Efforts to Achieve Social Justice for the Camp Lejeune Drinking Water Contamination 1999-2017" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-. 543. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020/543 CAMP LEJEUNE DIGITAL COMMUNITY ARCHIVE PROJECT: AN ANALYSIS OF DIGITAL PUBLIC HISTORY EFFORTS TO ACHIEVE SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR THE CAMP LEJEUNE DRINKING WATER CONTAMINATION 1999-2017. by MICHAEL PARTAIN B.A. Florida State University, 1992 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2021 Major Professor: Scot A. French © 2021 Michael Partain ii ABSTRACT This digital thesis seeks to evaluate the impact of the digitization of analog record archives in environmental justice activities for the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune Community. The details of the Camp Lejeune contaminated drinking water issue are firmly rooted in the analog era of record keeping and were all but forgotten by the affected community when the base was listed as a National Priority site in 1989. However, government public health activities at the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in the late 1990s and early 2000s resulted in the digitization of records from the military and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency onto CD-ROM discs and made available to the community and public. The conversion of the data from an analog paper format, restricted to onsite archives, into a digital medium provided the community an opportunity to independently assess the historical facts free from government interpretation and challenge the official Marine Corps narrative. My role as the community’s informal public historian allowed for the organization and utilization of these historical documents to create a community-based narrative using digital timelines. This work led to several congressional investigations into the drinking water contamination which were ultimately instrumental in the passage of legislative relief for the service personnel and their families who were exposed to the contaminated drinking water aboard the base. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is the love of one father for his daughter which has made all this possible. The Camp Lejeune contaminated drinking water story can not be told without Jerry Ensminger and his tireless efforts for justice for his daughter, Janey, and all of those poisoned while aboard the Marine base in North Carolina. Janey passed away at the age of nine from acute lymphocytic leukemia in 1985 after her in-utero exposure to high levels of volatile organic chemicals in the base’s drinking water. It is through Jerry Ensminger’s unrelenting fight for justice that I discovered my own exposures to the same contaminated drinking water, where I was conceived and born. A special acknowledgment is owed to the personnel at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and their work on Camp Lejeune. While at times contentious, the dedication of professionals like former ATSDR Director, Dr. Christopher Portier, current ATSDR Director, Dr. Patrick Breysse, Dr. Frank Bove, Mr. Morris Maslia, and Mr. Christopher Stallard has led to the re-evaluation of the exposures to the contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune. Finally, it was the quiet persistence and belief in my work from Drs. Scot French and Patrick Breysse for which I am indebted. I am grateful for the support I have received from the UCF Department of History and the faculty, in particular Drs. Richard Crepeau and Edward Dandrow. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ………………………………………………………….….vi INTRODUCTION......…………………………………………………………..….1 CHAPTER ONE: ESTABLISHING THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE….…………8 CHAPTER TWO: CREATING A COMMUNITY DIGITAL ARCHIVE….……28 CHAPTER THREE: ANALOG LEGACY IN A DIGITAL WORLD….………..40 APPENDIX A: CAMP LEJEUNE TIMELINE…………………….…………….50 APPENDIX B: HADNOT POINT FUEL FARM TIMELINE…………..……...113 APPENDIX C: VAPOR INTRUSION TIMELINE HADNOT POINT….....…..144 APPENDIX D: 2009 CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY………………….…..153 APPENDIX E: 2010 CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY……………………...164 APPENDIX F: CAMP LEJEUNE DIGITAL COMMUNITY ARCHIVE……...214 LIST OF REFERENCES………………………………………….……………..218 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Original Camp Lejeune Timeline Screenshot …………………...……………………34 Figure 2: TFTPTF.COM Original design…………………………………………..……………37 Figure 3: TFTPTF.com after revisions……………………………………………………...…...37 Figure 4: North Carolina Health News article featuring TFTPTF.com database……………….44 Figure 5: Table of internet IP entities visiting TFTPTF.com 2008………………………...……45 vi INTRODUCTION This thesis project explores the use of digital tools and public history methods by a geographically dispersed community of environmental justice advocates seeking government acknowledgement of health effects from the contaminated drinking water supply at Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base from 1953 through 1987. During this time, an estimated 1 million service men, women, their families and base employees were exposed to fuel products and volatile organic compounds in the base potable water supply. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) official National Priority List (NPL) designation for Camp Lejeune is Camp Lejeune Military Reservation NPL site #NC170022580, which was listed on October 4, 1989. The base was among the first of 141 Department of Defense sites to be listed on the NPL, otherwise known as a Superfund site.1 The affected community did not begin to organize until ten years after the Superfund designation. The project highlights efforts by community organizers to gather, curate, preserve, and display relevant government records through hyperlinked timelines, between 1997 and 2021, in order to understand their exposures and to effect policy change at the federal level. The project explores what historians Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig call “the promises and perils” of digital history as a sustainable medium for community organizing and environmental justice advocacy in the realm of public history.2 1 OLEM US EPA, “National Priorities List (NPL) Sites - by Listing Date,” Data and Tools, US EPA, August 14, 2015, https://www.epa.gov/superfund/national-priorities-list-npl-sites-listing-date. 2 Daniel J. Cohen et al., “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History,” The Journal of American History 95, no. 2 (2008): 452–91, https://doi.org/10.2307/25095630. 1 According to Tom D. Crouch, “Public historians are in the business of making the messages and lessons of the past useful and accessible to a broad general audience.”3 The National Council on Public History’s website describes the public historian as routinely engaging and collaborating with their community as wells as their peers.4 Public History and Environmental history have been long intertwined. Melosi argues in his 1993 article “Public History and the Environment” that there is a natural need for the two areas to coalesce the skills of traditional academic historian with that of the public historian while maintaining a balance between advocacy and academic integrity.5 Robert Kelley held that historians trained in historical methods were valuable tools to provide historical perspective to help shape public policy.6 This author is a stakeholder in the Camp Lejeune drinking water contamination. He became involved in the issue following his diagnosis of male breast cancer at the age of 39 and subsequent discovery of his own toxic exposures which occurred while residing aboard the base. His family was stationed aboard the base during the contamination period and he was born in the Tarawa Terrace family housing area in January 1968. There are instances in this paper where the first person is used to reflect his role as an activist and a Public Historian. However, the subject and purpose of this paper is an analysis of the digital historical tools and methods used by him 3 Tom D. Crouch, “Some Thoughts on Public History and Social Responsibility,” Illinois Historical Journal 82, no. 3 (1989): 195–200. 4 “About the Field | National Council on Public History,” accessed March 25, 2021, https://ncph.org/what-is-public- history/about-the-field/. 5 Martin V. Melosi, “Public History and the Environment,” The Public Historian 15, no. 4 (1993): 11–20, https://doi.org/10.2307/3378632. 6 Robert Kelley, “Public History: Its Origins, Nature, and Prospects,” The Public Historian 1, no. 1 (1978): 16–28, https://doi.org/10.2307/3377666. 2 and the community to understand and uncover the historical events for the Camp Lejeune drinking water contamination and utilize them to effect public policy for the community. The initial digital timeline project