ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERT AGENCIES WILL SOON DECIDE A TWO YEAR MILITARY REVIEW OF A FORMER ARMY BASE IN ALABAMA
Three federal agencies in Atlanta have completed a review of environmental matters of the former Fort McClellan, Alabama.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, USA, April 28, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- An organized medical patient group of veterans with military service at the former Army base of Fort McClellan, Alabama between the years of 1950 and 1998, will soon know the answers they have been seeking for several years now about the environmental toxic spill sites that used to be there. The Fort McClellan Veterans Stakeholders Group filed a formal petition for services2 and a national Cumulative Risk Assessment Study1 at the Agency for Toxic Substances in Atlanta, Georgia on June 11, 2021. They have just recently received an email notice from the agency that the review has been completed and the decision is now undergoing their clearance process prior to a public release..
The medical patient petition has undergone a rigorous, expert environmental science review by the three combined agencies of the Center for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency at Region 4, and the Agency for Toxic Substances which are all located in Atlanta. The ruling decision by the agencies is expected to hold the first official environmental decision regarding ten toxic sources that were named by the veteran's group as the focus of their concerns about health risks. Since the 1950s, both the military environmental site engineers and private defense contractors have made numerous incremental reports about new contamination sites that were discovered in places of high pedestrian traffic where the soldiers used to frequent. The McClellan Vets have asked the environmental agencies to combine all of the site information under one comprehensive science review and to make a new determination about the combined toxicity values of all the toxic sources.
The veteran's group moved over to the Agency for Toxic Substances in 2021 under the relatively new patient authority of the Veterans CHOICE ACT. The group had opted out of using the VA for their study and screening process well before the more publicized legislation of the PACT Act was even drafted. In 2015, the McClellan Vets underwent a year-long paperwork review at the Veterans Health Administration in Washington DC under the authority of what is commonly known as a "Duty To Assist" review which is found in the framework of veteran's law. The unit was under Dr. Carolyn Clancy at the time and was found to be overhired with staffers that had no environmental medicine background. The VHA concluded that because of the age group of the McClellan Vets, a health registry (which is sometimes referred to as an epidemiological study) would not likely yield any valuable information to the practitioner workforce. Since 2015, the veterans worked towards other remedy plans to obtain VA recognition at the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. After they were ignored and refused assistance by the Committee, they began the new plan to obtain an expert environmental review at the other alternative agencies.
The petition review in Atlanta began with nearly 3,500 pages of environmental engineering source papers that were compiled by the veterans. Then the agencies located over 9,000 more source documents after the Dept. of Defense granted them access to a privileged database holding history papers. In later months, the veterans located another critical source file at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The new file was nearly 2,500 pages in size. The trove of papers that the agencies had to move through took more time to process than was originally estimated at the start. The veterans are now relieved that a decision date is near to put an end to their worries.
The Fort McClellan Veterans Stakeholders group is organized on Facebook under the page name Toxic Exposure Army Veterans of Fort McClellan. Veterans with service at the former Army base are invited to join so they can be the first to receive the ruling decision when it's finally released from Atlanta. The agencies have been meeting with the veteran's group by way of computer teleconferencing until their medical patient petition is decided.
Susan R Frasier, national activist
Toxic Exposure Army Veterans of Fort McClellan
ft_mcclellan_vets1@yahoo.com
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1 https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/cumulative-risk-assessment-under-toxic-substances
2 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mixtures/assessment.html
