PA connections of contractor under fire for covering up Lejeune contamination

By Sue Sturgis
Hometown Hazards
March 10, 2010

My Congressman, Rep. Brad Miller, is the lawmaker who’s been raising hell about shoddy work by ATSDR in general, and particularly about what happened at Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base in North Carolina, where cancer is widespread among former base residents.

Yesterday Miller’s committee requested documents from the Navy and a private contractor out of concerns that they knew about benzene contamination at Camp Lejeune but kept that information under wraps. Here’s a recent news story about that:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/09/379463/congressional-investigators-seek.html

The private contractor is Baker Environmental, a subsidiary of the Michael Baker Corp. I decided to check out who exactly this Baker is. As it turns out, Baker Environmental holds the contract to provide general assistance to the PA DEP’s Superfund program. It manages the program, does investigation and remediation, and provides engineering studies and remedial designs:

http://www.mbakercorp.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1684&Itemid=278

Because of that, I do believe this ongoing Lejeune investigation will be worth watching for the folks back home in PA, and wanted to give you all a heads up.