PASCO COUNTY, Fla — Sitting at his kitchen table Joe Romero showed me the mementos he got serving in the Marines.
“You see me smiling. It was a really good time,” he said.
Joe’s mother was in the front row when he graduated from boot camp. While he says he didn’t do anything extraordinary, he did win the Leatherneck Award for outstanding performance during recruit training.
Romero says it was his time in the early 1980s stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina that left him with health problems all these years later.
“I got kidney issues. Ended up getting stones. Diagnosed with distended bladder. Prostate cancer three and a half years ago.”
Romero says he believes he is among the thousands of people exposed to contaminated water at the base over decades from 1953 to 1987.
It wasn’t until 2009 that the government started investigating the issue and its possible ties to diseases, including cancer.
Two years ago, the PACT Act was passed, and while a big part of it is for those exposed to toxins from burn pits in the Middle East, it does include a section for damages related to Camp Lejeune.
Romero says the VA still hasn’t granted him benefits for his conditions.
“It goes from Agent Orange, now it's toxic water. Burn pits. Of course, they know that stuff is poison. They are not going to admit it because it costs them money, said Romero.
I contacted Florida Congressman Gus Bilirakis, who helped author the original PACT Act.
His office got back to me and said they would look into Joe’s case but said the VA still makes it way too hard for veterans to get the care and benefits they deserve.
They say are working on future legislation to change that.
Joe says it has taken long enough for people to get the help they need.
“We have people dying every day. I don’t know, my time is numbered. My days are numbered too. It’s just the magnitude of this. We can’t delay this anymore,” said Romero.
A state report says hundreds of frail elderly nursing home residents were stacked side by side, head to toe in a small church with no working air conditioning or refrigerator during Hurricane Helene.
