Washington CNN —
The Justice Department and the Department of the Navy announced a streamlined application process on Wednesday for qualifying veterans who were exposed to toxic water at the Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune to receive financial settlements from the government.
The new process is an effort to speed up the crawling pace of resolving the more than 93,000 civil claims by Marines, their families and civilian employees against the Navy. The water they drank and bathed in at the base was contaminated for years by an off-base dry cleaner, leaky storage tanks and chemical dumping.
The claims are allowed under the PACT Act, a law
