Military Base Water Contamination Lawsuit: AFFF and Lejeune Claims

If you drank, bathed in, or worked around contaminated water at a U.S. military base and later developed a serious illness, a military base water contamination lawsuit may be available to you through one of two separate legal tracks: the federal multidistrict litigation against the manufacturers of PFAS firefighting foam, or a Camp Lejeune Justice Act claim against the federal government. More than $12 billion has been approved in settlements so far, but almost all of that money goes to public water utilities. Payouts to individuals for cancer and other illnesses are still being worked out, and the timing and amount depend heavily on which track fits your situation.¹

Which Lawsuit Fits Your Situation

The two tracks cover different contaminants, different bases, and different defendants. You may qualify for one, both, or neither.

The AFFF Firefighting Foam MDL

If you were exposed to PFAS-contaminated water at any of the hundreds of installations where aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) was used, your claim likely belongs in the AFFF multidistrict litigation. The Pentagon has used AFFF since the 1960s to extinguish jet-fuel fires, and the PFAS chemicals in it — primarily PFOA and PFOS — persist in soil and groundwater for decades. The Department of Defense has identified more than 700 installations requiring assessment for PFAS contamination, and the Environmental Working Group puts the number of military sites with known or suspected PFAS discharges at 721, with contamination confirmed at 630 locations across all 50 states and three territories.²³

These cases are consolidated as In re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation (MDL 2873), before Judge Richard M. Gergel in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. As of May 2026, there were 15,232 pending cases, with nearly 20,000 filed in total. The lawsuits target 3M, DuPont, Chemours, Corteva, Tyco, Chemguard, BASF, Carrier Global (Kidde-Fenwal), and more than 25 other manufacturers, alleging they knew the foam’s chemicals posed health risks and failed to warn users.⁴

This is a mass tort, not a class action. Each plaintiff files an individual lawsuit and keeps their own case.

Camp Lejeune Justice Act Claims

Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, is handled separately because the contamination there was not PFAS but industrial solvents: trichloroethylene, perchloroethylene, benzene, and vinyl chloride in the drinking water from 1953 to 1987. Over one million people may have been exposed.⁵

The Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022, enacted as Section 804 of the PACT Act, let affected people sue the federal government directly for the first time. More than 409,000 administrative claims have been filed with the Department of the Navy, and 3,715 lawsuits were pending in the Eastern District of North Carolina as of January 2026.⁶⁷

Important deadline: the window to file an administrative claim closed on August 10, 2024. The Navy is no longer accepting new claims. If your administrative claim was already filed and is denied or unresolved after six months, you can still take it to federal court.⁷

Qualifying Health Conditions

The illnesses that drive these claims overlap but are not identical between the two tracks.

For AFFF cases, the first bellwether trials and most eligible claims focus on:

Kidney cancer
Testicular cancer
Liver cancer
Thyroid disease and thyroid cancer
Ulcerative colitis

The scientific case has strengthened in recent years. In November 2023, the International Agency for Research on Cancer upgraded PFOA to a Group 1 carcinogen, its highest classification, meaning there is sufficient evidence it causes cancer in humans. PFOS was classified as a possible human carcinogen.⁸ Other documented effects of PFAS exposure include increased cholesterol, changes in liver enzymes, lower immune response to vaccines, and pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia and reduced birth weight.⁹

For Camp Lejeune claims under the Elective Option settlement track, qualifying diagnoses fall into two tiers:

Tier 1: kidney cancer, liver cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemias, bladder cancer
Tier 2: multiple myeloma, Parkinson’s disease, kidney disease/end-stage renal disease, systemic sclerosis/scleroderma¹⁰

What You Can Expect to Receive

Compensation differs sharply between the two tracks, and only one has published a payout schedule.

Camp Lejeune Elective Option Payouts

In September 2023, the Department of Justice and the Navy created the Elective Option, a streamlined settlement track with fixed amounts based on diagnosis and length of exposure:¹⁰

Tier 1 condition, 30 to 364 days of exposure: $150,000. One to five years: $300,000. More than five years: $450,000.
Tier 2 condition, 30 to 364 days: $100,000. One to five years: $250,000. More than five years: $400,000.
Death benefit: an additional $100,000 when the qualifying injury caused death, bringing the maximum offer to $550,000.

You receive payment for only one qualifying condition, whichever yields the highest amount. Elective Option payments are not reduced by VA disability benefits, Medicare, or TRICARE reimbursements.¹¹ As of early 2026, the DOJ had paid more than $421 million to victims since mid-January 2026, with total Elective Option payouts reaching approximately $708 million. Only about 13,687 claims currently meet the government’s criteria for Elective Option consideration, roughly 12% of total claimants.⁶

Camp Lejeune Trial Awards and the Offset Fight

If you reject the Elective Option and take your case to trial, you may recover more, but a major unresolved issue could cut into any award. The CLJA says any trial award “shall be offset” by disability awards, payments, or benefits received from the VA, Medicare, or Medicaid in connection with Camp Lejeune exposure. The government reads this broadly to include future benefits, which could mean subtracting a veteran’s projected lifetime of VA healthcare and disability payments from a jury award. Plaintiffs’ attorneys argue the statute only covers benefits already paid and that disability payments should not reduce pain-and-suffering damages. As of June 2026, there is no final ruling.¹²¹³

Broader estimates for Camp Lejeune litigation awards range from $10,000 to over $1 million based on Congressional Budget Office projections. The CBO has estimated total federal liability at $21 billion.⁶

AFFF Individual Payouts: Still Projections

No settlement exists for individual personal injury claims in the AFFF litigation. The $12 billion-plus in settlements already approved — 3M’s $10.5 to $12.5 billion deal paid out through 2036, plus smaller agreements with DuPont/Chemours/Corteva ($1.185 billion), Tyco/Chemguard ($750 million), BASF ($316 million), and Carrier Global/Kidde-Fenwal (approximately $730 million) — covers testing, treatment, and remediation for public water suppliers. None of it compensates individuals for health problems.¹⁴¹¹⁵

Projections for personal injury payouts vary. Industry-wide estimates place AFFF settlements at roughly $75,000 to $500,000 per person depending on injury severity, exposure evidence, and economic damages. Some attorneys project that top-tier claims — severe cancers with strong exposure documentation — could reach $200,000 to $1 million or more.¹⁴

The holdup is bellwether trials. The court selected 28 personal injury bellwether cases covering kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, and ulcerative colitis. A trial originally set for October 2025 was taken off the calendar in August 2025, and as of mid-2026 fact discovery is underway for nine plaintiffs in the Tier Two Personal Injury Bellwether Trial Pool. The first standalone trial is expected to focus on kidney cancer. Attorneys on both sides anticipate a global resolution for personal injury claims could come in 2026 or 2027, though that timeline is speculative.⁴¹⁶

Fees come out of any recovery. Attorney fees are capped at 20% for CLJA administrative claims and 25% for court-filed CLJA claims. Awards may also be reduced by liens from Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance.¹¹

Who Is Eligible and What Documentation You Need

Eligibility is broader than many people assume. It is not limited to veterans.

AFFF MDL claimants include active-duty service members, veterans, military family members who lived in base housing, civilian employees and contractors, and residents of communities near contaminated bases, provided they consumed PFAS-contaminated water and developed a qualifying condition. Expect to produce medical records confirming the diagnosis plus proof of your presence at or near a contaminated installation: service records, base housing assignments, employment records, or utility bills.¹¹⁷

Camp Lejeune claimants must have lived, worked, or otherwise been exposed to the water at Camp Lejeune for at least 30 cumulative days between August 1, 1953, and December 31, 1987. This includes veterans, reservists, National Guard members, family members, civilian workers, and people exposed in utero. Legal representatives of deceased victims can also file.¹⁸

How VA Benefits Interact

Filing a lawsuit does not cancel your VA benefits, but the two systems do not line up cleanly.

The VA does not currently treat any PFAS-related condition as presumptively service-connected. Veterans seeking disability benefits for PFAS exposure must prove the connection case by case: current diagnosis, in-service exposure, and a medical link between the two. Many such claims have been denied on service-connection grounds. Filing an AFFF lawsuit does not affect VA disability benefits.¹⁹

Camp Lejeune veterans have an easier VA path. The VA recognizes eight presumptive conditions — including adult leukemia, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, and Parkinson’s disease — for those who served at the base during the contamination period.¹⁸

Legislation introduced in July 2023 by Senator Debbie Stabenow, the VET PFAS Act (S. 2294), would have required the VA to automatically recognize PFAS-related illnesses as service-connected for veterans who served at confirmed contaminated bases. The bill did not advance beyond committee referral before the 118th Congress ended.²⁰

Where Things Stand Now

If your case is Camp Lejeune, the administrative filing window is closed; the question is whether to accept an Elective Option offer if you qualify, or press through to trial while the offset question is unresolved. If your case is AFFF, filing is still open, but personal injury compensation depends on bellwether trials that have been delayed and on settlement talks the trial judge has urged but not forced. The government’s Camp Lejeune defense took a hit in March 2026 when Magistrate Judge Robert B. Jones Jr. struck the expert reports of DOJ toxicologist Dr. Julie Goodman after she submitted roughly 300 substantive changes to her original reports, including about 120 reversals of her own study assessments, well past the disclosure deadline.²¹ For most individual claimants in both tracks, meaningful compensation is still months to years away.

1
Drugwatch. PFAS Water Contamination Settlements
2
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3
Environmental Working Group. Interactive Map of PFAS Contamination at Military Sites
4
MDL Update. MDL 2873 Aqueous Film-Forming Foams
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Lawsuit Information Center. Camp Lejeune Water Lawsuit
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U.S. Navy. Camp Lejeune Justice Act
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Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. PFAS Health Effects
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11
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Camp Lejeune Court Info. United States Memorandum of Law on Offsets
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Manufacturing Dive. 3M PFAS Water Supply Contamination Settlement Final Approval
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16
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17
TruLaw. Fort Benning PFAS Lawsuit
18
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19
CCK Law. Can You Receive VA Disability Benefits Due to Exposure to PFAS
20
U.S. Congress. VET PFAS Act, S.2294
21
Justia. Camp Lejeune Water Litigation v. United States of America