Former Brooklyn DEP Workers Say City Has Lied About Water Quality

New York City has become the latest scene of controversy over water quality reports.

The city's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) fabricated an official water quality report from the Newtown Creek Wastewater Facility and then fired whistleblower employees who refused to go along, according to several ex-DEP employees in an upcoming lawsuit.

In a letter sent out to the city and federal officials, the charges had been outlined that the city violated the federal Clean Water Act in an “agency wide conspiracy” to falsify records.

Before Brooklyn reported its water quality results, dnainfo.com reported that wastewater samples had been transported to DEP labs for testing where they are subject to strict federal and local regulations in how they are stored, analyzed, calculated, and then recorded in advance of government inspection.

In the letter, former and current DEP workers said they plan to sue the agency, along with 103 of the agency’s managers, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd.

“William Kelly, Chief at the NYC DEP Newtown Creek Laboratory presently engages in managerial practices to intentionally corrupt data at each of these stages, and finally by directing supervisors to make false statements in water quality logbooks just prior to governmental inspection,” stated the letter submitted by attorney Matthew Goldsmith of the JurisGroup.

At a staff meeting in February 2013, two weeks before an inspection, Kelly had requested staffers “flag all apparent violations” that were present in the testing logbooks, according to dhainfo.com. Kelly then directed workers to change the entries so that they would appear to comply with the Clean Water Act, the letter claims, “providing evidence from log books showing before and after images revealing the pattern of changes.”

Among the plaintiffs were Michael Golden, a former microbiologist and lab assistant, who reported the Newtown Creek violations and claims he was terminated after “enduring a barrage of false disciplinary charges.”

Though Golden is no longer there, his former colleagues say the practice was ongoing.

Additionally, the city and the state are now locked in a court battle over the best way to address the city’s sewage overflows.

Many cities violate the Clean Water Act and often apply for waivers to do so. But the DEP has a long history of hiding violations of the Clean Water Act, the letter stated. After 13 years of managers concealing health risks due to discharges with carcinogenic contaminants at its facilities, the DEP was convicted of violating the Clean Water Act in 2001 for polluting various upstate reservoirs.

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