State cites Sewerage and Water Board for drinking water testing violations
8th January 2024 · 0 Comments
By Greg LaRose
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — The Louisiana Department of Health has sent three notices of violations to the Sewerage and Water Board based on the findings of a joint investigation by the Illuminator and WVUE-TV Fox 8. The series “Tapped Out” found – and state officials confirmed – utility employees regularly fabricated drinking water testing results based on a review of several months of data.
One of the employees involved in falsifying samples has been fired, the Sewerage and Water Board has confirmed.
By skipping sampling sites or conducting the test improperly, the Sewerage and Water Board could have potentially missed the presence of contamination or when levels of chlorine in the water were inadequate to ensure it was safe.
The state also discovered not enough water sampling sites were used over a nine-month period last year to account for the city’s population growth.
The Sewerage and Water Board and Louisiana Department of Health have insisted the public was not at risk when the violations took place, although an expert in water quality standards says the employee practices could have criminal consequences.
“We take these findings very seriously. We have taken concrete measures, and we are confident those will stay in place and help us remain safe going forward,” Steve Nelson, S&WB deputy superintendent of engineering and services, told Fox 8 in an interview Thursday.
Two testing staffers involved in the falsification of records, Lakeithia Ross and Percy Randall, had left the Sewerage and Water Board when the “Tapped Out” reports were aired and published in early November. The utility confirmed Thursday of last week that a third employee, Louis Pierre Jr., has since been fired.
The Illuminator obtained copies of the three violation notices Wednesday through a public records request to the state health department. The documents are dated Nov. 28 and Dec. 4. Two note the failure of the Sewerage and Water Board to “perform adequate bacteriological sampling” at its Carrollton water plant on the east bank and comply with “disinfectant monitoring” at its Algiers purification site.
State officials found the utility also failed to notify the health department of a population increase that would have required more water samples be taken. As a result, the city was undersampled from February through October 2023.
The third notice was for failure to take proper samples from the Claiborne Filter Gallery at the Carrollton plant.
The notices spell out corrective actions for the Sewerage and Water Board to take. In addition, they require the Sewerage and Water Board to tell its customers what went wrong through a written explanation included with an upcoming bill within 90 days of the notice being received as well as public notice in the local newspaper within 45 days.
The violations are described as Tier 3 infractions based on standards in the federal Safe Water Drinking, which has been incorporated into Louisiana’s Sanitary Code. Tier 3 is the lowest level of notice, given when the public’s health and safety are not at immediate risk.
Comparable incidents have resulted in criminal prosecution for the individuals involved, including violations in St. John the Baptist Parish in 2015. Two water system employees there were convicted of falsifying chlorine testing data from just two locations. As part of a plea bargain, they were sentenced to one year in prison, which a judge suspended, six months of probation, a fine and community service.
Nelson said the Sewerage and Water Board has not been contacted by the Louisiana Attorney General’s office, the agency that prosecuted the violations in St. John. A spokesperson from the attorney general’s office has not responded to questions about the New Orleans violations from the Illuminator.
Data from the Census Bureau, reflecting New Orleans population growth from 2010 to 2023, has been publicly available on the agency’s website since September 2021. A Sewerage and Water Board spokesperson said Wednesday the utility only became aware of the new data in February 2023, when its east bank sample sites were upped from 150 to 180 to account for its east bank population surpassing 320,000, the regulatory cutoff for the change.
Regulations specify how many samples are to be taken each month based on population, and the Sewerage and Water Board had been using data from the 2010 census through the beginning of 2023.
New Orleans’ west bank population did not change enough to require a new sampling count.
Because it used dated Census numbers, the Sewerage and Water Board undersampled the east bank for coliform and chlorine levels by about 30 samples per month from September 2021 to January 2023, effectively skipping almost 500 samples over that period.
The Louisiana Department of Health made no mention of that oversight in its notifications.
The Sewerage and Water Board has not explained why it also delayed submitting a new sampling plan based on the population increase a further 11 months after they became aware of the new Census data, finally sending it to the state Dec. 8. The LDH violation issued in late November only counted the nine months between February and October.
Freelance reporter Matt McBride and Fox 8 reporter Rob Masson contributed to this report.
This article originally published in the January 8, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
