Article from Record Online
June 7, 2007

New York City DEP Employee Charged With Falsifying Water Program Records

NEW YORK--An employee of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection has been charged with making false entries in the city's drinking water monitoring records, federal prosecutors announced June 6
(United States v. Miritello, S.D.N.Y., docket number unavailable,arraignment 6/6/07).

The defendant, Nicholas Miritello of Wappinger Falls, N.Y., was arraigned June 6 on four felony counts in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, prosecutors said. He is the third DEP employee with drinking water monitoring duties to be charged in the past two years with falsifying records at the city's Catskill Lower Effluent Chamber (CLEC) facility (238 DEN A-11, 12/12/06) .

The monitoring is part of an extensive watershed protection program mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency to allow the city to continue to avoid filtration of drinking water from its Catskill/Delaware watershed, which provides 90 percent of the water in a supply system serving some 9 million people. EPA proposed in April to extend the city's filtration avoidance determination for 10 years (71 DEN A-7, 4/13/07) .

The tests Miritello was accused of falsifying are used to measure turbidity, or cloudiness, in the drinking water, a long-standing problem in Catskill/Delaware water. EPA requires turbidity monitoring four times a day at the CLEC facility, which is located in Westchester County near the system's terminal reservoir. On four occasions in February and March 2005, prosecutors said, Miritello made false log entries purporting to show results of monitoring tests that, in fact, he had not performed.

Videotape Evidence

He was caught after videotapes showed him leaving the chamber sampling site less than a minute after entering it, according to a complaint by an EPA criminal investigator that was unsealed in the case. To time how long the required monitoring should take, the investigator observed another employee conducting the tests and concluded that they could not be completed in less than two minutes, even if several steps were done simultaneously in a "truncated procedure," the complaint said.EPA has found that although turbidity itself poses no risks to health, it can interfere with disinfection and provide a medium for bacterial growth, prosecutors noted. The agency has also found that turbidity may indicate the presence of disease-causing organisms, such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites, and that increased turbidity levels can contribute to development of potentially harmful disinfection by products.

In May 2006, EPA fined the city $27,500 for violations of drinking water turbidity standards in a portion of the Catskill/Delaware watershed and urged the city to step up its turbidity control efforts. A representative for the defendant could not be reached for comment.

By John Herzfeld
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