Missouri RiverPhoto: Iowa Department of Natural Resources
(Des Moines, IA) -- The state of Iowa has filed a lawsuit against the city of Sioux City, over water testing. The city's accused of manipulating wastewater test results and sending polluted water into the Missouri River between 2012 and 2015. The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction and $5,000 per day of violation in fines.
The lawsuit alleges the city’s wastewater treatment facility would properly disinfect wastewater discharges only on days in which samples for E. coli contamination were taken and submitted to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. The lawsuit alleges the effort was an attempt by the city to increase its treatment capacity without a significant capital investment.
“The city potentially endangered human lives and wildlife by violating water-quality rules and perpetrating a fraud to conceal its employees’ actions,” said Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who filed the lawsuit in Woodbury County on behalf of the state and the DNR.
The state delayed it's case against Sioux City in 2016 while awaiting a federal investigation. Former treatment plant superintendent Jay Niday pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and falsifying or providing inaccurate information and was sentenced last year to three months in prison and was fined $6,000. Former supervisor Patrick Schwarte pleaded guilty to similar charges and was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $5,000.
According to the lawsuit:
Chlorine is used to disinfect wastewater discharges at Sioux City’s treatment plant. If insufficiently disinfected, waste waster effluent may expose recreational users of the river to various pathogens, including E. coli. Chlorine is toxic to fish and other aquatic life and dangerous to recreational users, so the treatment facility must subsequently add sodium bisulfite to reduce the total residual chlorine in the discharged water.
The lawsuit claims that in about 2012, the city’s treatment facility management and other city officials discovered that the facility did not work properly and could not consistently disinfect the millions of gallons of wastewater that it was discharging into the Missouri River each day. Rather than alert the DNR to this serious problem, the facility employed a fraudulent testing procedure that ensured that it would always pass its effluent tests for fecal coliform, E. coli, and total residual chlorine.
The treatment plant was required to test the water five days in one calendar month during each 3-month period from March to November, resulting in a total of 15 days of testing. The lawsuit claims during those days, the facility would adjust the chlorine rate higher, but then significantly lower it on non-testing days.
The lawsuit further alleges that at the same time the city was using the fraudulent testing procedure, the city was touting the effectiveness of its wastewater treatment system in an attempt to persuade the DNR to raise the facility’s capacity rating. That increase would allow the city to recruit more business and industry with high-strength wastewater.