Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced on May 24 that Hans Burnett, a former foreman for the city of Cottonwood water testing laboratory, had been indicted by a grand jury on charges of forgery and fraudulent schemes and practices.
According to a press release from the Attorney General’s Office, “Burnett allegedly instructed subordinate employees to modify the test results and paperwork associated with drinking water compliance samples in Cottonwood. The altered results were submitted to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality as part of the city of Cottonwood’s drinking water compliance obligations.”
Burnett resigned from his position working for the city shortly after the indictment.
According to City Manager Doug Bartosh, the city government was first alerted to problems with the water treatment in July when the Arizona Department of Health Services and ADEQ opened an investigation into Cottonwood’s water testing system.
The investigation presented its findings on Oct. 24. The city responded by changing its water testing policies, eliminating the in-house testing in favor of sending out the water to a lab in Phoenix for testing.
“We’ve taken a good hard look at our processes and our procedures and made some changes,” said Roger Biggs, the city’s utilities manager for the water and billing divisions. “We’re no longer doing any compliance testing in-house. All of that is sent out to certified laboratories in Phoenix. There’s a paper trail from the time the samples are taken until they arrive at the library. There is a paper trail the whole way — employee training, improved oversight, reassignment — we’re not doing these processes anymore.”
The change in outsourcing testing to a lab in Phoenix cost the city an additional $28,000 a year, a price Biggs said he feels is well worth it to ensure that testing is done right. Though some city administrators said that they were aware of the problem since last summer and fall, they expressed shock at the indictments.
Cottonwood Deputy City Manager Rudy Rodriguez said the incident was “just sloppy work from staff,” and complacency stemming from too many employees in the lab.
“Based on our internal investigation, we did not feel that Mr. Burnett’s actions rose to the level of criminal culpability,” Bartosh wrote in an email. “He was disciplined based on our findings. We were not aware of any criminal indictments until the AG media release. We have made a request for the AG’s criminal investigation and have still not received a copy, so we do not know the information that led to the grand jury’s decision.”
In a press release dated May 29, Rodriguez wrote that “It is critical to state that through our investigation there is no evidence that the public was exposed to unsafe water.”
“We had gotten surprise unannounced visits from [ADEQ] to check our wells,” Rodriguez said. “They do random sampling, and everything seems to be fine. We’ve gotten a clean bill of health every time they’ve come in.”
Erin Jordan, a public information officer for ADEQ, said it sent inspectors to the public water systems to collect water samples, and the systems are in compliance with federal drinking water standards.
“Residents in the city of Cottonwood are being supplied healthy drinking water,” Jordan wrote in an email. “Self-monitoring by the water systems is now ongoing through a separate lab.”
Additionally, Biggs expressed a similar sentiment in that the water system is up to par, and there are measures in place to keep water quality at its best.
“The water system is inherently safe. There are safeguards built into it,” Biggs said. “One is the fact that it is chlorinated water. The other is the fact that it’s a closed system. It comes out of the ground, it goes into a reservoir, it goes into the distribution system, and it goes to people’s homes and businesses. It’s a closed system. There’s no surface water. There’s no openings in the system where contaminants could get in.”
Mayor Tim Elinski expressed shock over the indictment, having felt before that it was accidental and not intentional, but it should be taken seriously.
“I wouldn’t say with 100 percent certainty that the water or the wastewater didn’t contain a level of contaminants that were unsafe,” Elinski said. “We don’t know what we don’t know, so I would never say with 100 percent certainty. What I want to say with 100 percent certainty moving forward is that it will never happen again. That’s the promise I want to make.”
Jon Hecht can be reached at 634-8551, or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
