OKLAHOMA CITY – The former manager of El Reno’s municipal wastewater treatment plant admitted violating the federal Clean Water Act by tampering with and rendering inaccurate a monitoring protocol that enabled him to falsify wastewater samples.
Kenneth Fulton, 61, of Bartlesville, was fined $10,000 and placed on probation for two years by U.S. District Judge Charles Goodwin on Feb. 22, 2022. In addition, the state Department of Environmental Quality revoked Fulton’s state licenses as a waterworks operator, wastewater works operator, and wastewater labor operator on Feb. 21, 2020.
The Clean Water Act was enacted by Congress to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological quality of the nation’s waters. The federal law also was enacted to prevent, reduce and eliminate water pollution in the United States and to conserve the waters for the protection and propagation of fish and aquatic life and wildlife, for recreational purposes, and for the use of such waters for public drinking water, agricultural, and industrial purposes.
The DEQ issued a pollutant discharge permit to the City of El Reno in May 2015. It authorized the town’s wastewater treatment plant to discharge properly treated municipal and industrial wastewater into the North Canadian River.
The permit sets limits on the levels of concentration for various pollutants discharged into the river, including carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids, ammonia, and E. coli, all of which are “pollutants” within the meaning of the Clean Water Act. The permit also established specific monitoring requirements for each pollutant.
E. coli is a species of fecal coliform bacteria that is specific to humans and other warm-blooded animals; its presence tends to indicate fecal contamination of the water.
In 2017 the City of El Reno hired Veolia North America to operate the town’s WWTP.
The City Council unanimously approved a contract on May 2, 2017, that authorized Veolia to operate El Reno’s water and wastewater treatment plants, two water towers, a groundwater storage tank and the town’s water field for five years; the city agreed to furnish 75% of the electricity cost for the two plants and Veolia to pay the other 25%. The contract price was set at $1,195,515 for one year.
Southwest Ledger left a voicemail Monday for the city’s public information officer, but she never returned the call. However, a Veolia spokesperson told the Ledger that the contract with El Reno expires May 31, 2022.
Fulton admits fraud
Fulton was employed by Veolia as the Project Manager of the El Reno facility. Fulton’s duties included overall management and supervision of the operations at the plant, said Robert J. Troester, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.
Fulton admitted that between September 2019 and February 2020 he employed fraudulent testing and reporting procedures at the El Reno sewage treatment plant that were designed to deceive the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Oklahoma DEQ, Troester said.
Specifically, Fulton would collect “grab” (individual) samples of treated wastewater from near the El Reno WWTP effluent discharge point to have the wastewater analyzed for the presence of E. coli. Fulton would mix the grab sample with a bleach/water mixture and then let the mixture sit for longer than the maximum holding time to allow the bleach to effectively kill off or significantly reduce the amount of E. coli present in the sample. Fulton would then pour out half of the contents of the bleached and diluted wastewater sample before adding deionized water to help neutralize the sample and hide the presence of bleach.
Fulton then transferred the sample contents into an official plastic container provided by the certified laboratory, then seal the container and provide it to the laboratory for analysis.
The DEQ received a complaint on Feb. 4, 2020, alleging that for more than a year the El Reno WWTP samples had been tampered with by using chlorine to mask E. coli in the treated effluent – despite the fact that the plant uses ultraviolet light, not chlorine, to disinfect its effluent.
Subsequently, DEQ Criminal Investigator Dennis Williams interviewed a lab worker at the El Reno plant who said she saw Fulton routinely tamper with the samples before they were mailed to the lab for testing.
The lab worker told Williams that she was “able to covertly switch” a tampered sample that had been diluted and chlorinated, with an untampered sample she took to send to the lab for testing.
Because of the tampering, the DEQ was unable to verify the quality of effluent discharged from the El Reno WWTP into the North Canadian River, and accused Fulton of “gross incompetence and misuse of his Operator Certification.”
On March 24, 2021, Fulton was charged in OKC federal court with violating the Clean Water Act.
“Cutting corners and falsifying tests potentially exposed citizens and the environment to harmful contaminants,” Troester said.
Fulton’s “willful acts of falsifying required effluent samples and the associated releases of untested effluent into the North Canadian River placed both the environment and local community water systems at risk of contamination,” said Todd “Tony” Adams, assistant special agent in charge of the EPA’s Southwest Office criminal enforcement program.
The Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act “rely on self-monitoring and self-reporting in order to protect our water resources,” Oklahoma DEQ Executive Director Scott Thompson said. Individuals who tamper with the process “potentially jeopardize public health and erode trust in our system. It is imperative that those who would take such actions be held accountable.”
The case was investigated by the Oklahoma Environmental Crimes Task Force, including the EPA Criminal Investigation Division and the DEQ’s Criminal Investigation Unit.