By Toni Marshall
Following a more than three-year-battle, an environmental watchdog group questions why the county health department settled with the city of Boca Raton after citing the municipality with five counts of major drinking water violations.
“The idea that they would get to within days of the hearing, after they have gone through weeks of depositions, use taxpayers’ money, then, all of sudden drop it, is absurd,” said Jerry Phillips, Florida director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility .
“I’ve really not seen it done before,” he said.
The city and the Health Department settled on March 22 of this year. The city was required to pay only $2,500 in court costs and admitted to no wrong doing, while the Health Department’s own 24- page document details more than eight years of serious violations. The Palm Beach County Health Department is the local arm of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which enforces the Florida Safe Drinking Water Act.
The city faced more than $250, 000 in fines, was cited for failing to implement safeguards to prevent sewage from contaminating drinking water and revealed it had an unlicensed contractor install an illegal system to pump chemicals into city water lines, according to official records obtained by the Boca Raton Tribune.
Health Department spokesman Tim O’Connor said the city must have provided evidence to the contrary in the discovery phase. During the discovery phase, most of the actions are either proven or disproven, he said.
“I can’t speculate on what was there,” O’Connor said. But he did say a lot of the violations were procedurals. “They built a new water plant and did a change over,” he said.
“The main thing in all of this is the drinking water is not in jeopardy,” he contended.
The attorneys worked out the settlement, O’Connor said.
That’s what unsettles Phillips, also an attorney. Such agencies generally do not spend so much time investigating and litigating to no avail, he noted. The litigation began in 2009.
“Usually when these agencies file an administrative complaint, their success rate is in excess of 80 percent if it goes to hearing,” he said. “The general counsel will look for holes. They don’t file the complaint unless they are very certain that when they get to hearing, what they are going to file.”
It is still not clear whether the city addressed all the counts. The Boca Raton Tribune filed a public records request on April 23, asking for that information. Florida law requires a response within a “reasonable time.”
Documents that are readily available should b provided within 24 hours, if possible, according to the Florida Attorney General’s office. The Tribune has not received an answer from the city.
Assistant City Manager Michael Woika has said the initial investigation by the Health Department “was flawed.”
The allegations that there were times when the public was not protected was “not true,” he told the Tribune in an earlier report, calling the department’s findings “a bunch of crap,” “untrue” and “laughable.” He said the city challenged the results with “factual statistics” and threatened to go to court. The Health Department, after evaluating the documents provided, changed its findings, he said.
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