Answers trickle in on missing water tests

MARCO ISLAND — Is there a “City Hall stonewall?” That’s the question the Eagle was asking Dec. 19 and City Hall answered back.

“We don’t stonewall,” said City Manager Steve Thompson.

Thompson and Public Information Coordinator Lisa Douglass invited the Eagle into segments of an internal city investigation of why water quality tests, which followed the Dec. 12 discharge of 18,000 gallons of raw sewage into the Landmark Waterway, were not properly reported to the city or the public.

Resident Karen Glaub echoes what many residents have said when she requests: “Just tell us the truth. We can handle the truth.”

Glaub added that while city officials “may believe what they are saying, it has to be questioned. It’s hard to accept.”

The Marco Eagle wasn’t the only organization asking questions when resident Bill McMullan e-mailed the Eagle at about 9 p.m., Dec. 16, with an attachment that included lab results of water sample tests taken near the Landmark Waterway off San Marco Road.

Tests the Eagle was told were never taken.

When the story was first reported last week in the Eagle, it appeared as though lab results were sent from Sanders Laboratories to Bart Bradshaw, a collections and distributions manager in the city’s utility department, via fax Dec. 15.

McMullan said that the results came to him via an e-mail with a PDF attachment, possibly a scanned fax, from a secret source within the city and he would not divulge the name of the person who sent them.

“I don’t want to lose the capability of getting things from city employees,” McMullan said.

The lab wrote a letter to the city Friday stating that the report was e-mailed to “bbradshaw@citymarcoisland.com,” accidentally omitting the “of” in the city’s domain “cityofmarcoisland.com.”

President of Sander Laboratories, Henry Mason, wrote the letter explaining that upon the lab’s investigation of the matter, they found they inadvertently sent the results to Internet Ad Corp., which owns the domain that differs by only two characters from the city’s domain.

Islander Joseph Raymond, owner of Internet Ad Corp., told the Eagle he did receive the lab’s e-mail intended for Bradshaw and sent it to McMullan.

Raymond was not willing to share those e-mails as of Eagle press time because he did “not want to get anyone else in trouble.”

Raymond said he has never met McMullan, but has seen him at City Council meetings on TV and read about his views in the newspaper regarding the sewer.

“I thought it was interesting and I thought it would be interesting to him. There was no disclosure statement on (the lab results.) I didn’t know it would be a problem for the city,” Raymond said in a phone interview Monday.

McMullan maintained Monday that he received the information from a city staffer.

Raymond said he believed he made it clear to McMullan that he was not a city employee.

McMullan then said he received the information from more than one informant. He received the lab results from a city employee before he received them from Raymond, he added.

An internal investigation into the incident is ongoing and fax records indicate the report was not sent by fax to the city, Thompson said. E-mails of the lab results were not sent to, or at least not received by, the city, he added.

The first record the city has of Landmark Waterway lab tests for fecal coliform were received, Dec. 17, or five days following the spill.

Thompson said he obtained verbal briefs on the status of the Landmark Waterway during that time.

Some confusion existed when the Eagle was told that water samples were not taken, yet are required by DEP yet in this case DEP said they weren’t testing, the county was. Meanwhile, Douglass said that Thompson received briefs on the status of the waterway. Bradshaw also said Wednesday that he received briefs on the lab results as early as Saturday.

The lab has since been fired by the city.

Thompson said the lab was not fired for sharing information with the public, but rather for not first sharing information with city directors, who would need the information to properly respond to the incident.

Bradshaw said he requested the lab results Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when he noticed he did not receive them on schedule, Dec. 15, in his e-mail. In the meantime, Bradshaw said the verbal results Saturday following the incident indicated “there was no urgent situation.”

Jeffrey Poteet, the city’s manager of utility operations, sent a letter terminating working relations with Sander’s Laboratories Friday morning due to the “unacceptable leak.”

When the Eagle asked about safety in fishing, Deb Millsap, a spokeswoman for the Collier County Health Department, said that’s why it’s unusual for DEP not to be involved.

DEP would normally be able to answer questions about fish following a spill, she said.

Millsap went to Ken Rech, also of the county health department, and determined a migratory fish which came into contact with a sewer spill would not absorb the pathogens into its flesh and therefore would likely be safe to eat when cooked.

Long-term exposure to such pathogens would be a greater concern, the county health department reported.

Millsap said swimming in a canal is never permissible or safe.

While the sewage was cleaned up quickly according to Millsap, testing, reporting and informing following the clean up is a process that many, including Thompson, say could be done better.

The city is required to test waterways after any spill of 1,000 gallons of sewage or more, Thompson said Friday.

He added that city employees had an opportunity to learn from the experience.

Spills requiring DEP notification, city testing and county health department testing will likely occur about twice each year, Thompson said.

The city is modifying its processes following a sewage spill, looking into proper information disclosures from the lab and investigating internally, Thompson said.

Supporting documents and related stories on the issue are posted on marconews.com.