The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority is expected to plead guilty and a former supervisor indicted for Clean Water Act violations.
The announcement was made by U.S. Attorney Scott Brady on Wednesday.
He said the violations occurred between 2010 and 2017.
The PWSA discharged sludge into the Allegheny River, a violation of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit. It was supposed to be sent to the ALCOSAN treatment facility.
It was enough to create islands of sludge in the river.
The Authority will plead guilty for violating the Clean Water Act and falsifying reports about the quantity of sludge being sent to ALCOSAN.
"First, violation of the Clean Water Act for its illegal discharge of pollutants into the Allegheny River. And second, seven counts of making false statements in its reports to the EPA," explained Brady.
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Glenn Lijewski, a 69-year-old former Aspinwall Drinking Water Treatment Plant supervisor, was indicted and charged with conspiracy to violate the Clean Water Act and the PWSA’s Clean Water Act Industrial User Permit.
The indictment alleges that Lijewski is responsible for dumping sludge into the Allegheny River and directing employees to falsify numbers on reports.
"For seven years, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority has failed to meet its public trust obligations in complying with the Clean Water Act during the production of drinking water for the citizens of Pittsburgh," said U.S. Attorney Brady.
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"Today’s criminal charges shed light on years of mismanagement and malfeasance," continued Brady. "The Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency are committed to protecting you and your families by ensuring that the water you drink is produced safely and that the area’s rivers are not polluted with waste."
Brady says PWSA must now create an environmental compliance program and then pay $500,000 to fund it.
"We thought it was important that they put a new compliance program in place, because whatever oversight management had - in our estimation - was not sufficient," said Brady.