2nd Middlesex County Water Inspector Arrested, Now In South River

SOUTH RIVER, NJ — Yet another water quality inspector in Middlesex County has been accused of falsifying drinking water inspection reports submitted to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

This week, the office of New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced that a licensed operator of the South River Water Department was charged with submitting false water samples and records to the DEP.

Robert Baker, 56, of Mine Hill, N.J., was arrested early Wednesday morning and charged with a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, a third-degree crime.

His arrest sounds very similar to the 2015 case of Edward O'Rourke, a former employee at the New Brunswick water plant, located just one town over. In 2015, O'Rourke confessed that he lied about testing the area's drinking water, and knowingly submitted false water reports to the DEP for more than two years.

O'Rourke, 60, who lived in Brick, admitted to submitting false water purity reports for New Brunswick and Milltown from April 2010 through December 2012. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

A spokesman for the state attorney general's office declined to answer when asked if either the state DEP or the attorney general's office is doing a long-range investigation into Middlesex County water quality tests. The New Jersey attorney general has a policy to neither confirm nor deny ongoing investigations.

"The two cases are not connected. They resulted from entirely separate investigations," said AG spokesman Peter Aseltine.

The investigation into Baker, who worked at the South River water plant, began last month: South River police said they obtained information that Baker allegedly was submitting false water samples to the state. Baker, as a licensed operator, is required to collect samples of drinking water from eight locations throughout South River to be tested for coliform bacteria (fecal bacteria from humans and animals). Samples are taken twice a month, with 15 samples per month required in total.

However, it is alleged that Baker only visited certain locations, not all eight sites. He submitted false samples for the sites he did not visit, investigators say. Baker was the sole employee in South River responsible for visiting the testing sites.

South River police and detectives with the AG's office then began doing a surveillance of Baker: They said that on May 21, he allegedly did not go to at least four of the eight designated collection sites. But the water samples he sent to the state lab were marked as if he had visited all eight.

Baker was also scheduled to conduct sampling on Tuesday of this week, June 11. Police were again watching him, and they said he again failed to go to all eight, but sent in samples as if he had.

He was arrested the very next day, early Wednesday morning.

But is my drinking water safe from fecal matter?

That's the question most South River residents are wondering right about now.

Once the state DEP found out Baker was allegedly falsifying the reports, they sent their own team out last week to all eight sites. All the samples came back negative for coliform bacteria, according to the state.

If found guilty, Baker is facing up to five years in state prison and a criminal fine of up to $15,000.

In 2015, O'Rourke, who admitted to faking the tests, was met with an unusually strict jail time. Prosecutors at the time were seeking he serve up to six years; he ultimately was sentenced to three years in state prison.

"He lied hundreds of times," Elie Honig, Director of the Division of Criminal Justice, said at the time of O'Rourke. "If (he) had simply been honest from the start about any failure to comply with the requirements for water purity testing, he would not be facing such stern punishment."

O'Rourke confessed to second-degree charge of corruption of public resources and third-degree violations of the Safe Water Drinking Act.

Because he failed to correctly test the water for 33 months, regulators were not able to determine if the public drinking water was safe for that period of time.

Past Patch reporting: Lied About Testing New Brunswick's Drinking Water for Years, Prosecutors Say (Dec. 17, 2015)