Former Indiana Wastewater Treatment Plant Superintendent Charged with Falsifying Reports
| U.S. Attorney’s Office March 20, 2012 |
The United States Attorney’s Office announced the filing of a felony information charging Daniel R. Olson, 62, of Merrillville, Indiana, with three counts of making a false statement under the Clean Water Act. Olson is the former superintendent of the J.B. Gifford Wastewater Treatment Plant in Michigan City, Indiana, and the charges alleged in the information cover the time period July 2007 through June 2010.
The first count in the information charges Olson with knowingly failing to make a required report of a bypass of a treatment process before discharging waste streams into Trail Creek, a tributary of Lake Michigan. The second count charges Olson with knowingly making a false material representation by selectively reporting only those sample results regarding TRC discharges that showed compliance with Michigan City’s permit and knowingly failing to report TRC discharge samples that showed non-compliance with Michigan City’s permit. Finally, the third count charges Olson with tampering with a monitoring method, that is, taking the daily sample of waste water to test for E. coli, as required under Michigan City’s permit, by delaying the taking of the sample until the point in time during the treatment process when the treatment chemical (chlorine) was elevated and when E. coli concentrations would be at lower levels.
These charges arose from an investigation undertaken by the Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is part of the Northern District of Indiana Environmental Crimes Task Force. Members of the task force include:
- United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana
- Indiana Attorney General’s Office
- Environmental Crimes Section of the Department of Justice
- United States Environmental Protection Agency-Criminal Investigation Division
- Department of Homeland Security-United States Coast Guard Investigative Service
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
- United States Fish and Wildlife Service
- United States Department of Transportation-Office of Inspector General
- United States Department of Labor-Office of Inspector General
- Indiana Department of Environmental Management-Office of Criminal Investigations
- Indiana Department of Natural Resources-Law Enforcement Division
- Indiana State Police
The Task Force encourages citizens in the Northern District of Indiana to report environmental crimes to 312-886-9872 or at the website http://www.epa.gov/compliance/complaints/index.html.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Wayne T. Ault and Environmental Crimes Section Trial Attorney R.J. Powers.
The United States Attorney’s Office emphasized that an information is merely an allegation and that all persons charged are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.
The specific sentence in each case to be imposed upon conviction will be determined by the judge after a consideration of federal sentencing statutes and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.