Ex-PWSA official sentenced to probation in sludge-dumping scandal

A former Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority supervisor was sentenced Thursday to serve one year’s probation and pay a $500 fine as a result of pleading guilty last year to conspiring to violate the Clean Water Act.

Prosecutors say James Paprocki of Ross falsified records on sludge discharges into the Allegheny River over a seven-year period, according to court documents.

Paprocki was sentenced by U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV in Pittsburgh in a case that previously ensnared another former supervisor at the Aspinwall Drinking Water Treatment Plant and the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority.

The allegations stemmed from faking records on sludge dumped in the river from 2010 to 2017. The sludge was generated by a chemical process and sedimentation used in treating the river water in a clarifier basin to make it drinkable.

Paprocki had pleaded guilty in July 2021, to participating in falsifying of records that violated the authority’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.

That illegal activity began when former supervisor Glenn Lijewski, 71, of Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood, was manager of the PWSA’s water treatment plant, the U.S. Attorney’s Office stated in the sentencing document on Paprocki.

Lijewski was sentenced on Aug. 16 to three years probation and a $1,500 fine upon pleading guilty in April to one count of violating the Clean Water Act. Lijewski had been charged with two counts of violating the PWSA’s Clean Water Act Industrial User Permit.

Lijewski allegedly directed workers to use estimated sludge flow numbers instead of actual numbers, according to prosecutors.

Paprocki discontinued altering the records when he became the water treatment plant’s interim assistant director, prosecutors said.

The authority had been required under its discharge permit to send that sludge from the clarifer basin to Alcosan’s treatment facility near the McKees Rocks Bridge, at a rate of up to 1 million gallons per day.

Instead, the amount of that sludge dumped into the Allegheny River created an “island” of muck, which plant workers derisively termed, “Glenn’s island,” according to prosecutors.

The PWSA pleaded guilty in September 2021 to one count of violating its discharge permit by dumping sludge into the Allegheny River and violating the pollution discharge elimination system.

PWSA was placed on probation for three years and required to pay $500,000 into a self-funded compliance fund, according to terms of the plea bargain.