Acting Roy City-Clerk Treasurer Beth King accused former Public Works Director William Starks Jr. of intentionally falsifying town water tests to “show the worst possible look of the water to show to council.”
This comes after current Public Works Director Ryan Fuller told the Roy City Council during its Monday, Nov. 18, meeting that, after a recent annual water quality test, the Washington state Department of Health (DOH) required an additional three-month testing period for Well No. 2, which was contaminated with iron and manganese. Fuller said the most recent test results showed that the iron and manganese levels were nearly non-detectable, a drastic shift from their previous findings.
“What’s baffling the DOH is we went from having higher elevated numbers to almost having no detectable numbers now,” Fuller told the council, adding that the city is working to expedite the additional testing and perform them bimonthly. “DOH has asked that we do additional testing to show that these levels stay near non-detectable, which would then make it so that we do not have to move forward with an iron and manganese filtration system.”
The council questioned whether the original tests that found high levels of iron and manganese were due to user errors from city staff or a change in aquifers. That’s when King shared her conversation with Starks regarding how he conducted the water quality test.
“I was told directly by William Starks Jr., the previous public works director, when I was back working in the back office as the records analyst, that he intentionally tested the water immediately coming off of the hydrants so it would be the worst possible look of the water to show to council,” King said. “[I was] told to my face in a conversation in the office, and I said, ‘Aren’t you supposed to flush that to take the test?’ And he said, ‘No, I do it right at the very beginning so it comes out looking muddy.’ It was right after he had put all the [water] bottles on the counter, and I said, ‘That’s not what the water looks like here. Where do you get that?’ And that’s when he told me that he did it directly instead of waiting and letting it run for a while.”
King said Starks “intentionally falsified those documents to make it look the worst possible so that filtration can be done” and that Skillings, the city’s engineering firm working on the water treatment plan, is aware of the situation, along with the DOH.
“There’s a possibility there’s a lot of money that was gotten based on state and federal and individuals who spent money on filtration systems in their own home. We’ve lied to the residents of the city, and it’s not going to look good for us,” King said.
Councilor Edmund Dunn suggested that additional testing, both for the iron and manganese and the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), be done by a third party without city staff involvement as soon as possible to ensure the authenticity of the water quality. Mayor Kimber Ivy said the city will utilize its interlocal agreement with Pierce County for the testing.
“It can be Pierce County but not involving city staff so that way we have an established baseline of what those numbers actually are, and that would give us something a little bit more solid, depending on what the DOH wants,” Dunn said. “But I think this will give us something a little bit more solid and maybe [we can] begin to rebuild some trust.”
Mayor Pro-Tem Yvonne Starks, the mother of the former public works director, rebutted that her son was not there to defend his actions and that the city has to act based solely on King’s word. King responded that the difference between the coloration in water presented to the council in bottles is enough evidence of her claims.
“You have the bottles that he shared before, and the current public works director has done his [testing], so those bottles are there and they are very different,” King said.
Roy Police Chief Paul Antista told the council that there was an occasion where Pierce County did its own testing without the presence of city employees while Fuller was in training, but King said the county did not do a water main flushing and it would still be necessary. Ivy added that the city can track down the county’s results from those tests.
Cindy Byrd, who spoke during the meeting’s community comments segment, said that one look at the water would be enough evidence to see that it is in fact contaminated.
“My new hot tub, I filled it once with 250 gallons and it looks worse than the samples you were given by William Starks Jr.,” she said. “I filled it a second time, same thing. Just because he was taking samples at the hydrant at the dirtiest whatever, it doesn’t seem to be making a difference.”
In additional water-related matters, the City Council voted unanimously to keep $70,000 of its $77,869 in available funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in the city’s water fund and move a combined $7,869 to pay for contracting services, technology updates and its comprehensive plan.
