February 16, 2000

Forty Midwest companies accused of polluting have been told that their cases were put on hold because test results from site samples may have been doctored.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that lawyers in the agency's Midwest region were asked to "freeze" those cases in August because of suspicion that many tests at the EPA's Chicago regional lab had been mishandled and that lab records were altered to cover up the irregularities.

Some of the cases have since been resumed after it was determined that none of the four lab analysts who had been suspected in doctoring test results had handled the pollution samples used in those cases.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this week that laboratory tests going back as far as 20 years are under scrutiny and that the Justice Department is conducting a criminal probe.

"The real concern about these flawed tests is that they may have masked pollution going into our soils and streams that could impact a community's health," said Paul Kakuris, president of the Illinois Dunesland Society and head of Great Lakes Environmental Marine Ltd.

Two pollution cases pending in U.S. District Court and put on hold show the troubles the government faces in cracking down on alleged polluters using data that might be flawed.

In one case involving the Gordon Martin Company's Estech General Chemical site in Calumet City, federal attorneys asked U.S. District Judge David H. Coar in August to suspend action on the case because two analysts with the EPA's Central Regional Laboratory in Chicago "are subject to an internal government investigation."

That inquiry, prosecutors disclosed, dealt with "the credibility" of the lab staffers' work "analyzing samples of media believed to be contaminated with hazardous substances" that "may be compromised."

However, according to an affidavit, an EPA project manager said she found that the two EPA lab technicians under suspicion did not test any of the data used to support the crackdown on the company.

The affidavit also stated the manager determined that two suspect employees of a private contractor, Lockheed Martin Environmental Services, who work in the lab under EPA supervision, did not handle any of the Gordon Martin Co. samples.

The Sun-Times reported Sunday that one of the Lockheed workers had been fired and another said he was "looking for a job."

On Oct. 22, the government announced that the enforcement action could continue.

In another case involving a Nalco Chemical dump near Rockford, the government asked that the action be suspended until it could be determined whether the suspect employees had handled tests in the case.

Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, said that in the Nalco case, which already has been partly settled, "it is not yet clear" whether the lab workers suspected of manipulating data handled Nalco tests.