In the letter, Roger Klinger, the city's water resources general manager, calls Simmerer's allegations to Fox "unsubstantiated."
In June 1995, Simmerer asked Steven Baker, the manager of the DHS lab licensing unit, to look into Westech's lab methodology for the November 24, 1994, test. Baker later testified that up until Simmerer's request, he believed Westech had shaped up and was following the terms of its provisional license, which Dillenberg had granted the previous January.
Baker's subsequent investigation proved disastrous for Westech.
Westech called it an "extraordinarily limited and extraordinarily backward-looking" probe. But Baker concluded that Westech had not lived up to its promises to produce reliable test results. Dillenberg decided to take formal steps to revoke Westech's license in August 1995.
The state and federal government temporarily barred Westech from doing contract work.
The Warnes were outraged. They denied any wrongdoing. In a sworn affidavit, James Warne III said the company had worked hard and spent nearly $1 million to "comply with every DHS directive."
Westech hired well-known environmental lawyers to represent it at the license-revocation hearing. So far, those lawyers have managed to persuade a state hearing officer to throw out some of the state's claims against the firm. The revocation hearing is expected to last for weeks.
No one really knows for sure how much TCE Scottsdale residents drank in the water that came from the North Indian Bend Wash treatment plant.
The city of Scottsdale maintains there has never been a day when residents were served unhealthful amounts of TCE--even taking into account "exceedences" turned up by recent state and federal investigations.
"Public health and safety are the city's primary concern," city water analyst Michelle De Haan wrote in a November memo to New Times. ". . . If there were or is ever any threat to public health, in cooperation with EPA and DEQ, we would immediately notify citizens. We would never intentionally withhold information about this.
"It is our policy that we serve only water that meets federal drinking water standards and state drinking water rules. The City believes that there has not been a violation of these rules and regulations or any threat to public health."
The health threat of the TCE exceedences was studied in 1995 by an EPA toxicologist who concluded that citizens who drank the water probably weren't harmed.
But a Boston University medical doctor who specializes in the health effects of TCE says no one can say whether citizens were damaged.
"I agree that the risk is low," says David Ozonoff, chairman of the university's department of environmental health.
"But I don't like TCE at all, even at three parts per billion. You don't have to drink it for 70 years to get sick. One day could do damage. It's not likely, but it could."
The city of Scottsdale incurred enormous expenses during the time the North Indian Bend Wash treatment plant was shut down.
Water to replace the plant's production was purchased from the city of Phoenix; that water cost Scottsdale $3 million. Motorola and the other companies that built the treatment plant agreed to pay about half of that sum. Scottsdale taxpayers picked up the rest of the tab.
The city of Scottsdale terminated Westech's contract in August, shortly after it learned Dillenberg filed his notice to revoke Westech's license.
Recently, the city hired a former DEQ drinking water compliance officer to replace Jim Nelson as the treatment plant manager for the North Indian Bend Wash site. After extensive work, Scottsdale's treatment plant is consistently producing drinking water with TCE levels well below state limits.
Jim Nelson has been reassigned to the city's wastewater department.
