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Mayor: Former Employee Concealed Extent Of NE Fresno Water Problems

Jeffrey Hess/KVPR
Mayor Swearengin addresses the media

The city of Fresno now says complaints about discolored water in Northeast Fresno were being diverted for years to the private email account of the former surface water treatment plant manager. That is one of the findings of an investigation into why the problems went untreated for more than a decade.

The first reports of rust colored water began rolling in shortly after the treatment plant opened 2004.

But the issue did not gain steam until residents began connecting on social media earlier this year.

Part of the problem, according to Mayor Ashley Swearengin, is that the plant’s former manager Robert Moorhead had staff forward water complaints to his private email and cell phone rather than city issued equipment.

“The investigation references Mr. Moorhead’s record keeping system as quote ‘a lot of boxes’. As a result, we don’t know how many complaints were coming in each year from 2004-to-2011. But those interviewed estimated those calls to be approximately 150 to 200 calls each year,” Swearengin said.

Moorhead was fired from the city for unknown reasons in 2011.

However, even after that time, city staff failed to report water complaints to the state as required by law…simply leaving the form blank.

Valley Public Radio was unable to reach Mr. Moorhead for comment.

According to the mayor, because the reports were not coming through top city officials at the time believed that the issue was only affecting a handful of the thousands of homes using water from the plant.

Other emails recovered from early in the process show that Department of Public Utilities employees agreed to change the chemical makeup of the water to address the issue but there is no evidence they actually did.

City of Fresno officials continue to maintain the problem is with the pipes in individual homes, not with the water the city is supplying.

The mayor says they are now following all required reporting requirements. They suggest that any resident experiencing problems contact the city of file a complaint on cellphone app FresGo.

It remains unclear how much responsibility the city has for helping residents with the financial cost of replacing pipes.

Jeffrey Hess is a reporter and Morning Edition news host for Valley Public Radio. Jeffrey was born and raised in a small town in rural southeast Ohio. After graduating from Otterbein University in Columbus, Ohio with a communications degree, Jeffrey embarked on a radio career. After brief stops at stations in Ohio and Texas, and not so brief stops in Florida and Mississippi, Jeffrey and his new wife Shivon are happy to be part Valley Public Radio.