Lab Manager Guilty Tampering - John W. Shelton, a lab manager from Daniels, West Virginia has pleaded guilty in Beckley's federal court towards the charges of violating the Clear Water Act.
Shelton was working with Appalachian Laboratories in Daniels as a field technician and manager, as the FBI reported. What Appalachian did was test coal mining operations to analyze the discharges of different pollutants into the public waters, controlling that the discharges were within limits.
Still, Shelton did not respect the limits and instead admitted to tempering the water samples, making the pollutants be actually more than they appeared to be.
"Shelton admitted that they diluted the samples by adding distilled water and substituted water samples from the 'honeyhole,' designated as such because the samples were always within permissible limits," the agency reported.
Apparently, together with this modification, Shelton also discharged excessive pollutants into creeks and rivers.
Apart from that, the people in the lab are supposed to put the samples on ice because the law actually requires them to do so. And from the years 2008-2013, not only he but other people from the lab failed to do so.
Contrary to this, what they did was leave the samples in trucks all day without proper refrigeration, not entering them into the lab either at the proper time.
They were controlled by the WVDEP, though, so to escape being caught they placed ice coolers on the trucks and refrigerated the water samples appropriately, when they knew that they would have a control soon.
Shelton will be sentenced on February 15, 2015, but he has already been accused and will be facing 5 years in prison together with a fine of $250,000.
Behind the entire case of the water tampering in the lab is not only the FBI, but also the Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal Investigation Division.
