The Sioux City Council on Monday approved a settlement concerning past employee actions at the wastewater treatment plant, which ends a protracted legal wrangling..
With that council vote, the city, Iowa Attorney General's Office and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources have agreed to the city paying a $300,000 civil penalty.
After a decade of negotiation, that amount is considerably lower than the original proposed penalty of $6 million.
Mayor Bob Scott told Siouxland Public Media News on Monday that this step puts the legal negotiations in the rearview, and redirects attention to completing the $470 million major refurbishing of the wastewater treatment plant.
Two former city employees in 2015 manipulated chlorine levels to make it appear the city plant was meeting federal regulatory benchmarks.
"Listen, we were wrong. I'd like to sit here and tell you we were not wrong. Our employees did things they should have not done, it is well documented in court. They were penalized because of it. And shame on us, we probably didn't have the controls in place that we should have had," Scott said.
A city release last week said those employee “actions were taken without authorization and do not reflect the standards, values or practices of the city today.”
The agreed upon consent also specifies a schedule for major improvements at the city’s wastewater treatment plant up through the year 2036.
