Henry Papuga Found Guilty of Tampering with Water Samples

WORCESTER — Henry Papuga, the retired former manager of the Milford Water Company, deliberately tampered with water samples in 2009, and made false statements about the integrity of those samples, a Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.

The four-day trial in Worcester Superior Court ended with a verdict from the bench.

Superior Judge David Ricciardone said he found the state's circumstantial evidence to be convincing. "I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt," Ricciardone said.

"... to do otherwise, I'd have to believe in a stunning series of coincidences."

Sentencing will be at 11:30 a.m. Friday. 

Papuga was found guilty of six counts of tampering with environmental monitoring device or method, and two counts of making false statements about the samples. All are misdemeanors. He faces up to a year in jail for each count, and or up to $1,000 for each offense.

The case was brought forward by the state Attorney General's Office. On Monday, at the beginning of the trial, Papuga waived his right to a jury and chose to have the judge determine the outcome.

Prosecutors Daniel Licata and Sara Farnum had contended that Papuga was under so much pressure to put a stop to a boil water order in August 2009, that he intentionally tampered with a round of water samples by adding chlorine to them, to make sure they came out "clean."

The boil water order required 27,000 residential and business customers of the Water Company to boil water before consuming or using it, and was ordered on Aug. 9, 2009 by the state Department of Environmental Protection after the drinking water in Milford showed evidence of bacterial contamination.

To lift the order, the Water Company had to have two consecutive rounds of clean water sample tests.

Prosecutors presented evidence that several samples taken on Aug. 15, 2009 had the chemical sodium hypochlorite added to them, evidence the judge, in a comment from the bench, said was "overwhelming."

In testimony, Oscar C. Pancorbo, director of the state DEP lab that analyzed the samples, said they contained 92 to 760 times the amount of chlorine that would normally be found in drinking water. The chemical was in the samples, but not in the larger water supply, based on subsequent DEP tests.

The circumstantial evidence presented by prosecutors focused on convincing the judge that Papuga was the person responsible for the tampering. He had delivered the samples that afternoon to a private lab being used during the crisis.

No witnesses saw Papuga alter the samples. But Assistant Attorney General Licata, in his closing statement, said only the manager had opportunity and motive. Seven other employees of Milford Water Company, or a consulting firm, were present on the day when the samples were collected by Jeff Papuga, the defendant's son, then taken by his father to the lab in Westborough.

All but the Papugas testified they never touched the bottles.

The state determined Jeff Papuga, also an employee of the Water Company, had no motive to tamper with the bottles, Licata said. His father, as the face of the Water Company, was under intense pressure to resolve the crisis, Licata said, including from the state and the public.

"He had opportunity. He had motive," said Licata.

William Kettlewell, 

Papuga was then a 27-year manager of the Milford Water Co., a private water utility. He had standing and was well-regarded in the community, Kettlewell argued, and would have no motive to alter the samples because even if they came out clean, the DEP would have required additional testing after the boil order was removed.

Kettlewell also argued that a person with that experience would have known not to have added so much of the chemical to the samples that it caused such a strong reaction in the lab. But in his closing argument, Licata pointed out that Papuga was a manager, not a scientist.

And "when people are under stress, they get sloppy," Licata said.