DENVER — The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment chemistry supervisor realized there was a problem on Dec. 29, 2023. The issue was that the supervisor believed a chemist had manipulated data for testing metals in drinking water.
However, CDPHE did not inform the federal government until April. It took even longer to inform Coloradans.
When the issue was discovered, the "analyst should have been removed from testing duties," a CDPHE document sent to the Environmental Protection Agency states. The document is called an, "Internal Data Manipulation Root Cause," which was sent to the federal government on Aug. 30, 2024.
Because of this situation, CDPHE has recalled 7,095 test results, according to a letter CDPHE sent to the EPA. The state explained the data manipulation as this to the EPA: "It was discovered that the chemist had been exporting instrument data text files and altering them."
The state placed the chemist on administrative leave on Feb. 12, 2024.
"The day Chemist A was placed on administrative leave, she tried to hide her USB drive containing the raw data instrument files from the Lab Director. This action from Chemist A demonstrates she knew her actions in changing data were wrong," the root cause investigation states.
The EPA asked for the analysis and wanted it to include, "The reason(s) for the Laboratory's months-long delay in reporting data integrity issues to EPA, CDPHE's drinking water program, and impacted customers."
In April, EPA staff came for a planned lab visit. At that time, CDPHE informed them of the issue. Two weeks later, the federal government revoked the state labs' certification to perform a test for metals in water.
On May 15, CDPHE informed the chemist of plans to begin disciplinary actions. Two days later, the employee submitted a letter announcing their plan to retire.
Even though Gov. Jared Polis told 9NEWS he wants to know what the consequences will be for the person responsible, it doesn't seem there will be any as the chemist retired months before 9NEWS informed the state about this situation.
"During the week of staff interviews, several staff members communicated that the current program manager had known about the data manipulation by the analyst for a while," the document states.
The document details concerns about the employee date as far back as 2021. In June of that year, the employee received what CDPHE calls a "coaching form." It asked the employee to check data for accuracy.
The employee received another coach form in 2022 about incorrect entries.
"When you were asked to please make a comment in the batch regarding the fix and how this happened, you rolled your eyes and responded that you cannot be expected to enter all data sets correctly," the coaching form states, according to the root cause report.
While the report is meant to investigate how this happened, ultimately the author determined that was an impossible task.
"The true cause of why the analyst made the decision to perform data manipulation and falsification will never be truly known."