SOUTH RIVER, NJ — Yet another water quality inspector in Middlesex County has been accused of falsifying drinking water inspection reports submitted to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

This week, the office of New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced that a licensed operator of the South River Water Department was charged with submitting false water samples and records to the DEP. Robert Baker, 56, of Mine Hill, N.J., was arrested early Wednesday morning and charged with a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, a third-degree crime.

His arrest sounds very similar to the 2015 case of Edward O'Rourke, a former employee at the New Brunswick water plant, located just one town over. In 2015, O'Rourke confessed that he lied about testing the area's drinking water, and knowingly submitted false water reports to the DEP for more than two years. O'Rourke, 60, who lived in Brick, admitted to submitting false water purity reports for New Brunswick and Milltown from April 2010 through December 2012. He was sentenced to three years in prison.



A spokesman for the state attorney general's office declined to answer when asked if either the state DEP or the attorney general's office is doing a long-range investigation into Middlesex County water quality tests. The New Jersey attorney general has a policy to neither confirm nor deny ongoing investigations. "The two cases are not connected. They resulted from entirely separate investigations," said AG spokesman Peter Aseltine.

The investigation into Baker, who worked at the South River water plant, began last month: South River police said they obtained information that Baker allegedly was submitting false water samples to the state. Baker, as a licensed operator, is required to collect samples of drinking water from eight locations throughout South River to be tested for coliform bacteria (fecal bacteria from humans and animals). Samples are taken twice a month, with 15 samples per month required in total.

However, it is alleged that Baker only visited certain locations, not all eight sites. He submitted false samples for the sites he did not visit, investigators say. Baker was the sole employee in South River responsible for visiting the testing sites.

South River police and detectives with the AG's office then began doing a surveillance of Baker: They said that on May 21, he allegedly did not go to at least four of the eight designated collection sites. But the water samples he sent to the state lab were marked as if he had visited all eight. Baker was also scheduled to conduct sampling on Tuesday of this week, June 11. Police were again watching him, and they said he again failed to go to all eight, but sent in samples as if he had.