TRENTON -- A former licensed operator of the New Brunswick and Milltown water utilities was sentenced on Monday to three years in prison after submitting falsified water purity test data to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, according to a statement from the state Attorney General's Office.

Edward O'Rourke, 60, of Brick, pleaded guilty in December to "an accusation charging him with second-degree corruption of public resources and third-degree violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act."

Superior Court Judge Alberto Rivas sentenced him to three years on each of the charges -- which will run concurrently -- as part of a plea bargain he entered with the state.

O'Rourke had admitted that between April 2010 and December 2012 he "repeatedly and intentionally submitted false water purity testing data to the DEP" to conceal that he had not properly overseen drinking water testing samples for New Brunswick and Milltown, the statement said.

The Attorney General's Office said even though the investigation "did not reveal any evidence that water distributed to the public ever contained coliform bacteria, O'Rourke's failure to correctly test and accurately report water purity information to the DEP undermined regulators' ability to oversee the monitoring of drinking water pumped to the public during the relevant 33-month period."

"Tens of thousands of residents relied on O'Rourke as the man responsible for ensuring that their drinking water was safe, and he not only failed to properly test the water, he lied, again and again, to cover up his failures," Hoffman said in the statement. "O'Rourke exhibited a remarkable lack of concern for the health of the people of these two communities."

O'Rourke was also the manager of the New Brunswick laboratory. According to the statement, the investigation revealed that he and his staff were persistently disobeying proper testing protocols and "therefore they frequently did not have samples and data that were compliant with federal and state testing requirements."

O'Rourke did not divulge that the test data did not meet standards and instead "falsified data and information" to give the "appearance" requirements were being met.

He submitted reports on more than 200 samples that contained falsified and fabricated data, the Attorney General's Office said.

Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the Find NJ.com on Facebook.