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Trenton Water Works' Pennington Avenue Reservoir, which holds about 100 million gallons of water, has been in service since 1899. The long-troubled water utility supplies about 29 million gallons of drinking water to about 200,000 people daily in Trenton, Ewing, Hamilton, Hopewell, and Lawrenceville. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor) Residents of Trenton and its suburbs received a letter last week from their local water utility that informed them an employee had been fired for falsifying drinking water data for 15 months — meaning the water went unmonitored for contaminants for over a year. The news might otherwise have earned a shrug from the 200,000-plus customers of Trenton Water Works, long used to the mismanagement, money problems, and staffing shortages that have made the utility frequent headline fodder. But the letter came two years after the state assumed oversight of the utility in New Jersey’s capital city and just a month after state environmental officials blasted its “serious ... continued noncompliance” with the state’s Safe Drinking Water Act — and levied a $235,000 penalty. It also came almost a year after the employee in question last falsified drinking water data. “There’s a section on the letter that says: ‘What do you need to do now?’ It happened a year ago! Do I buy a time machine and go back and not drink the water?” said Michael Ranallo, a longtime Trenton resident. Trenton officials deny that the falsified data means the water was tainted. Instead, it was a monitoring violation, not a water quality violation, said Michael Walker, the utility’s chief of communications and community outreach. The falsified data was “an inexcusable event,” but the employee rightfully got fired and referred to authorities for possible criminal charges, Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora said. A spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office said an investigation remains ongoing. “We have a couple hundred employees, and unfortunately, one of the water testers, criminally, in my opinion, did not perform his duties and stayed home and fabricated test results . Totally serious violation. Doesn’t mean necessarily that there would have been water violations found,” Gusciora said. Residents and public officials in the suburbs the utility serves remain skeptical. “While TWW claims there is no immediate public health risk, I share the frustration and mistrust felt by many Ewing residents and our neighboring communities,” Ewing Mayor Bert Steinmann said in a statement. Steinmann called for more transparency, accountability, and “swift corrective actions.” “Falsified data and inadequate testing for contaminants erode public confidence and raise serious questions about the utility’s ability to provide safe, reliable drinking water,” he said. On the Facebook page Trenton Orbit, which Ranallo co-founded, Ranallo urged customers to challenge their bills and press the state Board of Public Utilities to intervene. A board spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. “Would you pay your cable company if your signal was scrambled for a month?” Ranallo said. He also complained that local and state officials “made a bigger deal when Starbucks left than anyone has over ~220,000 people’s water.” The Starbucks closure prompted Gov. Phil Murphy to intervene, unsuccessfully. Trenton Water Works serves all sorts of people and facilities, including restaurants and health care facilities, Ranallo told the New Jersey Monitor. “If you were to look back over that time, how many people got sick and didn’t even think that it could be the water? We’ll never know,” he said. While political leaders haven’t said much, state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette was clear in his concerns about the utility in an order he issued in late October. “The Department has determined that conditions continue to exist at the System that may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health of persons, and that this (order) is necessary to protect public health,” LaTourette wrote. The order indicates the department will continue its operational oversight of the utility and informs Trenton Water Works it will hire staff to manage its water treatment plant and other operations. The department is now soliciting bids from firms that can help operate, manage, maintain, and repair the utility over at least a two-year period . Gusciora said the city welcomes the state’s oversight and help in filling staffing gaps that he blamed in part for the 200-year-old utility’s water monitoring lapses and other ongoing problems. “We’re the second oldest water company in the nation, and it has a lot of historical problems that we’ve been addressing since the get-go,” Gusciora said. He also blamed the state’s failure to invest in improvements or otherwise support the city. The utility got just $6 million a year in state aid during the Christie administration, compared to $47 million this year , while state property in Trenton is tax-exempt, leaving the 7-square-mile city struggling financially to fill that property-tax gap, he said. “They drain a lot of our resources and take up space that otherwise would be choice development,” Gusciora said. Walker estimated the utility has $500 million to $1 billion in capital needs, with projects underway to remove lead from water lines, update the filtration plant, replace its reservoir with decentralized storage tanks, and otherwise modernize operations. Trenton Water Works ranked 25th in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s recent ranking of water systems with the most lead lines nationally, with more than 23,000 lines known to contain lead in need of replacement. The utility hasn’t raised rates since 2020 but will have to do so annually, beginning next year, to help cover modernization costs, Walker said. He defended the delay in alerting the public about the employee — one of three water testers — who falsified water data for 15 months, saying the utility is required first to report such things to the state Department of Environmental Protection and follow their directions on community notifications. “We love our customers, including the ones which are not happy with our performance,” Walker said. “We understand that we need to do a better job of communicating why we do what we do, what it costs, and how it benefits the health and well-being of our consumers. At the end of the day, we are very passionate about what we do, about producing one of the finest drinking water products in the world. We want a stronger relationship with our service area customers, and we will get there.” Ranallo doesn’t believe it. “I haven’t had a drop of that water in years,” he said. “I buy bottled water. I don’t consume water from the utility because I don’t trust it.” SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
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President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday said he wants to change the name of the highest mountain in North America from Denali back to Mount McKinley. Alaska’s two Republican U.S. senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, immediately pushed back, saying they support the Koyukon Athabascan place name for the mountain. Denali was long favored by many Alaskans and used by Indigenous people here for centuries. Trump made the suggestion Sunday in a speech to supporters in Phoenix at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest. He mentioned former President William McKinley of Ohio as a supporter of protective tariffs, which Trump has embraced. “William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States ... the vast sums of money that he brought into our country,” Trump told the crowd. “The person really who got us the money that President Theodore Roosevelt used to build the Panama Canal and a lot of other things. McKinley was a very good, maybe a great president. They took his name off Mount McKinley, right? That’s what they do to people. ... But President McKinley was the president that was responsible for creating a vast sum of money in the United States that Teddy Roosevelt then spent. So let’s say that they were both excellent presidents, but McKinley did that, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley because I think he deserves it. I think he deserves it. There are lots of things we can name, but I think he deserves it. That was not very gracious to somebody that did a good job.” Trump offered no more specifics. The mountain, the highest in North America at 20,310 feet, was named Mount McKinley by the federal government in 1896 but was renamed Denali in 2015 by the Interior Department on the eve of then-President Barack Obama’s visit to Alaska. It followed many years of efforts by Alaska officials and Native groups to rename the mountain. It was renamed by then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell under a federal law that allows the secretary to make changes to geographic names through the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, according to the department. The park was originally named Mount McKinley National Park in 1917. Its name was changed in 1980 with the creation of Denali National Park and Preserve. McKinley died without ever setting foot in Alaska, assassinated in 1901 at the start of his second term in office. Jewell’s 2015 order changing the name of the mountain notes, “President McKinley never visited, nor did he have any significant historical connection to, the mountain or to Alaska.” The name “Denali” is derived from the Koyukon name and is based on a verb theme meaning “high” or “tall,” according to linguist James Kari of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in the book “Shem Pete’s Alaska.” Both Alaska senators immediately pushed back on Trump’s remarks Sunday. “Sen. Sullivan like many Alaskans prefers the name that the very tough, very strong, very patriotic Athabaskan people gave the mountain thousands of years ago — Denali,” Sullivan aide Amada Coyne wrote in a text message. Sullivan has been a supporter of the president-elect. Murkowski, on social media, said, “There is only one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali — the Great One.” Trump suggested changing the name back when he was president in 2017 and both Murkowski and Sullivan objected, Sullivan said in remarks to the Alaska Federation of Natives annual conference, according to an ADN article at the time. The senators met at the White House with Trump and then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to discuss Alaska issues, Sullivan said, including reversing Obama executive actions the senators had opposed. At the end of the meeting, Sullivan said, “He looked at me and said, ‘I heard that the big mountain in Alaska also had — also its name was changed by executive action. Do you want us to reverse that?'” He and Murkowski “jumped over the desk — we said, ‘no! No. Don’t want to reverse that,’ ” Sullivan said. Sullivan said he told the president Denali was the name given to the mountain by the Athabascan people more than 10,000 years ago. And Sullivan’s wife is Athabascan. If “you change that name back now, she’s going to be really, really mad,” he said he told the president. “So he’s like, ‘all right, we won’t do that,’ ” Sullivan said. U.S. Rep.-elect Nick Begich couldn’t immediately be reached on Sunday, and a spokesman for Gov. Mike Dunleavy had no immediate comment.
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Since being traded to the Washington Commanders, Marshon Lattimore has missed his first four potential matchups in D.C. due to a hamstring injury. It sounds like that might change after the Commanders' Week 14 bye, and there's no doubt Lattimore has Washington's next game circled on his calendar. That would be because the opponent in that game is the New Orleans Saints, the team that just traded Lattimore. In eight seasons, Lattimore played in 97 games for the Saints and was a four-time Pro Bowler in addition to the 2017 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year. Lattimore returned to the practice field this past week (albeit in a limited role), and will now have the full bye week to rest up. With four games remaining in the regular season, that first game after seems to be the best opportunity to finally get him on the field regardless of the opponent. The fact that it's against the Saints -- in New Orleans, at that -- only makes it more emotional for Lattimore, who is sure to be given plenty of respect from his former teammates and fans. It should also make him all the more motivated to show out for his new squad. Commanders fans have waited an entire month to see their team's prized trade deadline acquisition on the field. Assuming all goes according to plan, his debut could now be an extra special one.
2024 in pop culture: In a bruising year, we sought out fantasy, escapism — and cute little animalsTOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A white ex-police detective in Kansas died Monday in an apparent suicide just before the start of his criminal trial over allegations that he sexually assaulted Black women and terrorized those who tried fight back. Local police found Roger Golubski dead of a gunshot wound on the back porch of his split-level home outside Kansas City, Kansas. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation said “there are no indications of foul play" in the 71-year-old's death, discovered Monday morning after a neighbor heard a gunshot. Fifty miles (80 kilometers) to the west, prosecutors and Golubski's attorneys were inside the federal courthouse in Topeka, where Golubski faced six felony counts of violating women's civil rights. Prosecutors say that, for years, Golubski preyed on female residents in poor neighborhoods, demanding sexual favors and sometimes threatening to harm or jail their relatives if they refused. He had pleaded not guilty. His death led U.S. District Judge Toby Crouse to dismiss the charges at prosecutors' request, though a second criminal case involving three other co-defendants remains. U.S. Department of Justice officials said it's “difficult” when a case cannot “be fully and fairly heard in a public trial,” but advocates for the women who accused Golubski of abusing them were angry, feeling that they and the community were denied a reckoning. “There is no justice for the victims,” said Anita Randle-Stanley, who went to court to watch jury selection. Randle-Stanley, who is not a victim in this case, said Golubski began harassing her when she was a teenager decades ago, but she always refused him. The heart of this trial focused on two women: one who said Golubski began sexually abusing her when she was a young teen in middle school, and another who said he began abusing her after her twin sons were arrested. Prosecutors said seven other women were planning to testify that Golubski abused or harassed them as well. And advocates for the women believe there are other victims who have either died or have been afraid to come forward. The allegations that Golubski preyed on women over decades with seeming impunity outraged the community and deepened its historical distrust of law enforcement. The prosecution followed earlier reports of similar abuse allegations across the country where hundreds of officers have lost their badges after allegations of sexual assaults. Some of the women and their advocates were upset that Golubski was under house arrest while he underwent kidney dialysis treatments three times a week. Cheryl Pilate, an attorney representing some of the women, said she has questions about how well the government was monitoring Golubski. “The community had an enormous interest in seeing this trial go forward,” she added. “Now, the victims, the community and justice itself have been cheated.” After Golubski failed to appear in court Monday, his lead attorney, Christopher Joseph, said his client “was despondent about the media coverage.” Joseph said he had talked to Golubski regularly, including Monday morning, and he was shocked to hear that his client had apparently killed himself. As for Golubski’s death, he said, “I don’t know the details.” This case against Golubski was part of a string of lawsuits and criminal allegations that led the county prosecutor’s office to begin a $1.7 million effort to reexamine cases Golubski worked on during his 35 years on the force. One double murder case Golubski investigated already has resulted in an exoneration , and an organization run by rapper Jay-Z is suing to obtain police records. Joseph had said lawsuits over the allegations were an “inspiration for fabrication” by his accusers. “We have to keep fighting,” said Starr Cooper, who was in the courthouse Monday to watch jury selection and said Golubski victimized her mother before her death in 1983. About 50 people had a short rally Monday morning in sub-freezing temperatures outside the federal courthouse in Topeka to show their support for the women accusing Golubski. They held signs with slogans such as, “Justice Now!” Lora McDonald, executive director of MORE2, a Kansas City-area social justice group, said participants learned that Golubski didn’t show up in court just as the rally began. They dispersed before prosecutors announced his death. They later joined Pilate in calling for an independent, outside investigation into Golubski's death. “Golubski terrorized an entire community and co-conspired with dangerous people,” McDonald said. “Our rally today was not just about Roger Golubski. Rather, it was about the department in which his criminal activity flourished." Pilate lamented that without a trial for Golubski, "In the eyes of the law he died an innocent man.” Max Seifert, a former Kansas City police officer who graduated from the police academy with Golubski in 1975, said Golubski's supporters will treat him as a martyred victim of unfair pretrial publicity. He contends the department condoned misconduct. “I feel that there is always going to be a cloud of mystery about this,” he added. Stories about Golubski remained just whispers in the neighborhoods near Kansas City’s former cattle stockyards partly because of the extreme poverty of a place where crime was abundant and some homes are boarded up. One neighborhood where Golubski worked is part of Kansas’ second-poorest zip code. Fellow officers once revered Golubski for his ability to clear cases, and he rose to the rank of captain in Kansas City before retiring there in 2010 and then working on a suburban police force for six more years. His former partner served a stint as police chief. The inquiry into Golubski stems from the case of Lamonte McIntyre, who started writing to McCloskey’s nonprofit nearly two decades ago. McIntyre was just 17 in 1994 when he was arrested and charged in connection with a double homicide, within hours of the crimes. He had an alibi; no physical evidence linked him to the killings; and an eyewitness believed the killer was an underling of a local drug dealer. In the other federal criminal case involving Golubski, that drug dealer also was charged with him, accused of running a violent sex trafficking operation. McIntyre's mother said in a 2014 affidavit that she wonders whether her refusal to grant regular sexual favors to Golubski prompted him to retaliate against her son. In 2022, the local government agreed to pay $12.5 million to McIntyre and his mother to settle a lawsuit after a deposition in which Golubski invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent 555 times. The state also paid McIntyre $1.5 million. The last name of a woman who says the ex-detective harassed her for years has been corrected. She is Anita Randle-Stanley, not Randel-Stanley. Hollingsworth and Ingram reported from Edwardsville, Kansas.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A white ex-police detective in Kansas died Monday in an apparent suicide just before the start of his criminal trial over allegations that he sexually assaulted Black women and terrorized those who tried fight back. Local police found Roger Golubski dead of a gunshot wound on the back porch of his split-level home outside Kansas City, Kansas. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation said “there are no indications of foul play" in the 71-year-old's death, discovered Monday morning after a neighbor heard a gunshot. Fifty miles (80 kilometers) to the west, prosecutors and Golubski's attorneys were inside the federal courthouse in Topeka, where Golubski faced six felony counts of violating women's civil rights. Prosecutors say that, for years, Golubski preyed on female residents in poor neighborhoods, demanding sexual favors and sometimes threatening to harm or jail their relatives if they refused. He had pleaded not guilty. His death led U.S. District Judge Toby Crouse to dismiss the charges at prosecutors' request, though a second criminal case involving three other co-defendants remains. U.S. Department of Justice officials said it's “difficult” when a case cannot “be fully and fairly heard in a public trial,” but advocates for the women who accused Golubski of abusing them were angry, feeling that they and the community were denied a reckoning. “There is no justice for the victims,” said Anita Randle-Stanley, who went to court to watch jury selection. Randle-Stanley, who is not a victim in this case, said Golubski began harassing her when she was a teenager decades ago, but she always refused him. The heart of this trial focused on two women: one who said Golubski began sexually abusing her when she was a young teen in middle school, and another who said he began abusing her after her twin sons were arrested. Prosecutors said seven other women were planning to testify that Golubski abused or harassed them as well. And advocates for the women believe there are other victims who have either died or have been afraid to come forward. The allegations that Golubski preyed on women over decades with seeming impunity outraged the community and deepened its historical distrust of law enforcement. The prosecution followed earlier reports of similar abuse allegations across the country where hundreds of officers have lost their badges after allegations of sexual assaults. Some of the women and their advocates were upset that Golubski was under house arrest while he underwent kidney dialysis treatments three times a week. Cheryl Pilate, an attorney representing some of the women, said she has questions about how well the government was monitoring Golubski. “The community had an enormous interest in seeing this trial go forward,” she added. “Now, the victims, the community and justice itself have been cheated.” After Golubski failed to appear in court Monday, his lead attorney, Christopher Joseph, said his client “was despondent about the media coverage.” Joseph said he had talked to Golubski regularly, including Monday morning, and he was shocked to hear that his client had apparently killed himself. As for Golubski’s death, he said, “I don’t know the details.” This case against Golubski was part of a string of lawsuits and criminal allegations that led the county prosecutor’s office to begin a $1.7 million effort to reexamine cases Golubski worked on during his 35 years on the force. One double murder case Golubski investigated already has resulted in an exoneration , and an organization run by rapper Jay-Z is suing to obtain police records. Joseph had said lawsuits over the allegations were an “inspiration for fabrication” by his accusers. “We have to keep fighting,” said Starr Cooper, who was in the courthouse Monday to watch jury selection and said Golubski victimized her mother before her death in 1983. About 50 people had a short rally Monday morning in sub-freezing temperatures outside the federal courthouse in Topeka to show their support for the women accusing Golubski. They held signs with slogans such as, “Justice Now!” Lora McDonald, executive director of MORE2, a Kansas City-area social justice group, said participants learned that Golubski didn’t show up in court just as the rally began. They dispersed before prosecutors announced his death. They later joined Pilate in calling for an independent, outside investigation into Golubski's death. “Golubski terrorized an entire community and co-conspired with dangerous people,” McDonald said. “Our rally today was not just about Roger Golubski. Rather, it was about the department in which his criminal activity flourished." Pilate lamented that without a trial for Golubski, "In the eyes of the law he died an innocent man.” Max Seifert, a former Kansas City police officer who graduated from the police academy with Golubski in 1975, said Golubski's supporters will treat him as a martyred victim of unfair pretrial publicity. He contends the department condoned misconduct. “I feel that there is always going to be a cloud of mystery about this,” he added. Stories about Golubski remained just whispers in the neighborhoods near Kansas City’s former cattle stockyards partly because of the extreme poverty of a place where crime was abundant and some homes are boarded up. One neighborhood where Golubski worked is part of Kansas’ second-poorest zip code. Fellow officers once revered Golubski for his ability to clear cases, and he rose to the rank of captain in Kansas City before retiring there in 2010 and then working on a suburban police force for six more years. His former partner served a stint as police chief. The inquiry into Golubski stems from the case of Lamonte McIntyre, who started writing to McCloskey’s nonprofit nearly two decades ago. McIntyre was just 17 in 1994 when he was arrested and charged in connection with a double homicide, within hours of the crimes. He had an alibi; no physical evidence linked him to the killings; and an eyewitness believed the killer was an underling of a local drug dealer. In the other federal criminal case involving Golubski, that drug dealer also was charged with him, accused of running a violent sex trafficking operation. McIntyre's mother said in a 2014 affidavit that she wonders whether her refusal to grant regular sexual favors to Golubski prompted him to retaliate against her son. In 2022, the local government agreed to pay $12.5 million to McIntyre and his mother to settle a lawsuit after a deposition in which Golubski invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent 555 times. The state also paid McIntyre $1.5 million. The last name of a woman who says the ex-detective harassed her for years has been corrected. She is Anita Randle-Stanley, not Randel-Stanley. Hollingsworth and Ingram reported from Edwardsville, Kansas.