The City of Cottonwood has been cooperating with Arizona Department of Health Services and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality in an investigation into the City’s practices and procedures for collecting, testing and recording water samples and reporting the results of those tests to the state. City Manager Doug Bartosh says the investigation has revealed a number of significant deficiencies and incidents of noncompliance, but there’s no evidence that any of the deficiencies led to the provision of water that did not fully comply with all applicable federal and state water quality standards. Bartosh says the City has elected to cease testing its own compliance samples and is now sending those samples to a certified outside laboratory. The city has also implemented a number of additional actions to ensure this type of thing never happens again.
