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<\/a>Thirty-five feet down, on the bottom of a concrete tank filled with a mil- lion gallons of bitterly cold water, lay a body. The tank\u2019s fity-pound lid was slightly askew; its usually secure bolts were loose or missing. Shards of glass\u2014the remains of a beaker for taking water samples\u2014were scattered across the concrete floor. This was in early February 2005, in a state-of- the-art water purification plant in suburban New Jersey.\nThe victim was Geetha Angara, a well-liked forty-three-year-old hydrochemist. She was the mother of three, the wife of a banker, had a PhD in organic chemistry from New York University, and had worked at the Passaic Valley Water Commission plant for twelve years. In 2004, the plant underwent a $70 million upgrade, during which a chlorine treat- ment system was replaced by an ozone-based system. At the same time, Angara was promoted to senior chemist. Her job was to maintain water quality to standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to oversee the new ozone generators, which would suffer from cracks and other problems. A colleague recalled that during the plant\u2019s rededi- cation, Angara was \u201cin such a fabulous mood, [but] other people around her weren\u2019t.\u201d
\nAn autopsy showed that Angara had been forcibly subdued but that she was still alive when she fell, or was pushed, into the tank. \u201cThere was no way out,\u201d said Passaic County prosecutor James Avigliano. \u201cThe water level was five feet below the opening. It was pitch-dark, ice-cold, thirty- six-degree water. There were no ladders. It was just a horrible way to die. There is no doubt that this is homicide.\u201d
\nThe Passaic treatment plant sits on the outskirts of Totowa, a bustling suburb of ten thousand, just west of Manhattan. The plant purifies 83 mil- lion gallons of drinking water a day. Although New Jersey has relatively large water reserves, the state\u2019s rapid growth has put tremendous pressure
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\non its water supplies. Towns are competing for the same resources, water rates are rising, decades of pollution have poisoned rivers and aquifers, and infrastructure is aging.
\nAs in many states that suffer from similar problems, private water com- panies sensed an opportunity in New Jersey and began to move in. By the mid-1980s, the Hackensack Water Company controlled hundreds of acres in the watershed of northern New Jersey, supplied water to many towns, and had acquired numerous smaller water companies. When in the early 1990s the company announced it would turn some of its wetlands and for- ests into housing developments, arguments broke out in town meetings. Local environmental groups\u2014worried that the developments would con- taminate the watershed\u2014filed lawsuits to block them. A 1993 settlement preserved 650 of the disputed acres. But in 2000, the company\u2014renamed United Water Resources, and operating in fourteen states\u2014pushed to develop a twenty-acre parcel adjacent to the Oradell Reservoir, near the town of Emerson, and just a few miles from the Passaic Valley water plant. This time, the Environmental Defense Fund, a national environmental group, spearheaded the drive to protect drinking supplies. Both sides were threatening legal action when the giant French water company Suez took a controlling interest in United Water\u2014for $1.36 billion, in mid-2000\u2014and brokered a truce. In December 2001, the borough of Emerson purchased the disputed lot for $7.8 million and turned it into a nature preserve\u2014 though the battle still rankles New Jerseyans.
\nWater is now a big, if unglamorous, business. Disputes over the control of supplies, and the privatization of utilities, have become increasingly common across the country\u2014from Atlanta, Georgia, to Stockton, Califor- nia\u2014and around the world, from China to Bolivia. In some cases, priva- tizing water leads to better service; in many cases, it results in higher fees; occasionally, it has led to social upheaval and violence, as people protest the commoditization of an essential resource.
\nGeetha Angara was proud of her work at the Passaic Valley treatment plant, and she always conducted her water tests conscientiously. On the day she went missing, she was alone by the water tank for only a short time. That aternoon, colleagues noticed an odd sight: an uneaten sand- wich on Angara\u2019s impeccable desk; they began to search for her but did not call the police for ten hours. The following aternoon, police divers were called in and eventually discovered her radio and clipboard at the bottom of a tank. But Angara\u2019s body had migrated from the main tank into a sec- ond tank, the \u201cclear well,\u201d and wasn\u2019t discovered until hours later.
\nPlant administrators worried that the water might have become contaminated and decided to drain the entire 1-million-gallon tank. By the time Anga- ra\u2019s body was recovered, chlorine used as a cleansing agent had destroyed any potential DNA evidence.
\nAs news of Angara\u2019s death spread in surrounding communities, rumors flew. Officials canceled school, and some local businesses temporarily closed. (A dead body will generally sink as soon as the air in its lungs is replaced by water; once submerged, liquids and feces escape the cadaver, which begins to decompose, rendering the surrounding water unhealthy to drink.) As a precaution against contamination, the Passaic Valley Water Commission issued a \u201cboil order\u201d\u2014a suggestion that the public boil drinking water, to purify it\u2014to seventeen towns. The citizens of Pas- saic County were forced to confront an uncomfortable fact: their hereto- fore safe, dependable, boring water supply was not as secure as they had always assumed it was.
\nInvestigators were unable to discover a clear motive for Angara\u2019s kill- ing, but they felt sure of one thing: the plant was protected from outside intruders, so she was likely murdered by one of her eighty-five coworkers. All fity employees present on the day of her death were interviewed and provided DNA samples. Eight of them were deemed of \u201cspecial interest\u201d; three of them were especially suspect because their stories didn\u2019t add up. But without a clear motive or proof of a crime, the investigation stalled in 2006. Detectives were no longer working full-time on the case, though it remained technically open (and therefore I was not allowed to view the voluminous investigative files). The following year, the Angara family filed a wrongful-death suit against the PVWC and a number of individually named supervisors and lab technicians, claiming the water plant\u2014which had a history of accidents involving extremely high levels of chlorine in the water, open and unguarded water tanks, dirty work spaces, a lack of internal security measures, and a record of fity-five health and safety vio- lations\u2014was a dangerous workplace that the PVWC allegedly knew about but failed to correct. In 2009, a state judge instructed attorneys to mediate the lawsuit. The commission\u2019s lawyer declined to comment, other than to say, \u201cThe PVWC continues to deny these unproven allegations.\u201d
\nWith Angara\u2019s death still a mystery, questions remain. Why would someone murder a respected hydrochemist? Did it have anything to do with the quality of water at the plant? Had the water at the PVWC really turned a pinkish color the week before the murder, as Angara had con- fided to her husband? If so, what did that mean? Did Angara blow a whistle on a colleague? Did the expensive new ozone disinfectant system, which had caused Angara headaches for weeks, have some kind of embarrassing problem? Had she inadvertently stumbled over something illicit, such as a drug deal, or a tryst, as some have alleged? Were any of the more outra- geous conspiracy theories\u2014such as the claim, whispered to me in a windy parking lot, that the New Jersey mob had been angered by the PVWC\u2019s switch from chlorine to ozone treatment, a move that supposedly cur- tailed work done by contractors under mob control, and had put out a hit on Angara\u2014true? (No evidence has been presented to back this theory.) One indication that her death may have had something to do with water quality, and not professional jealousy or personal antipathy, was that the EPA sent agents to review PVWC maintenance records. State prosecutors played down the importance of the visit, saying the federal agents \u201cwere just dotting their i\u2019s and crossing their t\u2019s. They found nothing.\u201d
\nTo the public, the most pressing question surrounding Angara\u2019s death was, how could a body enter the drinking supply in one of the nation\u2019s most densely populated regions and remain undetected for a day and a half without sounding an alarm? The answer was that in the PVWC tank, the sensor designed to warn of any change in water displacement wasn\u2019t working. So when Geetha Angara fell, or was pushed, into the water tank, no alarm sounded to warn that something weighing 175 pounds had entered the water. It could just as easily have been 175 pounds of cyanide, or a biological weapon, as a body.
\nThis revelation led to further questions. If a body could contaminate 1 million gallons of water with no warning, then what other contaminants might lie unidentified in the drinking supply? In light of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in nearby Manhattan, were the PVWC\u2019s treat- ment chemicals\u2014such as chlorine (a potentially deadly gas that was used as a chemical weapon during the First World War)\u2014used properly and secure?
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