Two former suburban Crestwood officials who lied for decades about drawing water for residents from a well tainted by a cancer-causing chemical were sentenced for their crimes Thursday.
Theresa Neubauer, 55, received two years probation along with 100 years of community service per year. And the village's former certified water operator, 61-year-old Frank Scaccia, was also sentenced to two year's probation.
Neubauer was convicted earlier this year on 11 counts of making false statements and was the only Crestwood official to go to trial in a scandal that shocked the region for the apparent callousness displayed by village officials. She faced a maximum five-year prison term for each count.
Scaccia pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements.
Prosecutors say the village for decades mixed contaminated well water with cleaner but pricier water from Lake Michigan to keep water rates low. It infuriated residents and left many fearing for their health.
Sandy and Ronald Reinstein, who say the water made their 17-year-old son sick, left the sentencing hearing dissatisfied.
"While they serve their sentences and go on with their lives, my son will go on with his life ... he has a lifetime sentence ... with what the water may have done to him," Sandy Reinstein said.
Neubauer's brother, Mike, feels she's a scapegoat.
"It's been hell on our family. And of course a lot of things came out in the trial, you heard it yourself -- how come none of the big guys were ever charged in this?" Mike Neubauer said.
Theresa Neubauer claims that officials higher up the chain of command devised and carried out the plot to divert a percentage of well water into the village's supply and that she was "unknowingly sucked into it."
Officials drew the tainted water until 2008 even after environmental officials warned in the mid-1980s that cancer-causing chemicals had oozed into the well, prosecutors said during the trial.
Pending lawsuits blame the well water for a variety of illnesses. A 2010 health department report did find cancer rates were higher than average in Crestwood, but it didn't make a definite link to the tainted water.
