The Setup: Untreated Water, Zero Oversight

The Akal Energy Tumbleweed Express Public Water System sits in Albany County, Wyoming. It pulls water from a single underground well. That water goes directly to customers with no treatment whatsoever. That is not a claim; it is stated plainly in the EPA’s own administrative order.

Because the system serves approximately 50 individuals daily for at least 60 days a year, it legally qualifies as a “non-transient, non-community” public water system. That designation triggers a specific set of federal monitoring requirements under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Those requirements exist because untreated groundwater can carry bacteria, nitrates, and other contaminants that cause serious illness and death.

Akal Energy, LLC and its owner Manjot Pandher received annual notifications from the EPA spelling out exactly what tests they were required to run and when. They ran some of those tests. Then they stopped.

The Water Was Already Flagged. They Still Did Nothing.

On November 1, 2021, a routine water sample came back positive for total coliform bacteria. Total coliform is a group of bacteria whose presence signals that the water supply may have been contaminated by sewage, animal waste, or other hazardous sources. A positive result is not a minor administrative hiccup. It is a red flag with a mandatory protocol: collect three additional repeat samples within 24 hours.

Akal Energy collected one Triggered Groundwater Rule sample on November 3, 2021. That sample came back negative. The EPA’s order is explicit: one negative sample does not satisfy the regulatory requirement for three distribution system repeat samples. Respondents never collected the other two required samples. They also never completed the mandatory Level 1 Assessment, which was due by December 13, 2021.

A Level 1 Assessment requires the operator to investigate what caused the positive result, identify corrective actions for any sanitary defects found, and submit a documented plan to the EPA. None of that happened. The deadline passed. The investigation was never opened. The 50 daily customers were never told.

They Stopped Testing Entirely

The violations do not end with the November 2021 coliform hit. The EPA’s order documents that Akal Energy failed to monitor the water monthly for total coliform bacteria during September and October 2021, the two months immediately preceding the positive result. They were supposed to be testing every month. They were not.

Then, in 2022, they failed to conduct the required annual nitrate test. Nitrate contamination in drinking water is particularly dangerous for infants and young children. High nitrate levels can cause “blue baby syndrome” (methemoglobinemia), a condition where the blood loses its ability to carry oxygen. The test that would have detected this was simply never run.

The EPA sent them annual notifications of their monitoring requirements. They received them. They still did not test.

The Ledger: Seven Ways They Failed You

The EPA’s order catalogs the violations with bureaucratic precision. Here is what that language actually means for the people drinking this water.

• VIOLATION 1: Failed to conduct a Level 1 coliform assessment after a positive bacteria result on November 1, 2021. Deadline was December 13, 2021. Assessment was never completed.
• VIOLATION 2: Failed to collect three required repeat samples from the distribution system within 24 hours of the November 1, 2021, positive coliform result.
• VIOLATION 3: Failed to monitor the water for total coliform bacteria during September and October 2021, the two months directly before the positive result.
• VIOLATION 4: Failed to conduct the required annual nitrate test in 2022. Nitrate was never checked that year.
• VIOLATION 5: Failed to provide required Tier 2 public notice to customers about the coliform violation. Customers had a right to know within 30 days. They were never told.
• VIOLATION 6: Failed to provide required Tier 3 public notice about the missed coliform monitoring and missed nitrate monitoring violations.
• VIOLATION 7: Failed to report violations to the EPA within the required timeframes, including failing to report the nitrate testing failure within 48 hours and failing to report the coliform violations within 10 calendar days.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Can’t Be Fined Away

Regulatory documents love to count violations. They list them neatly, number them, and assign them penalties. What they cannot number is what it feels like to be one of those 50 people who drank from this system every day, trusting that someone responsible was making sure the water was safe. That trust was not earned. It was just assumed, and then exploited by inaction.

The Tumbleweed Express system has no treatment process. The water that entered customer pipes came directly from underground, with no filtration, no disinfection, no chemical treatment of any kind. The only protection those 50 daily customers had was the monitoring system: regular tests to catch contamination before it caused harm. Akal Energy and Manjot Pandher removed that protection by simply not testing. September 2021 passed without a coliform test. October 2021 passed without one. November 2021 arrived, and finally a test was run. It came back positive.

Here is what should have happened next: immediate follow-up sampling, an urgent assessment to find the source of contamination, a public notification to customers within 30 days, and a documented corrective plan submitted to the EPA. Instead, nothing happened. The company collected one test that came back negative, used that single result as a reason to stop, and moved on. The Level 1 Assessment that would have investigated the root cause was never opened. The customers who had already been drinking that water during the months when testing was skipped were never contacted.

The Safe Drinking Water Act’s public notification requirements exist specifically because people cannot make informed decisions about their health if they do not have accurate information. Akal Energy made that decision for them by staying silent. A Tier 2 notification for the coliform violation was due within 30 days of the problem being identified. It was never issued. Tier 3 notifications for the missed monitoring violations were also never issued. The EPA’s records contain no evidence that any customer ever learned, from the company responsible for their water, that anything was wrong.

The People the System Was Built to Protect Were the Last to Know

The Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974 after decades of industrial contamination disasters made clear that private operators could not be trusted to self-police when the cost of testing and transparency cut into their margins. The entire framework, the monitoring schedules, the Level 1 assessments, the tiered public notification system, exists because of what happens when companies choose silence over accountability. Akal Energy chose silence.

The 2022 failure to test for nitrate adds a layer of particular concern. Nitrate contamination in drinking water poses its greatest danger to infants, whose bodies metabolize nitrate into nitrite, a compound that interferes with the blood’s ability to carry oxygen. The condition it causes, methemoglobinemia, can be fatal in newborns. The test that would have detected elevated nitrate levels costs very little and takes minimal effort. It was simply never run. If any of those 50 daily customers included a household with an infant, they had no information to protect that child. Akal Energy took that information from them.

Legal Receipts: The Government’s Own Words

Every quote below comes directly from the EPA’s Administrative Order, issued October 3, 2023. These are not allegations. These are federal government findings.

“The System is supplied by a groundwater source accessed via one well source. The water is untreated.” EPA Administrative Order, Paragraph 3 — Describing the physical reality of the Tumbleweed Express water supply

“Respondents failed to conduct a Level 1 assessment by December 13, 2021, that was triggered when they failed to take three repeat samples of the System’s water after a positive total coliform sample on November 1, 2021.” EPA Administrative Order, Paragraph 7 — Documenting the core monitoring failure

“This one sample, however, does not fulfill regulatory requirements under the RTCR or negate the violation of failing to complete the Level 1 Assessment.” EPA Administrative Order, Paragraph 7 — Rejecting the company’s apparent attempt to use a single negative test to avoid the full assessment requirement

“The EPA’s records reflect that the Respondents failed to notify the public of the violation cited in paragraph 7 and failed to submit a copy of the public notice and certification to the EPA.” EPA Administrative Order, Paragraph 10 — Confirming customers were never told about the coliform violation

“Violation of any part of this Order, the Act, or Part 141 may subject Respondents to a civil penalty of up to $67,544 (as adjusted for inflation) per day of violation, a court injunction ordering compliance, or both.” EPA Administrative Order, Paragraph 27 — Stating the maximum penalty per violation, per day: $67,544 (enough to pay a working family’s annual rent every single day the violation continued)

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: The Body Count That Doesn’t Make the Papers

The public health stakes of untreated groundwater violations are not theoretical. Total coliform bacteria are classified as indicator organisms, meaning their presence signals the water supply may carry pathogens including E. coli, Salmonella, and Cryptosporidium. Any of these can cause diarrhea, vomiting, kidney failure, and death, particularly in children, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals. Akal Energy ran this system without treatment and without consistent monitoring for months.

The November 2021 positive coliform result came after two consecutive months, September and October, where no testing was conducted at all. That means if contamination was already present during those months, no one would have known. The people drinking the water would have had no warning, no public notice, and no recourse. The law’s entire public notification architecture exists to prevent exactly this scenario. Respondents bypassed it completely.

The missed 2022 nitrate test compounds the risk profile significantly. Nitrate contamination, which can enter groundwater from agricultural runoff, septic systems, or livestock operations, is acutely dangerous to infants under six months of age. The federal maximum contaminant level for nitrate is 10 milligrams per liter. Without the required annual test, there is no way to know whether the water exceeded that limit in 2022. If it did, no one drinking it was warned.

Economic Inequality: Who Drinks Untreated Groundwater?

The Tumbleweed Express system serves a single service connection and approximately 50 daily customers at what the EPA’s order characterizes as a “non-transient, non-community” system. That classification covers workplaces, schools, and other facilities where the same group of people consume water regularly but do not live there. These are people who often have no ability to choose their water source. They drink what is provided, by whoever is running the building or facility they show up to every day.

The maximum potential fine of $67,544 per day (enough to cover a full year of rent for a working-class family in Albany County, every single day the violation continued) sounds significant until you consider that the EPA issued an administrative order rather than immediately pursuing financial penalties. The order requires compliance steps but does not attach an immediate dollar penalty to the existing violations. For smaller operators who cut corners on safety precisely because they calculate that compliance costs money, an order that demands future compliance without extracting past accountability is a weak deterrent.

The communities most likely to rely on small, single-connection, non-community water systems are often rural, lower-income, and working-class populations who have no alternative. When the operator of such a system skips testing, skips assessments, and stays silent about known contamination risks, the people absorbing that risk are not the operator. They are the 50 people who showed up that day and drank the water.