A former Rochester water management official faces up to two years in prison and fines after pleading guilty Tuesday to charges that he falsified water records when submitting reports to the Indiana Department of Emergency Management.

In the plea agreement, Herbert Corn, the former superintendent of the City of Rochester’s wastewater treatment plant, admitted to falsifying records about discharged pollutants at least five times between September 2004 and May 2007.

IDEM and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enforce the monitoring requirements, which means that Corn was responsible for detailing the levels of pollutants and reporting those findings to the state agency.

But federal and state officials said that Corn falsified those records for at least three different pollutants — including E. coli bacteria — when submitting discharge reports to IDEM.

And any discharged water levels that exceeded the concentration limits of the Rochester facility’s permit violated the federal Clean Water Act.

Corn entered his pleas in U.S. District Court in South Bend and faces up to $250,000 fines for each count, as well as the possibility of prison.

“Accurate information about a community’s water quality is essential to protect the public health and the environment,” said Randy Ashe in a statement, following Corn’s plea. Ashe is a Chicago-based special agent in charge for the EPA’s criminal enforcement program.

The case was investigated by a task force that includes about a dozen different agencies. Among them, in addition to Ashe’s office and its investigative counterpart at IDEM, are Indiana State Police, Indiana Department of Natural Resources and the federal Environmental Crimes Section of the Department of Justice.

The Task Force encourages citizens to report environmental crimes at (312) 886-9872 or on the Web at www.epa.gov/compliance/complaints/index.html.