Eliopoulis
WATERTOWN — City of Watertown officials continue to make safety improvements following the workplace death of CSEA member Gregory Eliopoulos.
Eliopoulos, a process worker at the city’s Wastewater Treatment Plant, died in November 2017 when he was struck by a fitting from a high-pressure line.
The resulting investigation by the state Department of Labor’s Public Employee Safety and Health (PESH) Bureau found numerous violations that contributed to the incident.
Since that time, CSEA’s Occupational Safety and Health Department, city officials and the plant’s workers have been working cooperatively to remediate those violations, and recently the PESH Bureau confirmed all the violations were corrected.
CSEA Occupational Safety and Health Specialist Joshua Kemp said CSEA has been satisfied with the city’s cooperation.
“On the plant level, both workers and management have worked together to create safety programs that go above and beyond requirements. They took what they had and what they’ve learned and created exceptional programs, which they intend to expand moving forward,” Kemp said. “We give them credit for taking the worst situation imaginable and working with us to make positive improvements to ensure this type of tragedy never happens again.”
— Mark M. Kotzin
