RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — Joshua Niemann will lead Riviera Beach’s Special Utility District after the utility, serving mostly Riviera Beach and parts of West Palm Beach, went 11 months without a permanent leader.
Riviera Beach’s City Council, which governs the utility district, fired the last executive director in June 2024. The city made the decision after WPTV reported on a seven-month delay between receiving a positive test for E. coli in untreated well water and notifying the public in January 2024.
WATCH: New director takes over utility district plagued by water quality issues
Our news team also uncovered documents showing the city was accused of fabricating water quality tests, changing tests positive for contamination to negative in October 2024.
An investigation by the Palm Beach County Office of Inspector General found employees at the water utility didn't carry out essential duties, including failing to report water tests to the Florida Department of Health at least 130 times between January and September 2023. This resulted in the city facing fines worth more than $1 million, officials within the utility losing their jobs and the city spending millions to hire an outside company to manage the water utility.
The department Niemann takes over has had issues with water quality tests for at least a decade, stretching back to 2016 when the city had issues with chlorine levels within the water.
PREVIOUS: Employees at Riviera Beach's water utility didn't carry out essential duties
“I’ve been with Riviera Beach since Monday morning and I tell you what, we do have our work cut out for us,” Niemann said to Riviera Beach’s City Council at a June Special Utility District meeting. “But things are already looking up.”
WPTV wanted to know more about Niemann’s plans to fix the utility department, which also controls stormwater and other utility operations. However, the city still hasn’t given us a time to interview him since we first asked back in June 2025. Our news team got a copy of his application for the position within the last two weeks, after requesting it months earlier from the city.
According to his application, Niemann said he had experience working in water utilities for three different municipalities. Most recently, he said he worked for the city of Deerfield Beach as an assistant director of environmental services (utilities), after working as a Class A water treatment plant manager.
Before becoming the plant manager, his resume said he was a Class A chief water treatment plant operator for the Seminole Tribe of Florida after being a plant operator for the Seacoast Utility Authority that serves areas around Palm Beach Gardens.
