Compiled by leaders of groups from communities located in the shadows of U.S. nuclear weapons sites. The report card grades looks to the future and lays out an agenda for the next administration.
2008 Radioactive Report Card Grade Book
Press Release
| | |
|
|
| | | published Monday, May 18, 2009 | 2113 Views | |  |
Nuclear Cleanup Awards Questioned:
Firms Cited for Errors Get Funding
By Kimberly Kindy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 18, 2009
A private company was being paid $300 million by the federal government
to clean up radioactive waste at two abandoned Cold War plants in
Tennessee when an ironworker crashed through a rotted floor. That
prompted a major safety review, which ended up forcing work to an abrupt
halt, and the project was shut down for months. The delay and a host of
other problems caused cost estimates to rise, eventually hitting $781
million.
Now, President Obama's stimulus package is opening a bountiful stream of
new funding, and the same contractor, Bechtel Jacobs, is slated to get
$118 million to help complete the job.
The Energy Department has begun releasing more than $6 billion in
stimulus money to clean up 18 nuclear sites from New York to California,
more than doubling the typical yearly funding for the program.
Contractors helped shape the stimulus package and are lined up to get
the work, including many that have been cited for serious safety
violations and costly mistakes.
The contracts -- along with much broader problems in the department's
nuclear cleanup program -- have prompted rare, sharply worded warnings
from some government officials and lawmakers who say the stimulus
funding is ripe for abuse.
The cleanup program has long been plagued by cost overruns and delays
and is designated by the Government Accountability Office as "at high
risk for fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement." Over the past two
years, estimated cleanup costs at all 22 sites have escalated from $180
billion to $240 billion, according to the Energy Department.
"The very contractors that have been responsible for cost overruns and
serious delays have proposed how to pump stimulus money back into the
project," said Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America
Northwest, an environmental watchdog group. The companies "are set to
get hundreds of millions of dollars on top of the money they've already
received, for the same projects they've seriously mismanaged."
Energy Department officials, as well as the contractors, point out that
nuclear cleanup work is exceedingly complex and that some problems have
been unavoidable. Still, the boost in funds to a troubled federal
program highlights the potential pitfalls as $787 billion in stimulus
funding flows out to federal, state and local programs across the country.
In the case of the Energy Department program, private contractors do all
cleanup work, and they have been involved from the beginning in shaping
their piece of the stimulus. As far back as December, when it became
clear that Obama would introduce a huge spending bill to create jobs,
Energy Department staff members began meeting with the contractors,
including representatives from Bechtel National, CH2M Hill and other
large firms.
A $6.4 billion plan was devised at the sessions and carried forward by
Sen. Patty Murray
(D-Wash.), who incorporated the funding into the Senate bill. The House
version of the bill provided for $500 million.
But Murray pushed for the larger figure, saying in an interview that
hundreds of acres would be removed from the nation's "footprint of
contamination" and that the projects were a perfect fit for stimulus
spending because they would create jobs -- the Energy Department has
estimated 13,000.
The final version of the legislation included $6 billion for nuclear
cleanup, and the department said it would negotiate with current
contractors, rather than conduct a lengthy competitive bidding process,
to meet spending deadlines. Most work will begin in the coming months
and is supposed to be completed by the end of 2011.
It is already clear that many of the same contractors whose problems
have been noted in dozens of GAO and inspector general reports are once
more in line for federal money.
Washington Closure Hanford, for example, will receive $254 million for
additional cleanup work at the Hanford nuclear site along the Columbia
River in central Washington state. Two years ago, some workers who the
company had hired were caught falsifying documents about their handling
of nuclear waste, according to an investigation by the Environmental
Protection Agency.
Todd Nelson, a spokesman for Washington Closure Hanford, said his
company thinks the misconduct by subcontractors is now "history," adding
that the current work is "ahead of schedule, under budget and by all
measures getting high marks."
In New Mexico, Washington TRU Solutions will get at least $100 million
to manage and operate a disposal site in the Chihuahuan Desert. despite
safety violations that forced repeated closures and put the work behind
schedule. Company officials did not return calls requesting comment.
Senators have demanded that the department name contractors with past
cost overruns and delays, and have questioned why it would give current
contractors new work without firm penalties in place.
"These contractors know they are going to get the business. What has
been the penalty when they exceeded costs?" Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska)
asked at a hearing last month. "Over the past four years, how many
contracts have been terminated?"
No contractors lost jobs for poor performance during that period, said
Inés Triay, acting assistant secretary for environmental management. But
she said that if contractors do not perform well in the stimulus
programs, the funds will be shifted to other projects. "We believe we
will be very demanding customers," she said.
Environmental groups, as well as government watchdogs, have warned that
private contractors have become too powerful, wielding more influence at
the sites than the Energy Department. The department staff members, said
Gene Aloise, the GAO's director of natural resources and environment,
"need to be reminded that they are there to oversee the contractors, to
protect the taxpayer's dollars."
A central concern for watchdog groups and government auditors is that,
to secure the huge funding increase, department officials promised to
accelerate the work, and that some of the most notable mishaps took
place during accelerated plans under two prior administrations.
One project was at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site, where costs more than
doubled and the estimated completion date went from 2008 to 2015. Two
plants there were abandoned in the 1960s, and hundreds of compressors
and generators laced with uranium were left behind.
Bechtel Jacobs, hired to dismantle and demolish the two buildings, fell
behind schedule in 2005 and asked the Energy Department to authorize an
accelerated plan for the work. But, according to government records, the
company did not follow proper safety plans or accurately evaluate the
first building's condition before sending in workers. That's when the
worker fell through the floor and was seriously injured.
"This accident did not have to happen," an investigation by the Energy
Department found.
"Did we have problems? Yes. But I believe that anyone would have," said
Paul Divjak, president and general manager at Bechtel Jacobs, noting
that the worker has recuperated and has returned to the job. "Are there
other companies that are better qualified" to do the new work? "We don't
think so."
At the Hanford site, critics worry that accelerated efforts will lead to
a repeat of past mistakes. In 2006, for example, a treatment plant had
to be redesigned largely because site managers did not account for the
region's seismic activity, causing costs to rise from $4.2 billion to a
projected $12.2 billion.
Now, $44 million in stimulus funding will go to design a facility that
will process leftover waste from the treatment plant. But because that
plant is still under construction, nuclear engineers say it is premature
to design the new facility.
"It doesn't make sense," said Arjun Makhijani, president of the
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and an expert on the
Hanford site. "It's like figuring out what you are going to do with
spare parts from a car you are going to build before you build the car.
What they design today will be obsolete by the time the plant is up and
operating in 2019."
|
|
|
|
|