Got Anymore Shoddy Solutions for NOLA?
Congress appropriated $5.7 billion to rebuild New Orleans’ flood protection systems.
Thanks to the Associated Press for revealing that when the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, it copied the specifications — typos and all — from the catalog of the same manufacturer that they awarded the $32 million contract to. GAO is looking in to this and will not comment.
The defective pumps were supplied by Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., and installed at NOLA canals before the start of the 2006 hurricane season.
Oh my, MWI employed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, (President Bush’s brother), to market its pumps during the 1980s, and top MWI officials have been major contributors to the Republican Party.
The Army Corps of Engineers’ mea culpa is shallow considering the job was obviously rigged for the benefit of a certain company (by a politically connected insider like Jeb).
In May 2006 a Corp Inspector warned that the pumps were faulty.
Then a whistle-blower, Bob Purcell, who was an FPI salesman at the time the bids were taken, asked the Corp, “Are you folks aware that the specifications that you folks put out was a copy of the specifications in the MWI catalog?”
Purcell complained “We were forced to meet someone else’s specifications in entirety.” He said the contract consultants did not cooperate with FPI, and that MWI was given “a head’s up” about the job. That was evident by MWI’s order for pump engines before the contract was even put out to bid.
Thanks to the Associated Press for revealing that when the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, it copied the specifications — typos and all — from the catalog of the same manufacturer that they awarded the $32 million contract to. GAO is looking in to this and will not comment.
The defective pumps were supplied by Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., and installed at NOLA canals before the start of the 2006 hurricane season.
Oh my, MWI employed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, (President Bush’s brother), to market its pumps during the 1980s, and top MWI officials have been major contributors to the Republican Party.
The Army Corps of Engineers’ mea culpa is shallow considering the job was obviously rigged for the benefit of a certain company (by a politically connected insider like Jeb).
In May 2006 a Corp Inspector warned that the pumps were faulty.
Then a whistle-blower, Bob Purcell, who was an FPI salesman at the time the bids were taken, asked the Corp, “Are you folks aware that the specifications that you folks put out was a copy of the specifications in the MWI catalog?”
Purcell complained “We were forced to meet someone else’s specifications in entirety.” He said the contract consultants did not cooperate with FPI, and that MWI was given “a head’s up” about the job. That was evident by MWI’s order for pump engines before the contract was even put out to bid.
Purcell, a former MWI employee, is also a plaintiff in a federal whistle blower lawsuit accusing MWI of fraudulently helping Nigeria obtain $74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary pumping equipment. The U.S. Justice Department has joined the suit as a plaintiff. Was Jeb’s hand in this, too?
Aren’t we so lucky that America’s Royal Family is so arrogant that they don’t even try to cover their paper/money trail! Shoddy work in Iraq, shoddy work in NOLA, shoddy is the nicest label I can offer to America’s dumbest criminal syndicate. How long can the voting public allow this?
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May 1st, 2007 at 8:11 am
My dad was down there for Jazzfest this past weekend and said you can still see spray paint on abandoned houses indicating how many dead were found in each house. That’s just heartwrenching.