MWH? Bid Rigging? City BK? WTF?

Looks like MWH is at it in Los Osos, CA as well, interesting reading, an excerpt follows...

In 1999, MWH won the engineering contract when the Los Osos sewer was still in the hands of the Los Osos Community Services District and not the county.

By 2006, the district terminated its contract with MWH because of alleged contract violations, over-billing, and conflicts of interest.

Around the same time MWH sued the district for about $1.1 million in unpaid services after the CSD reversed course and canceled the project.

That lawsuit is still pending while the district is in bankruptcy. According to Los Osos residents, MWH helped put the district in bankruptcy.

It wasn’t the first time MWH had problems. In the city of Cape Coral, FL, the contractor was hired to expand the coastal community’s water and sewer system.

The cost of that project quickly rose to just under $1 billion, according to the News-Press.

A 2006 audit found a number of “red flags” in the MWH contract with Cape Coral, including inflating the project cost and bid rigging.

The audit findings were forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of Justice.

A representative from the DOJ declined to comment on any investigation and the FBI did not return a call before press time.

A livid group of Los Osos residents have recently shifted their focus away from the design of the new sewer system and more toward Public Works Director Paavo Ogren.

They have accused Ogren of having connections to MWH. Ogren was the Los Osos CSD’s interim general manager shortly before MWH was hired in 1999.

Ogren: “I was the contract interim general manager prior to Bruce Buel, but the proposal process for project management services was independent from the work I was doing. … I didn’t have involvement in the hiring of Montgomery Watson back then.”

There is, however, also an MWH connection to the evaluation committee.

The current project engineer, Carollo Engineers, used MWH as a subcontracted consultant for the project in 2006.

The Nattering One muses... this wreaks of the same stench that plagued the Cape in the aborted Kessler Audit.

Sources indicate that FBI & DOJ have both investigated bid rigging allegations. Neither agency will confirm nor deny, whether the investigations are ongoing.

With the city in dire economic straights, could a lawsuit from MWH put the Cape into BK territory?

One can only wonder what other connections exist between MWH and high ranking Cape officials? More to come.