The never-ending tale of the Hanford, Wash., nuke waste cleanup waste, fraud, and abuse returns, time after time. It’s the longest-running saga of the cascading failure of the U.S. government to deal with the wastes, past and present, from its nuclear weapons program.
Last Wednesday (Jan. 24), the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington filed a complaint in federal district court against Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, LLC (HMIS), alleging fraudulent labor overcharging at the Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford Nuclear Site. Among other tasks, the company provides fire protection at the shuttered 80-year-old legacy bomb factory at Hanford on the Columbia River that made plutonium for the U.S. military’s nuclear weapons beginning in 1943, under a contract awarded in 2021. Hanford closed between 1964 and 1971.
The complaint is the result of a whistleblower, sprinkler fitter Bradley Keever, who alleged the company submitted false invoices for work never performed, totaling millions of dollars. The U.S. Attorney and DOE investigated his claims and then filed the formal complaint under the federal False Claims Act. Under that law, which is designed to encourage whistleblowers and protects them against retaliation by their employer, the government can recover triple damages.
Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS) is a conglomerate creation owned by three government contractors: Leidos Integrated Technology in Reston, Virginia; Centerra Group, LLC in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; and Parsons Government Services in Centreville, Virginia. The contract is worth billions of dollars. In a news release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, “If the United States obtains a recovery, the whistleblower is generally able to share in a portion of the recovery. Over the past decade, False Claims Act recoveries in the Eastern District of Washington have exceeded $400 million.”
The Hanford cleanup contracts have been a multi-layered legal tangle and practical failure for years, moving in and out of various courts and DOE as the agency tries, so far unsuccessfully, to cope with a toxic and radioactive brew of liquid wastes held in above-ground steel tanks, some of which have leaked, threatening the Columbia River.
HMIS is paid on a cost-plus contract, where it submits invoices for “reasonable, allowable, and allocable,” accord to the U.S. Attorney’s office, and “can earn profit, or fee, based on achieving various performance incentives. Costs include labor costs, such as the cost associated with labor hours performed by fire protection and fire systems management personnel employed by HMIS at the Hanford Site, who perform critical tasks such as testing and maintaining sprinklers, pipes, and electronic fire systems.”
According to the complaint, company fire protection workers “regularly experienced extensive and unreasonable idle time on a daily or near-daily basis,” during which time the workers “took naps, watched moves and television, and engaged in other personal activity not related to performing work.” The company then encouraged the idle workers to “falsely and fraudulently charge this idle time to work codes” associated with the contract representing work performed.” HMIS also “scheduled substantial overtime for fire protection workers on Friday and weekends” that were also idle time and fraudulently billed for such shifts at premium pay rates.
The complaint sites a specific illustrative case where “a fire protection worker who did not have any work to perform for an entire 10-hour day, and spent a portion of that day watching the film ‘There’s Something About Mary’ at his desk, then charged the entire 10-hour day to the 600318 training code, which HMIS management approved and submitted to DOE for reimbursement.”
U.S. Attorney Vanessa R. Waldref said, “Fire safety at Hanford is critical to the health of the public, workers, and the environment. It is inexcusable to think that a well-paid contractor entrusted with this critical task to protect our community would fraudulently bill DOE for idle time spent watching movies and literally sleeping on the job, all while putting the public at risk when critical work went uncompleted. We will continue to work hand-in-glove with our law enforcement partners to end fraud and corruption at Hanford and support environmental remediation.”
The 596 square mile Hanford site – which Wikipedia notes is “roughly equivalent to half the total area of Rhode Island – is a scrubland desert, with 50 miles of the Columbia River forming its northern and eastern boundary. In a Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing last year, DOE estimated that the fully cleaning up the site, including a still unproved vitrifying technology – encapsulating the waste in glass – will cost “$300 billion to $640 billion” to complete the remainder of the cleanup by 2078.
–Kennedy Maize