Contractors Sued for N-waste Overbilling

A former budget analyst for subsidiaries of CBS Corp. and Fluor Daniel in a lawsuit filed Apr.6 in U.S. District Court in Spokane, WA, charged the two contractors with overbilling the U.S. Department of Energy by at least U.S.$85 million. The overcharge reputedly was in conjunction with cleanup work at the Hanford (WA) nuclear reservation during the last 12 years.

According to the suit, the contractors added a 14% surcharge to overtime wages. The contractors then compounded the improper charges, the suit says, by using the inflated labor costs in formulas for calculating pension and benefit costs and general overhead.

The suit was filed by David Carbaugh under the False Claims Act, which lets employees collect 15 to 30% of any damages recovered. The Justice Department has decided not to join the suit, a decision reportedly often made separate from the merits of the claim.

Westinghouse ran the 560-sq.-mi. site for the DOE from Jun. 1, 1987, until Sep. 30, 1996, when Fluor Daniel took over. Production of weapons material stopped in 1987. Most work at the site since then has been cleanup, with a budget now exceeding $1.4 billion a year, according to The New York Times report of the suit. The suit contends that labor accounts for about 60% of the total cost.