September 5, 2008

U.S. investigates charge that faulty pumps installed after Katrina

Army Corps of Engineers employee raised alarm

NEW ORLEANS

The U.S. Department of Defense will again investigate allegations that the Army Corps of Engineers let a contractor install faulty pumps after Hurricane Katrina despite a warning that they might fail, according to the agency that handles federal whistleblower complaints.

DOD Acting Inspector General Gordon S. Heddell ordered the new probe. It came days after the Office of Special Counsel described a report on the warning by Heddell’s predecessor as “superficial and dismissive,” said James Mitchell, spokesman for the counselor’s office.

The office handles whistleblower complaints, including those by corps engineer Maria Garzino, who cautioned in early 2006 that the pumps would not work properly.

Mitchell quoted Heddell as agreeing “that every effort must be made to assure the citizens of New Orleans that pumps designed for flood protection will perform as specified during hurricanes.”

Heddell was appointed after Claude Kicklighter resigned in June.

In May, Kicklighter wrote, “Our review did not find reasonable grounds to believe that there were criminal violations or deficiencies in the pump acquisition that constituted a danger to public health or safety.”

Heddell has ordered his office to find out whether the pumps were adequately tested and whether they might fail if another hurricane hits New Orleans, Mitchell said.

“We are encouraged by the prompt response ... to ensure that the pumps will perform when needed to provide protection for the people of New Orleans,” said Special Counsel Scott Bloch, who sent Garzino’s whistleblower complaints to the DOD.

Garzino contended that the 34 pumps provided by Moving Water Industries Corp. would fail under a hurricane’s stress. Corps crews installed the pumps on three major drainage canals anyway before the 2006 hurricane season.

The report is the latest look at the US$33 million contract with MWI, owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush once were partners in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps.

Bloch called Kicklighter’s findings “superficial and dismissive.” Garzino called them a whitewash “devoid of engineering and mathematical interpretation.”

Moving Water’s general counsel, Bill Bucknam, called Garzino a liar.

“For the ninth time in the past two years, Moving Water Industries categorically denies the highly inventive, scurrilous and patently false allegations by the would-be whistleblower, Maria Garzino,” he wrote in a statement forwarded by company spokesman Kevin Boyd.

He said seven of nine investigations “have rejected outright Garzino’s wild accusations.”

Associated Press

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