The book would close on a whistleblower lawsuit that Bechtel National and AECOM settled last year for $125 million, under a final stipulation for dismissal the three plaintiffs filed Tuesday.
The filing is mostly a formality, as the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington state had already dismissed much of the case in March. The court retained limited jurisdiction, including to enforce the terms of the settlement the Justice Department disclosed in late November.
Under federal law, plaintiffs Donna Busche and Walter Tamosaitis, former employees of URS Energy Corp., and former DOE Hanford Site vitrification plant engineering director Gary Brunson, are each eligible for between 15 percent and 25 percent of the total award, or between $18.75 million and $31.25 million. The three filed suit under seal in 2013. The Department of Energy later joined the action.
AECOM acquired URS Corp. in 2014, after the alleged wrongdoing described in the lawsuit. The whistleblowers said Bechtel and URS bought non-nuclear-certified parts for the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., and that Bechtel illegally used federal funding to lobby for the project.
The companies have denied all wrongdoing.
Bechtel’s Waste Treatment Plant prime contract is worth roughly $14.5 billion. The plant will turn Hanford’s liquid waste, left over from Cold War plutonium production, into more easily storable glass cylinders. Part of the plant is slated to open by 2023 to treat low-activity waste, with high-level waste treatment set to begin in the mid 2030s.
