A former employee of Energy Department contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) alleged the company bilked the federal government out of $20 million by covering up a leak in the double-shelled liquid-waste Tank AY-102 at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., according to a recently unsealed court documents.
In a whistleblower complaint filed under seal in 2013 in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington under the federal False Claims Act, former WRPS employee Michael Geffre sought a jury trial and up to $60 million in civil penalties on behalf of the United States against the Hanford tank farm contractor and its parent companies, URS Corp. and EnergySolutions Federal Services of Hanford.
The complaint — filed the year after WRPS acknowledged Tank AY-102 was leaking radioactive waste — was unsealed Dec. 8, 2015, after Geffre dropped the case. The whistleblower made his decision the same day Michael Ormsby, the U.S. attorney with jurisdiction over Hanford, officially declined to get involved with the case. In cases where whistleblower claims lead to federal civil penalties, the whistleblower may receive a portion of the proceeds.
In a Tuesday email, a WRPS spokesman said only that the company “is pleased that this meritless lawsuit has been dismissed,” and that “the WRPS actions taken in response to the suspected AY-102 leak were in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements.”
Geffre himself, reached Wednesday, declined to be interviewed. At the time he filed the complaint, Geffre was WRPS’ lead instrument specialist for the AY/AZ Tank Farm at Hanford, court documents show. He has since left the company.
Geffre’s allegations, and the fact of the leaky tank, have been known for years, but the unsealed complaint provides the first insider insight into the cost of WRPS’ actions. DOE has ordered WRPS to transfer the waste in Tank AY-102 to another tank by March 4, 2017 — a fix the agency thinks will cost about $110 million, in total.
DOE at one point envisioned modifying the roughly 1-million-gallon Tank AY-102 into a sort of transfer reservoir to help pipe the 56 million gallons of liquid waste at the Hanford tank farm to the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) being built at the site to convert liquid waste into a glass form that is safer to store. The leak — which Geffre said in his complaint he discovered on Oct. 10, 2011 — threw a wrench in those plans, since leaky tanks must by law be taken out of service.
Geffre, in his complaint, said he informed WRPS about the leak on Oct. 10, 2011, and that instead of investigating it immediately, the company “took action to cover-up the existence of the leak” before finally acknowledging the situation on Oct. 22, 2012.
“Despite knowing that a leak in Tank AY-102 would preclude it from serving as the holding tank for wastes to be transferred to the WTP, Defendants continued their design efforts to upgrade Tank AY-102 for this purpose, claiming payment for design work, construction efforts and procurements,” the complaint reads. The eventual taxpayer bill for that work, Geffre alleged, was “at least” $20 million.
Geffre, according to his complaint, notified his employer about the leak after a so-called ENRAF alarm on Tank AY-102 went off. DOE, in a 2012 press release, said the leak was discovered in August of that year “during a regularly scheduled DST Integrity Inspection.”
Washington River Protection Solutions got its tank operations contract from DOE in 2008. The deal is potentially worth up to $7 billion through 2018, including a $2.5 billion base period and two options.
DOE picked up the first option in 2013, which at a cost of roughly $2 billion extended the pact through September. The department must decide before then whether to pick up the remaining option. The department has so far paid WRPS about $4 billion under the contract, according to a copy of the contract posted online by the agency’s Office of River Protection.
