Fulton County twice this year violated a state law that specifies how governments hiring private companies to operate water or sewer systems must evaluate prospective contractors’ environmental records, county officials said.
The mistake led the county to scrap last month’s recommendation for an operating contractor for sewage treatment plants and pump stations in north Fulton over the next five years. The contract, worth an estimated $153 million, is one of the county’s largest awards.
“Although we had that component in there, it did not comply to the reading with the state law,” Chief Purchasing Agent Felicia Strong-Whitaker told county commissioners during a recent meeting.
Fulton County reissued the solicitation Monday.
The winning contractor would take on responsibility for all the sewage treatment facilities in north Fulton, serving hundreds of thousands of people. The battle for the contract comes two years after a massive E. coli leak at the Big Creek Water Reclamation Facility, the largest sewage treatment plant in north Fulton, closed 11 miles of the Chattahoochee River for weeks.
Two of the bidders have protested Fulton County’s solicitation process. One losing bidder accused a member of the selection committee of retaliating after the company reported him for previous ethics violations. Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s executive director and Fulton County’s public works director got into a heated argument over the winning bidder.
“I predicted that this would get messy,” County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said last month at a meeting. “It has gotten messy.”
State law requires governments to consider “relevant civil or criminal penalties” incurred by prospective water, wastewater or stormwater contractors in the five years leading up to the contract’s award.
County staff planned to recommend the north Fulton sewage treatment operations contract be awarded to a joint venture between Inframark and Slater Infrastructure Group. Instead, Strong-Whitaker asked the County Commission to defer a decision so the bid process could be redone.
Pitts was the only board member opposed to canceling the recommendation to hire Inframark.
“All three firms bid on the same requirement and neither of the three firms was harmed by that omission,” Pitts told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We screwed up. The bidders shouldn’t be the ones to pay for it.”
The county in February awarded Veolia a 10-year, $6.2 million contract to operate the Tom Lowe Atlanta-Fulton County Water Treatment Facility without requesting environmental compliance records in the way state law requires, Pitts said. The county is not rebidding that contract, he said.
Fulton did not break the law outright for the more recent sewage treatment contract because no vendors were hired before the corrected solicitation was issued, county spokesperson Jessica Corbitt said.
The other two bidders included the current operator — a joint venture between Veolia and Khafra — and a joint venture between Jacobs and C.E.R.M. Solutions.
All three bidders have faced allegations of environmental lapses.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
The city of Houston fired Inframark from operating five sewage treatment plants two years ago, after inadequately treated wastewater was released, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Veolia was operating the Big Creek facility two years ago when the leak occurred.The Georgia Environmental Protection Division fined Fulton County $113,000 for the incident. Fulton officials have said Veolia helped pay the fine but was not to blame.
Jacobs currently faces a lawsuit in Rhode Island over odors from a sewage treatment plant there.
Steve Labovitz, an attorney for Inframark-Slater, told Fulton commissioners last week he thought the county was incorrectly interpreting the state law they claim to have violated.
Inframark filed a protest last month against the first bid’s cancellation, according to documents the AJC obtained under the Georgia Open Records Act.
Inframark President of Operations & Maintenance Andy Appleton, and Slater CEO Jeanne Simkins Hollis said they are confident of winning the rebid.
“We welcome accountability,” Hollis told commissioners last week. “We stand firmly behind the integrity and goodwill of our proposal and the expertise that led to our selection as the winning bidder.”
The commission last month extended Veolia’s contract until November while the five-year agreement is rebid. During an argument over procedure before that vote, Commissioner Marvin S. Arrington Jr. cursed at Commissioner Bob Ellis. After a hearing last week, the other commissioners decided Arrington had violated the board’s decorum policy, reprimanded him and fined him $500.
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