Spat over alleged Qatar World Cup trafficking clogs Fulton sewage contract
The contract to operate sewage treatment plants serving hundreds of thousands of residents in North Fulton County was already a clogged mess.
It is one of the most expensive agreements in Georgia’s most populous county, under renewed scrutiny since the biggest plant released catastrophic levels of E. coli into the Chattahoochee River three years ago.
Fulton County first delayed awarding the new five-year, $150 million contract in June amid a dump of complaints about alleged ethical and legal violations — and the environmental records of the bidders.
But since December, the contract has been delayed for a surprising new reason: a dispute over whether one of the bidders should have disclosed a lawsuit alleging its parent company managed FIFA World Cup construction projects in Qatar using trafficked and forced labor.
The bidder, JC Water Partners, was disqualified for omitting the lawsuit from its submission, according to documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the Georgia Open Records Act. JC Water Partners protested its disqualification, but the county upheld the decision in January, records show.
The company has the right to formally appeal the decision, according to the county’s purchasing code. Spokespeople for Fulton County and Jacobs Solutions, the parent company, did not respond to questions about whether an appeal was in progress.
An evaluation committee recommended awarding the contract in December to Inframark-Slater, but Fulton County chief purchasing agent Felicia Strong-Whitaker pulled the decision from the County Commission’s agenda after receiving the protest.
Commissioners instead voted to extend the contract with the current operator, Veolia Water, through March 31 for more than $5.6 million. Some commissioners expressed weariness and frustration at having to delay the award yet again.
“I don’t have a dog in the fight, other than the taxpaying citizens of Fulton County,” said Vice Chair Khadijah Abdur-Rahman, who represents a western and southern district not served by the contract. “The longer and longer we string this out, they’re the ones that are going to suffer.”
Jacobs Solutions, Jacobs Engineering Group and CH2M Hill were sued in October 2023 by 38 anonymous Filipino construction workers who said they were trafficked and then forced to work on stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The suit was filed in a Colorado federal court. CH2M Hill was headquartered in Colorado until Jacobs acquired it in 2017.
The companies are trying to have the lawsuit dismissed, saying they were consultants to the Qatari government and had no relationship with, or control over, the people and companies that hired the workers, according to court records.
The companies also argued the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act applies on foreign soil in criminal, not civil, cases.
JC Water Partners is a joint venture between Operations Management International — a Jacobs Solutions subsidiary — and Atlanta-based Corporate Environmental Risk Management. A Jacobs vice president submitted JC Water Partners’ bid, records show.
In JC Water Partners’ protest letter, parts of which the county redacted, the company argued the bid’s disclosure requirements did not include private civil lawsuits and “the Qatar lawsuit concerns different corporate entities with no management or personnel overlap to JC Water Partners, OMI, or this Proposal.”
Even if the company erred, it should be allowed to resubmit the bid in lieu of disqualification, the letter said.
In a written response, Strong-Whitaker rejected those arguments.
“The County’s policy is to review the history of litigation of each Proposer to determine whether a firm’s past business practices and overall reputation is one that would be acceptable to perform work for Fulton County,” she said in the letter. “The County has determined as a factual matter that these very serious allegations should not be (viewed) as technicalities and declines to treat them as such.”
Fulton County issued a solicitation a year ago for a contractor to operate the Big Creek, Johns Creek and Little River sewage treatment plants, along with 28 associated pump stations. An evaluation committee recommended Inframark-Slater last spring. But Veolia, the current operator, protested.
While evaluating that protest, county officials concluded the solicitation did not comply with a state law that specifies how governments contracting water or sewer system operations must evaluate bidders’ environmental records. Fulton County then scrapped the bidding process and started over with a new solicitation, extending the contract with Veolia in the meantime.
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