RH White, the construction company that will be hired by Aquarion to work on the Berkshire St. wastewater treatment facility and CSO 009 wastewater abatement project.

Malcolm Pirnie, the engineering firm Holyoke hired, and worked on a similar project in Lynn.

RH White

The construction company that will be hired by Aquarion is RH White, http://www.rhwhite.com/ a notorious non-union contractor and member of the Association of Builders and Contractors. ABC companies are non-union, and often aggressively anti-union, and the ABC is their national association.

Below is what they call their ‘Merit Philosophy” which is all about what they once called ‘scab labor’: the ‘right to work’ and the ‘open shop’ being code words for how to bust unions, which has been quite successful in destroying unions in many trades and industries.

Association of Builders and Contractors

”ABC has enjoyed a growing membership, now totaling more than 23,000 firms, each dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and management’s right to manage.

“ABC supports the sound merit shop philosophy at the heart of the free enterprise system. The merit shop is a force for economy and efficiency in construction, regardless of organizational affiliation.”

“Associated Builders and Contractors believes that the common good is best served by an open and competitive marketplace; that every company, regardless of its affiliations, has the right to compete free of coercion by any group or organization; and that every person must have the opportunity and right to work.”

http://www.abc.org/documents/meritshopword.PDF

Malcolm Pirnie

Malcolm Pirnie http://www.pirnie.com/index2.html is the engineering firm hired by the city of Holyoke to come up with the proposal for privatization of the wastewater treatment plant. The company did similar work for the city of Lynn, subject of an Inspector General’s report with 18 findings of problems with the process: http://www.mass.gov/ig/publ/lynnwwrp.pdf, concluding:

“The [Lynn] Commission paid more than $3 million to privatization consultants to assist

with these procurements; unfortunately, this expensive investment in expertise has not

protected the ratepayers from a bad deal. The Commission’s experience demonstrates

that generating competition for public contracts is essential to protecting the public

interest. Other communities considering long-term DBO contracting for their

wastewater facilities should be aware that the high cost to private firms of developing

proposals for these risky and complex contracts may deter competition and result in

higher costs than competitively bid construction contracts and straightforward operation

and maintenance contracts.

Sincerely,

Robert A. Cerasoli

Inspector General

Finding 7. An analysis prepared by Malcolm Pirnie to show that the

U.S. Filter design-build price for the CSO project was lower

than competitively bid construction prices was based on

an invalid and misleading cost comparison..............................

Finding 14. Malcolm Pirnie prepared a flawed analysis purporting to

show that the 20-year, DBO contract would cost less than a

competitively procured five-year contract for the

wastewater treatment plant contract..........................................

Finding 9. Claims made by the Chairman of the Commission and the

Mayor that the U.S. Filter contract would save the

Commission more than $400 million were not supported by

the cost estimates and analyses prepared by the

Commission’s consultants.........................................................

In 2004, the city of Lynn fired US Filter, now called Veolia: ” Commissioners James Cowdell, Walter Proodian and Jeffery Hayward referred to a "breach of contract" clause in the commission's contract with USFilter in voting to fire the firm. "USFilter is done. I don't want USFilter in the city," Cowdell said.” http://www.waterindustry.org/New%20Projects/usfilter-29.htm

Maybe Mayor Sullivan didn’t know about Malcolm Pirnie and the Inspector General’s report. Maybe he didn’t care. A year after the report came out, he testified to the US House about the virtues of privatization and used the city of Lynn as an example:

http://www.house.gov/transportation/water/03-13-02/sullivan.html

“The Lynn, Massachusetts experience is an example of what can be achieved by using competitive approaches to design, build and operate water infrastructure that is intended to achieve compliance with the zero discharge requirement for storm waters. In that example, the City was required to eliminate overflows and traditional design-build-operate planning anticipated a $400 million (plus) solution. A competitive bid process, however, anticipating a public-private partnership approach yielded a zero discharge solution that cost less than one-quarter of the traditional approach. Hence, it is possible through competition to achieve compliance with water quality goals at a cheaper price.”

“As I mentioned to you before, the estimate to take care of Holyoke’s CSO problem will cost between $56-78 million dollars. If we conduct a traditional approach to solve this problem, the cost will be at the high end of that estimate. We are now considering doing a public-private partnership to handle this situation. The current estimate for this approach is around $32 million, a considerable savings. In my opinion, this is the best solution I have available. By doing a public-private partnership, we can save money, bring additional private sector resources, and share the risks together with the private sector. That is a very valuable tool to utilize to help us solve this tremendous problem.”

The Mayor also sits on the Urban Water Council, part of the US Conference of Mayors. Other members include several of the largest water corporations, multinationals like Veolia, owned by Vivendi – Universal, one of the largest of the large diversified multinational conglomerates actively buying up water systems throughout the US. The global water industry sees vast potential profits in raising the low rates of public systems throughout the US.