March 17, 2014

PADUCAH CLEANUP COST GOING UP, BUT BY HOW MUCH?

By ExchangeMonitor

The cost for LATA Environmental Services of Kentucky, LLC, to complete its scope of cleanup work at the Paducah site has increased, though by how much is unclear. Last week, the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office said in a written response that LATA Kentucky’s contract is currently valued at $299 million, an increase of $31 million from the “original” value of $268 million. However, when DOE announced in mid-2010 that LATA Kentucky had won the new Paducah cleanup contract, the Department said at that time that the contract was valued at approximately $285 million.

According to DOE, the cost of LATA Kentucky’s contract has increased due to several factors, including having “additional scope to perform that was not completed by the previous contractor” and “changes in site conditions” from when the Request for Proposals was issued for the new Paducah cleanup contract to the start of LATA Kentucky’s contract. Another factor was “definitization of Non-discriminating elements from the original contract award,” according to DOE spokeswoman Loretta Averna. Non-discriminating elements are cost elements in the contract that DOE provided to all the bidders for use during the competition. “It was expected that these non-discriminating elements would be adjusted after contract award,” she said. LATA Kentucky’s contract at Paducah is set to run for five years, and the work to be performed includes groundwater removal and treatment, containment of the site’s burial ground materials and inactive facilities disposition and surface soil removal, treatment, and containment, according to DOE.

Comments are closed.