A tiny firm from Montana managed to snag a $300 million contract to help restore Puerto Rico’s devastated power grid – and it had just two employees when Hurricane Maria hit.
Whitefish Energy signed a the contract five days ago to restore power in Puerto Rico, despite having no history of doing any comparable work.
Now, a Democratic lawmaker is calling for an inquiry, as attention focuses on the firms’ tiny hometown of Whitefish, Montana – which happens to be the town where Interior Department secretary Ryan Zinke was raised.
Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the leading Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, is calling for a probe of the contract. While the vast majority of Puerto Rico’s 3.5 million people are without power.
In this Sunday, Oct. 15, 2017 photo, Whitefish Energy Holdings workers restore power lines damaged by Hurricane Maria in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski said previous work restoring transmission lines damaged by wildfires in the western U.S. has prepared them for the Puerto Rico contract. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
He said Congress ‘needs to understand why the Whitefish contract was awarded and whether other, more cost-effective options were available.’
According to the Washington Post, which reported the story, the company is based in Whitefish, Mont., Zinke’s hometown.
Its CEO, Andy Techmanski, knows Zinke, although according to Zinke officials it is a town where ‘everybody knows everybody.’
The paper wrote that one of Zinke’s sons ‘worked a summer job’ at at a Techmanski construction site. Both men said Zinke had no role in the contract. Zinke is a former congressman from that part of Montana.
‘Neither the secretary nor anyone in his office have taken any meetings or action on behalf of this company,’ the department said in a statement.
Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, from left, Betsy DeVos, U.S. secretary of education, Eric Hargan, acting U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Ryan Zinke, U.S. secretary of interior, listen as U.S. President Donald Trump, not pictured, speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Oct. 16, 2017
The company had just two Energy Department contracts under its belt. One was for just $172,000.
Under the contract, subcontractors would get $462 per hour for a supervisor, $319 for a lineman, plus accommodation fees of $332 per worker and $80 per day for food.
The island is billions in debt, with about 80 per cent of residents lacking power.
Ricardo Ramos, director of Puerto Rico’s power authority, said the government has a $300 million contract with Whitefish and a separate $200 million contract with Oklahoma-based Cobra Acquisitions after evaluating up to six companies for the job.
Whitefish was one of two companies on the government’s shortlist, Ramos said. The other company was requiring a $25 million down payment, given the power authority’s troubled finances. PREPA filed for bankruptcy in July and has put off badly needed maintenance for years. It just finished dealing with outages from Hurricane Irma in early September.
President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, in Washington, as Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, left, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, center, listen. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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Whitefish is providing hotel rooms for it workers and brought its own materials, Ramos said. ‘They’re doing an excellent job,’ he said.
Whitefish CEO Techmanski visited Puerto Rico in late summer while on vacation and established contact with PREPA and discussed potential future work, company spokesman Chris Chiames said. When Maria hit Sept. 20, Whitefish was one of the companies that power authority officials were able to reach by satellite phone.
‘We got here quicker than anybody else and we built a plan that PREPA had confidence in,’ Chiames said in telephone interview.
Grijalva said lawmakers also need to know why the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and public sector utilities ‘failed in Puerto Rico to conduct the disaster-response planning they carried out ahead of other disasters this year’ in Texas, Florida and other states.