Re: [CPEO-MEF] Privatization......

[doobage@localnet.com]

Stella,

My comments are based on what I have read on the military's privatization
of BRAC sites and not on experience.

Because if the need to down size quickly, the long duration for clean up at
Superfund/RCRA sites at BRAC bases, cost and other factors that tend to be
"negative" in the current thinking of the military, the powers to be have
proposed that clean up should be taken out of the hands of military
personnel and transferred to consulting engineering firms. My guess is that
the military will put out the transfer of the bases' clean up for bids,
contracts executed and some private firm awarded the task of managing the
base. Sounds great on the surface, but let's examine a couple of items.

1. Private firms are out there to make a profit, and as low bidder, the
successful firm at the word go is already at the disadvantage in that its
profit margin will be low. So how will the officers and the rank and file
of said company get their bonuses come Christmas? By cutting back on
important and necessary remedies during the past year. I can hear the State
and EPA arguing for a remedy that will cost $15 million (for sake of
argument), but at every step of the negotiations, the private firm will
provide data and arguments that "no action", OOPHS! "natural attenuation"
is the only sensible remedy. Expand this thought into every facet of a
Superfund investigation and clean up and by golly!, every one in the firm
will get those Christmas bonuses - and an excellent percentage raise for
those six figures salaries, to boot!!! So, if any one now thinks that the
military personnel are difficult to deal with - and many of them are!- just
you wait until "things" get privatized.

2. The site will remain a BRAC site, but USDOD has always been a great
practitioner and has always been exquisite in "double speak". I am sure
some bright staffer in the Pentagon is at this moment composing a rationale
to explain away USDOD's responsibility under CERCLA, and to foist
responsibility on the contractor, when the clean up is privatized. There is
nothing in the literature that suggests the private firm is obliged to set
up a RAB; as far as a firm is concerned, this is a bunch of balderdash -
and it will treat RABs in like manner. So good bye RABs when the bases are
privatized.


JQ - If there is an interest, pls pass around FPS - MC.




At 08:33 PM 6/21/2001 EDT, StellaVB@aol.com wrote:
>
>Anne Callison asked several good questions back in April regarding:
>
>Does anyone have any thoughts on whether privatization means a base is no 
>longer a BRAC site and under DoD guidance?  Were the RABs done away with in 
>the privatization schemes now in effect at other former BRAC sites?
>
>I would like to know if anyone responded to these questions for they are 
>questions other RABs need to know.
>
>BTW Anne, I have contacted a Brownsfield project here in Florida and will let
>
>you know what I find out.
>
>Stella 
>
>


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