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George Schultz |
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Bechtel has been in the construction business for more than 100 years and has completed close to 20,000 projects in 140 countries. This privately owned firm had revenues of $13.3 billion last year. They won the Iraq re-construction contract worth $34.6 million, but provides for funding of up to $680 million over 18 months subject to Congress' approval. Bechtel's primary activities under the contract will include rebuilding power generation facilities, electrical grids, water and sewage systems and airport facilities in Iraq. Heaven forbid the Iraqis reject the contract - Bechtel recently brought a $25 million lawsuit against Bolivia for canceling a contract to manage the Cochabamba water system, which resulted in skyrocketing rates for local people. Bechtel built Saudia Arabia's first pipeline as well as major towns like Jubail. Seven weeks after Riley was asked to advise President Bush on increasing exports, his company won multi-million dollar contract from U.S. Agency for International Development contract to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, who oversees the bidding process for postwar contracts, once headed the Boston-area "Big Dig" construction project, for which Bechtel was the primary contractor. This project is wrapping up reconstructing Interstate 93 underneath the surface of the city. In 1985, the price tag of the project was an estimated $2.5 billion. This figure has been spiraling upwards every year. The latest price tag for the project was a whopping $14.6 billion or $1.8 billion a mile, making it the world's most expensive highway. Bechtel also built most of the United States nuclear power plants and now has the contract to clean up the mess they made when they built them. California citizens are still paying the bills for the cost over-runs at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in northern San Diego County where Bechtel installed one of the reactors backwards! Meanwhile the local environmental costs continue to mount every day as the plant sucks in huge quantities of plankton, fish and even seals with the water to cool the reactors. The reactor also destroys miles of kelp on the seabed by discharging the heated water back into the ocean. Other construction boondoggles by Bechtel include the Ok Tedi gold mine in Papua New Guinea where the dam Bechtel was building to contain mining waste collapsed before gold was even extracted in 1984. In 1996, when the local people took them to court, BHP, the Australian operators of the mine agreed to spend up to $115 million to contain the toxic waste that they were dumping into the Fly river at a rate of 80,000 tons a day from the mine. However, the company has many friends in high places: Jack Sheehan, a senior vice president at Bechtel, is a member of the Defense Policy Board, a government-appointed group that advised the Pentagon on the war. Meanwhile Bechtel also advises both the federal agencies that provide loans and insurance to American companies overseas. Daniel Chao, another Bechtel senior vice president, serves on advisory board of the US Export-Import Bank, while Ross J. Connelly, a 21-year veteran of Bechtel Group, is the chief operating officer for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). |
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