Puerto Rico’s power authority on Sunday canceled its controversial, $300 million contract with a small Montana company to rebuild its power lines after Hurricane Maria.
Ricardo Ramos, head of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, said the deal with Whitefish Energy would cease once the firm’s current work is finished.
The announcement came as the authority, also known as PREPA, faced mounting pressure from officials to cancel the deal.
Now that it is, Ramos said, restoring power lines on the U.S. territory could be delayed by 10 to 12 weeks.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello earlier Sunday called on PREPA to sever ties with Whitefish.
“There cannot be any kind of distraction that alters the commitment to restore electrical power as soon as possible in Puerto Rico,” Rossello said.
Whitefish only had two full-time employees when Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane. It’s since added roughly 300 workers to its effort.
Rossello said Sunday that Whitefish has been paid at least $8 million until this point.
“If something illegal was done, once again, the officials involved in that process will feel the full weight of the law, and I will take administrative actions,” the governor said Sunday.
A Whitefish representative said the company is “very disappointed” by the severed contract.
“The decision will only delay what the people of Puerto Rico want and deserve — to have the power restored quickly in the same manner their fellow citizens on the mainland experience after a natural disaster,” the statement read.
The company said their linesmen had already “completed significant work on two major transmission lines” restoring power to hospitals, businesses and homes in Manati parts of San Juan.
New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito didn’t buy Rossello’s take — arguing he would’ve known about the contract.
“The number one task, the priority right now in Puerto Rico is to get the electricity up and running,” Mark-Viverito, who grew up on the island, said during a Sunday appearance on MSNBC. “And to say that a $300 million contract, which has as a responsibility to put the electrical grid back on, he knew nothing about, that’s hard to believe.”
She continued to slam Rossello’s response to the storm, saying he’d defended the Whitefish contract only days earlier.
“I unfortunately believe that the governor is inept at the moment,” the council speaker said.
Multiple questions have risen since PREPA inked the deal with the company, based out of Whitefish, Mont., hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Both Zinke — whose son worked at the company for a summer — and the White House have said they didn’t play a role in the contract.
Whitefish didn’t go through a formal bidding process to get the contract. PREPA’s leaders said it signed the contract two days before Maria hit, and FEMA signed off on that.
Not so, according to FEMA officials, who are now looking into the contract over some of its reimbursements. Other agencies are also looking at the deal.
Line items on the contract called for $20,277.60 for a Chinook helicopter airlift and $3,969.84 for a passenger chopper, according to a copy obtained by a Daily Beast reporter.
Workers were to get nearly $80 for meals each day as well as $332.41 for daily accommodations.
The AP, which also obtained a copy of the agreement, noted a foreman for a power line crew is to be paid $322 an hour, while journeyman lineworkers are set to get $319 per hour.
And the fight over the contract comes as 70% of Puerto Rico remains without power more than five weeks after Maria made landfall.
Rossello on Sunday called for New York and Florida crews to come to the island and aid in the power work.
Gov. Cuomo, speaking on CNN, said he’d send teams to the island to help, but first officials “will need an estimate from the Puerto Rican power authority, as to how many crews they want.”
The governor estimated it’d take at least 2,000 crews from what he’d seen on the island.
“And then you have a logistical operation on the island,” he said. “Where do you house 6,000 workers? But those are logistically, issues that can be worked out.”
With News Wire Services
With Nicole Hensley
