Bechtel Corporation: An Illustrative List of the Places and Peoples Impacted by Bechtel's Litany of Negligence, Greed, and Abuse

·     Bechtel built the petrochemical plants that allowed Iraq to make the chemical weapons used against Iran.

·     Bechtel lobbied for war through its former president George Shultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State and co-founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

·     Bechtel is receiving $2.8 billion to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, and is laying the groundwork for more lucrative deals through Iraq’s water privatization, even though an independent report found that many of the Corporation’s reportedly finished rebuilding projects remain “in shambles.”

·     Bechtel recently won a bid to co-manage, along with the University of California, the Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Lab, the birthplace of the atomic bomb

·     Bechtel looks to submit a similar bid for its sister lab, Lawrence Livermore. If successful, Livermore Lab will join Bechtel’s vast nuclear weapons portfolio, which includes:
     o       The Y-12 National Security Complex and Oak Ridge National
           Laboratory in Tennessee 
     o       The Pantex nuclear weapons assembly plant in Texas
     o       The Savannah River Site in South Carolina
     o       The Kwajalein missile range off the Marshal Islands, and
     o       The Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in Pittsburgh.

·     Bechtel was in charge of the Nevada nuclear test site up until June of this year. These managerial contracts combined total over $20 billion.

·     Bechtel operates the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. There are serious concerns about waste from Yucca mountain escaping into the water table, which the nearby native people rely upon. Many even predict the waste contaminating water as far away as Las Vegas.

·     In 1951, Bechtel built the “world’s first nuclear reactor designed to generate electrical power” in Idaho.

·     Bechtel built India’s first nuclear plant at Tarapur. That reactor produced the plutonium used in India’s 1998 atomic bomb test, which set the stage for the arms race between India and Pakistan.

·     Bechtel was originally contracted to build Iran’s first nuclear power plant, before the fall of the Shah’s regime.

·     Bechtel constructed the San Onofre nucler power plant in Southern California just two miles from an earthquake fault. Bechtel installed one of the reactors for the plant backwards, further exacerbating the potential damage from an earthquake. Although Bechtel officials admit the mistake, they claim there is, “no problem.”  

·     Bechtel has built 40% of the US’s nuclear power capability and 50% of all the nuclear power plants in the developing world.

·     Bechtel received a contract to clean up after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant meltdown. The company avoided making essential repairs, and disregarded the health and safety of its cleanup crew by sending them into contaminated areas without protective clothing or respirators.

·     Bechtel has also harassed and fired employees for complaining about dangerous situations at the nuclear facilities they build and maintain. Richard Parks, a senior engineer, complained about safety violations and excessive company waste during the Three Mile Island salvage operation. He was fired, and his apartment was broken into. He was so intimidated by the company that he took his family into hiding.

·     In 1999 a Bechtel Subsidiary privatized the water supply of Cochabamba, Bolivia, and raised rates so high that many people could no longer afford water for drinking, cooking, and bathing. The people of Cochabamba, however, organized in resistance and refused to pay. In Bechtel’s defense the Bolivian government attacked protestors with police, and later the military. In the struggle, a sniper killed 17-year-old Victor Hugo Daza. At the end of the two-month battle, the people emerged victorious and reclaimed their water supply. Bechtel then tried to sue the Bolivian government for lost profits.

·     Bechtel has privatized water in Sofia, Bulgaria. Bechtel tried to raise water rates against the terms of its contract, requiring a government injunction to stop the price hikes.  Even so, water rates have been raised, despite worsening water quality and no visible investment in the water service infrastructure.  

·     In the 1990’s, Bechtel was responsible for over 730 hazardous waste spills – including crude oil, asbestos, and ethylene glycol. 

·     Bechtel received a $45 million contract to manage the reconstruction of San Francisco’s water system. It grossly overcharged the city for unnecessary and superfluous work, and in April 2002, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission ended the contract.

·     Last year Bechtel received a $100 million contract from FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. This contract elicited comparisons to Bechtel’s rebuilding deals in Iraq, right down to its no-bid nature. 

·     Bechtel is co-managing a major transportation infrastructure project in Boston known as the “Big Dig.” The initial price tag for the project was $2.6 billion and it was supposed to be completed in seven years. Instead, it took nearly 15 years and repeated cost overruns drove up the price to $14.6 billion. A month ago, a significant portion of the tunnel system was closed after tons of concrete panels fell from the ceiling, fatally crushing a 39-year-old woman in her car. Massachusetts Gov. Romney called this security lapse “hard to understand,” adding that it raises, “very serious concerns about the oversight by these engineering firms of this project."

Bechtel Factsheet from Arms Trade Resource Center

Bechtel Factsheet
For August 6 Coalition
Arms Trade Resource Center, prepared by Frida Berrigan, based on research by Dena Montague

June 19, 2006

“We are not in the construction and engineering business. We are in the business of making money.”

As one of the largest construction and engineering companies in the world, Bechtel Group develops, manages, engineers, builds and operates telecommunications projects, water systems, petroleum and chemical plants, pipelines, nuclear power plants, mining and metal projects, and civil infrastructure projects.

Bechtel has been involved in some of the world’s largest and most ambitious construction projects-- the Hoover Dam, the first oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia, the Alaskan oil pipeline, and our first nuclear power plants. Bechtel has successfully solidified its position as the preeminent company for building all things nuclear: the company helped design and/or constructed 45 nuclear power plants in 22 states. Bechtel was involved in the decommissioning the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant, managed ExxonMobil’s Singapore Chemical Complex, built an oil pipeline in Mexico, the Meizhou Wan power plant in China and the Boyne Island aluminum smelter in Australia—just to name a few.

Even with these ambitious and problematic projects under their collective belt, the company is most known- or most infamous- for their work in Iraq. In the last few years, Bechtel’s share of Pentagon contracts has risen sharply. In 2005, Bechtel was the 22nd largest recipient of Pentagon contracts, clocking in $1.48 billion. Just two years ago, they received $910 million. IN 2000, they pulled in $694 million, 2001 621 million, before jumping over the Billion dollar mark in 2002.

Iraq
One of the keys to their war time success was a series of very lucrative rebuilding contracts from the Pentagon. The company has reaped tens of millions of dollars in contracts to repair Iraq's schools, for example, but an independent report found that many of the schools Bechtel claimed to have completed, “haven't been touched,” and a number of schools remained “in shambles.” One "repaired" school was overflowing with “unflushed sewage.”

Bechtel also has a $1.03 billion contract to oversee important aspects of Iraq's infrastructure reconstruction, including water and sewage. Despite many promises, Iraqi families continue to lack access to clean water, according to information gathered by independent journalist Dahr Jamail. The company made providing Southern Iraq potable water one of its top priorities, promising delivery within the first 60 days of the program. One year later, rising epidemics of water-borne illnesses like cholera, kidney stones and diarrhea point to the failure of Bechtel's mission.

Nuclear Bechtel
In December 2005, construction giant Bechtel (as part of a consortium) won a $553 million seven-year management contract to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory-- the birthplace of Fat Man and Little Boy, the two nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Lab employs more than 13,000 people and has an estimated $2.2 billion annual budget. That might have been the first time many Americans thought the two words “Bechtel” and “nuclear” in the same sentence, but the company has been profiting from nuclear weapons and power for generations.

In 1951, Bechtel built the “world’s first nuclear reactor designed to generate electrical power” in Idaho. And far away from America’s heartland, the company planted the seeds for today’s South Asia arms race, building India’s first nuclear plant at Tarapur. The nuclear plant produced the plutonium used in India’s 1998 atomic bomb test.

Not only did Bechtel’s activities help catalyze the nuclear arms race in South Asia, their plant didn’t work—it experienced major leaks, causing severe radiation exposure in the area. This toxic phenomenon affected many of Bechtel’s nuclear power stations. In fact, by the 1970s, the entire generation of reactor plants Bechtel began building in the late 1950s were not in compliance with minimum Atomic Energy Commission safety requirements. Although Bechtel employees complained that Bechtel was using “substandard building techniques and faulty welding techniques in the construction of nuclear power plants,” Bechtel chose to ignore such complaints and silence employees who have spoken out the company’s safety violations.

In the face of these challenges, Bechtel transferred its business emphasis from nuclear construction to nuclear cleanup—a lucrative switch. The company has been awarded numerous contracts for clean up in past decades at some of DOE’s largest former weapons productions sites. In 1997 Bechtel earned over half-billion dollars in revenues from nuclear cleanup; more revenue than any other company involved in nuclear cleanup. More here

Bechtel helped build a missile defense site in the South Pacific, is the “environmental manager” at the Oak Ridge National Lab which stores Highly Enriched Uranium, and is carrying out design work at the Yucca Mountain repository for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. At the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, Bechtel is working on technology to turn nuclear waste into glass. But, the estimated costs of the plant doubled in one year to about $10 billion while the completion date slipped from 2011 to 2017. Members of Congress have proposed that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission take over Bechtel’s management because of these cost overruns and delays.

The company runs the Nevada Test Site where the United States performed hundreds of above-and under-ground nuclear weapons tests, and through Bechtel Bettis, manages and operates the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Privatization of Water
When Bechtel got involved, water became an economically, socially and politically destabilizing force for communities in the third and first world. The company took advantage of the push-pull dynamic in public infrastructure—namely, third world countries are pushed into privatizing their water systems by World Bank structural adjustment policies, and in the first world, municipalities are pulled into water privatization as a way of avoiding responsibility for restoring antiquated systems.

The privatization of water systems inevitably results in increased prices for consumers forcing poor people to choose whether or not water takes precedence over food, clothing, or shelter. Privatizing water systems means a steady income for corporations that secure water monopolies.

Bechtel’s efforts to privatize water systems in San Francisco and Bolivia spawned major protests against the company. In February 2000, Bolivia’s third largest city, Cochabamba erupted into a battle over water after the public water system was sold to Bechtel. Subsequently, the price of water in Cochabamba skyrocketed creating panic among Bolivians and forcing them onto the streets in protest. In the protests, a 17-year-old boy was killed and hundreds were injured and arrested.

Although the citizen unrest was directed at Bechtel’s opportunistic venture, the company masked their interest in Bolivia with a humanitarian sheen-- “Currently more than 40% of the region’s citizens have no direct access to water resources. We were invited by the government to participate in a privatization program to develop long-term solutions to provide safe and affordable water and wastewater services.”

A Bolivian protest leader countered, “The blood spilled in Cochabamba carries the fingerprints of Bechtel.”

Bechtel finally agreed to leave Bolivia, but only after La Paz paid the corporation between $12 and $40 million in compensation.

Back on Bechtel’s home turf of San Francisco, the company won a $45 million contract to repair and manage the city’s water system. Many San Franciscans are frustrated that a corporation that has questionable human rights and environmental record will manage the city’s water system. Additionally, many are skeptical that Bechtel can provide cost efficient service, particularly considering its current performance on the ‘Big Dig’ in Boston, where Bechtel is charge of the reconstruction of Interstate 93 beneath the city. In 1985 the price tag for the project was about $2.5 billion. Now it is a whopping $14.6 billion (or $1.8 billion a mile), making it the world's most expensive highway.

Making the World Safe for…. Dictator Profit
In 1997, Bechtel established a strong relationship with Congolese rebel leader Larent Kabila, and went one step further than many of its Western competitors in the Congo by offering to prepare a “master development plan and inventory” of the country’s mineral resources to Kabila free of charge. The company compiled “the most complete mineralogical and geographical data of the former Zaire ever assembled, information worth a fortune to any prospective mining or oil firm.” Bechtel also “commissioned and paid for U.S. National Aeronautics and Space administration satellite studies of the country for infrared maps of its mineral potential.” Robert Stewart, an executive, representing Bechtel International, became “a trusted advisor to Kabila and traveled the country with the Congolese leader “to help him deal with ethnic uprisings as well as with problems across the river in Brazzaville.”

Corporate Connections
“In this business, you get to know people, sit on their boards and one day when something comes up, they ask you to take on a project. One thing leads to another.” Steve Bechtel

Bechtel’s success in the nuclear industry was fostered by the close relationship between Steve Bechtel and John McCone. McCone, a former partner and classmate of Steve Bechtel at U.C. Berkeley, became chairman of President Eisenhower’s Atomic Energy Commission, allowing Bechtel a front row seat in the nuclear revolution. McCone went on to be CIA director under Kennedy and Johnson. Even before McCone’s influence was brought to bear, Bechtel cemented several key nuclear deals—the company built the storage plants for the Manhattan Project, the Doomsday Town in Nevada to measure the damage a nuclear weapon would have on a typical American town, and finally constructed the facility for the Material Testing Accelerator project which eventually became Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

Other key Bechtel alumni include:
Casper Weinburger, Reagan Secretary of Defense, a former Bechtel general counsel
George Schultz, Reagan Secretary of State, former Bechtel President, and current Bechtel board member
W. Kenneth Davis, Reagan’s deputy secretary of Energy and head of the Atomic Energy Commission under Reagan, former vice-president for nuclear development at Bechtel
William Casey, chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission under Nixon, head of the Export-Import bank under Ford, Reagan campaign manger and head of the CIA under Reagan, Bechtel consultant.

Additionally, numerous friends of Bechtel, too long to list, many working in the Atomic Energy Commission eventually ended up with Bechtel. The close collaboration between the AEC and Bechtel was “so incestuous it is impossible to tell where the public sector begins and the private one leaves off.”

McCartney, Laton Friends in High Places The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corporation and how it Engineered the World Simon &Schuster, 1998 p. 80
Riccio, Jim “Incompetence, Wheeling and Dealing: The Real Bechtel” Multinational Monitor October, 1989.
“100 Companies Receiving the Largest Dollar Volume of Prime Contract Awards,” fiscal year 2003 and 2005.
Chatterjee, Pratap “The Earth Wrecker: The Company That Won The Contract To Oversee the Rebuilding of S.F.’s Water System has a Disastrous Record Worldwide,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 31,2000.
McCartney, Laton Friends in High Places p. 203
ibid, 201.
ibid, 201
“Good Things Might Come to Those Who Wait in Nuclear Waste Cleanup” Engineering News Record July 14, 1997.
Bechtel Global Report 2000.
Shultz, Jim “While Bolivia Says Bechtel Agreement is Broken Bechtel Says its Staying” The Democracy Center April 11, 2000.
Shultz, Jim “Blame the Bechtel Corp. Not Narcotraffickers for Bolivia Uprising” The Democracy Center April 12, 2000.
Ibid.
ibid
ibid
ibid 96
ibid 104

DOE fines Bechtel

• DOE Cites Bechtel National Incorporated for Price-Anderson Violations (March 16,2006)
  
• DOE Cites Bechtel Jacobs Company for Nuclear Safety Violations (August 4, 2005)
  

Bechtel, War Profiteer Extraordinaire, a target for activists this August

"The impression we get is that Bechtel is more powerful than the US Army"
- Dr. Nabil Khudair Abbas, a top official with the new Iraqi government's Ministry of Education.

This August groups across the country will directly confront the role of U.S. corporations in creating a worldwide nuclear crisis and leading us to war in Iraq as well as expose the hypocrisy of U.S. threats against Iran. One primary target for these actions will be Bechtel's corporate offices and nuclear facilities, as Bechtel is both the world's #1 nuclear profiteer and a leading beneficiary of the Iraq war and corporate globalization in general.