By now you’ve heard a company called Whitefish Energy scored a $300,000,000 contract to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electrical grid after Hurricane Maria. Turns out there is a lot more to the story and that led to the contract being terminated.
Whitefish is a tiny company based in the Montana hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Seems the Secretary is pals with the guy who owns Whitefish Energy; his son even worked a summer job at a Whitefish construction site. The 2-year-old company had two full-time employees when the storm hit, but it has since hired more than 300. They were quick to put together a sweet little deal for themselves.
Cost of doing business
A Whitefish contract obtained by The Associated Press found that the deal included:
70 percent of P.R. remains without power more than a month after Hurricane Maria struck as a Category 4 storm with winds of up to 154 mph. It’s expected that the total cost of restoring the power grid will top $1.2 billion. The P.R. power agency is $9.1 billion in debt.
Original article: https://medium.com/@SteveMillerOK/p...a-company-that-had-two-employees-416bab8aa2e2
Whitefish is a tiny company based in the Montana hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Seems the Secretary is pals with the guy who owns Whitefish Energy; his son even worked a summer job at a Whitefish construction site. The 2-year-old company had two full-time employees when the storm hit, but it has since hired more than 300. They were quick to put together a sweet little deal for themselves.
Cost of doing business
A Whitefish contract obtained by The Associated Press found that the deal included:
- $20,277 an hour for a heavy lift Chinook helicopter
- $650 an hour for a large crane truck
- $322 an hour for a foreman of a power line crew
- $319 an hour for a journeyman lineman
- $286 an hour for a mechanic
- Each worker also gets a daily allowance of $80 for food, $332 for a hotel room and $1,000 for each flight to or from the mainland
70 percent of P.R. remains without power more than a month after Hurricane Maria struck as a Category 4 storm with winds of up to 154 mph. It’s expected that the total cost of restoring the power grid will top $1.2 billion. The P.R. power agency is $9.1 billion in debt.
Original article: https://medium.com/@SteveMillerOK/p...a-company-that-had-two-employees-416bab8aa2e2