“There was no intention to ignore or refuse to submit responses to the EPA,” CUC Deputy Executive Director Abe Utu Malae said.
During a status conference in federal court, then-CUC deputy director for water and wastewater Bruce Megarr told the U.S. Department of Justice that he was instructed to “purposely submit inadequate deliverables that would not meet the stipulated orders requirement.”
Malae said CUC Executive Director Antonio Muna advised him and Megarr that the executive director would be responsible for certain deliverables such as the interim financial plan and the organizational evaluation.
“That made sense to me since finance, budget and accounting are his [Muna’s] forte. I simply left it at that and did not ascribe motives,” Malae said.
However, he admitted that some of the deliverables were not submitted on scheduled.
“They were late but the primary reason was that we — CUC as an organization — was simply overwhelmed by all the requirements and orders,” he said.
