THE Commonwealth Utilities Corp. has returned $230,000 in federal CIP funds as ordered by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Interior’s order was due to a defaulted CUC contract with Ceron a few years back for additional power generation capacity on Rota—a project that was never realized.
CUC spokeswoman Pamela Mathis said the utilities agency returned the money to Interior, and has started scrutinizing all contracts and advertisements for requests for proposal and invitations to bid.
Without this scrutiny of contracts, CUC may be requested again by Interior to return more funds.
“This will avoid delays and avoid wasting money. CUC wants to avoid losing opportunities just because we wrote the RFP in a wrong way,” Mathis said.
Bernard P. Villagomez, acting CUC executive director, said Ceron provided CUC with used, and not new, power engines.
But Ceron said the contract did not specify whether used or new engines were required. CUC had already paid Ceron at that time.
“It’s now my job to straighten out the way CUC advertises, reviews and awards contracts, including contractual language reviews,” Villagomez said.
Mathis said CUC has not fully recovered the $230,000 it initially paid to Ceron.
Because of the need to generate more power for Rota, CUC again entered into a $475,000 contract with Pacific Machinery, Inc.
