Ashbritt

Ashbritt, located in Pompano Beach, Florida, is an environmental services company providing engineering, construction management, operations/privatization, and other related services.

Overview

Ashbritt is organized in four divisions: disaster recovery services, solid waste services, engineering services, and special environmental services. The company sees six potential hazards that may result in destruction – hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, ice storms, and terrorist activities – Ashbritt prepares itself to deal with the damage caused by these events. It also provides non-hazardous waste collection throughout the United States. Among Ashbritt’s past jobs are the cleanup and recovery from several hurricanes and tornadoes.

Hurricane Katrina

On September 1, 2005, just days after Hurricane Katrina, AshBritt hired Mike Parker as a lobbyist. Mr. Parker had formerly been the director of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The company listed his duties on federal disclosure forms as "federal affairs for debris removal after Hurricane Katrina." Fourteen days after Parker's hiring, the Army Corps awarded AshBritt a contract worth $500 million to remove Katrina debris in Mississippi, with an option to increase the dollar amount to an even billion dollars. AshBritt had already been activated under a preexisting contingency contract for $56 million, rocketing it to the top of the list of Katrina contractors. [http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf20051027_8761_db038.htm]

Ashbritt, considered one of the larger hurricane contractors in the Southeast, received dozens of contracts in support of hurricane cleanup throughout the region. Many of these contracts have been completed successfully, but many have also been mired in controversy. For example, in December 2005 Ashbritt's contract was terminated by the city of Biloxi, Mississippi for failure to make required progress. [http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12886]

Controversy

Much has been written about the political connections of various hurricane contractors.Fact|date=May 2008 Shaw Group, DRC and Ashbritt all have strong political ties and have been accused of purchasing this political influence in order to advance their own contracts. Ashbritt in particular has come under fire for several examples of using political contributions to further their business. Around the time of Hurricane Katrina, Ashbritt paid $40,000 to the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which had been run by Mississippi Governor and former National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt also provided $50,000 over to the Republican National Committee in 2004.

Ashbritt has also come under fire after a report in The Washington Post revealed that until October 2005, AshBritt listed itself in government databases as a minority-owned, woman-owned company, even though it's run by a white man. [http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf20051027_8761_db038.htm]

External links

* [http://www.ashbritt.com Ashbritt corporate website]
* [http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley04262006.html Katrina: Eight Months Later Government Fraud, Despair and Hope] , Bill Quigley, Counterpunch, April 26, 2006.
* [http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf20051027_8761_db038.htm Anatomy of a Katrina Cleanup Contract] , Eamon Javers, Business Week, October 27, 2005.
* [http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12886 Biloxi Axes Corps, Ashbritt] , Corpwatch, December 13, 2005.