Judge Upholds EPA’s Decision Against Fluor

A federal judge in Los Angeles has blocked an attempt by the Fluor Corp. to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s denial of a $45-million contract to build a wastewater treatment plant in Monterey.

The company’s Fluor Constructors Inc. subsidiary originally was awarded the contract in May by the Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency. However, the deal was rescinded by the EPA in September after other bidders protested that in its final bid, Fluor failed to name one of the suppliers it intended to use for the job.

Despite the company’s protest that the omission was unintentional, Judge Manuel Real on Monday upheld the EPA decision to award the contract to another firm whose bid came in at $893,000 more than Fluor sought for the project.

Although building, expanding and modernizing wastewater treatment plants is increasingly accounting for a greater share of Fluor’s business, a company spokesman said the lost contract represented a tiny fraction of Fluor’s yearly revenues.

Currently, the firm’s various engineering and construction units are involved in about a dozen wastewater treatment plant projects worth a combined total of approximately $200 million. The spokesman, however, said that while the loss of the Monterey contract won’t have any “significant effect” on Fluor’s earnings, “we don’t like to lose $45-million contracts either.”