The top USAID official for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Donald L. Larry Sampler, said the inspector general’s letter used the wrong number for his initial calculation and that the estimates derived from that are also much too high.

“The letter is rendered moot by the fact that they used the wrong number to begin with,” he said.

The project is the Kandahar Helmand Power Program, designed to spur economic growth through increased electricity production in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, the two deadliest regions of Afghanistan for international troops over the course of the 12-year war.

The project has become emblematic of all that has gone wrong with the international reconstruction effort in Afghanistan.

USAID built the Kajaki Dam in the 1950s, and subsequently installed two turbines to generate power, leaving an empty space for a third unit. Work to improve the dam started shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. One aspect that has proven especially difficult is the installation of the third turbine that would greatly increase power production to Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city and the spiritual heartland of the Taliban.

The original estimated cost of installing the turbine was just under $17 million, with completion expected in 2005. But the work is still unfinished even as U.S. forces are pulling out of the province as part of the withdrawal of coalition combat troops.

USAID has now pledged $75 million to install the third turbine in the dam’s power station, which will be run by Afghanistan’s national utility. With that sum, the program costs have now ballooned to $345 million, which is $32 million more than what the aid agency said could be spent before the program became unviable, according to SIGAR’s calculations.

USAID officials, though, say the $17 million estimate was just for a site survey, not meant to be an estimate of the entire turbine project. By their calculations, the KHPP program will cost $303 million.

Sampler said some of the benefits – such as the boost to national pride by putting the project in the hands of the Afghan government – are hard to quantify.

“The cost benefit analysis is a little more complicated than was presented in this letter,” he said.

Two contractors have already failed to install the turbine amid major fighting and insurgent attacks, and a third has now been hired to complete the work. The latest contractor still will have to negotiate violent conditions on the ground and daunting logistics challenges, especially as the U.S. military presence has shrunk in the area and the still fledgling Afghan security forces have taken over responsibility for protecting the dam.

USAID officials say they plan to push through, despite the challenges.

If someone someday does manage to turn on the turbine, it could be a boon to the people of Afghanistan’s south, especially Kandahar City, the country’s second-largest metropolis, which suffers chronic electricity shortages.

“Skepticism or no, work is going forward,” USAID Afghanistan Mission Director William Hammink said in an email before the latest SIGAR letter was released.

Original Article: Star & Strips - http://www.stripes.com

“We ultimately believe the U.S. Supreme Court will decide the proper application” of company defenses including that it operated under the military control and direction that confers immunity on a contractor, Goins said.

Electrocuted Soldier

KBR asked the Supreme Court in January to hear its appeal of an August ruling by a federal appeals court in Philadelphia that revived a lawsuit brought by the family of a soldier electrocuted while taking a shower in his barracks in Iraq.

The family claims that KBR was negligent in servicing the barracks plumbing.

The high court hasn’t decided whether to hear the appeal.

KBR criticized today’s ruling on burn pits, locations where material including medical waste, paint and pesticides were disposed of, for its “misguided” reliance on the Philadelphia decision.

In that case, the Philadelphia appeals court said a contractor can’t claim immunity unless it acted under explicit instructions from military overseers.

“Where the military does not exercise control but merely provides the contractor with general guidelines that can be satisfied at the contractor’s discretion, contractor actions taken within that discretion do not necessarily implicate unreviewable military decisions,” Floyd wrote, citing the Philadelphia ruling.

Consolidated Suits

The burn pit case against KBR and its former parent, Halliburton, consolidates 58 lawsuits alleging harm from exposure to toxic smoke and contaminated water from the pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Susie McMichael, a spokeswoman for Houston-based Halliburton, which spun off KBR in 2007, referred an inquiry seeking comment on the ruling to KBR.

Susan Burke, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said her clients look forward to a deeper look at KBR’s activity.

“We’re confident that further discovery will show that KBR acted outside the control of the military,” Burke said in a telephone interview.

According to Floyd’s summary of the case, service members claim injury because KBR “violated military directives in its performance of waste disposal and water treatment services” and breached its contract with the government.

The burn pit litigation and the electrocution suit are among at least five sets of cases involving work in Iraq and Afghanistan that KBR is defending by invoking wartime immunity.

In November 2012, a jury in Oregon awarded $85 million to a group of soldiers who alleged they were poisoned by toxic chromium dust at a KBR worksite in Iraq. KBR is appealing the verdict.

Another set of chromium poisoning cases is being litigated in federal court in Houston.

Also in Houston, the company in January won dismissal of a suit brought by the families of 12 Nepali workers killed while they allegedly were forced to work against their will at company sites in Iraq in 2004.

The burn pit case is In re KBR Inc. Burn Pit Litigation, 13-1430, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Richmond).