TheOak

More than $15 million worth of ice purchased for Hurricane Isaac victims in Louisiana was allowed to melt or was given away by the state to private entities, according to a report released by the state office of inspector general on Thursday. The mishandling of the incident means 10-pound bags of ice, originally $2.10 each, ended up costing more than $28 apiece, including transportation costs.

As Hurricane Isaac made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 28, 2012, parishes across the state began requesting much-needed supplies from the state, including ready-to-eat meals, tarps, bottled water and bagged ice.

In charge of the distribution of the supplies was the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, or GOHSEP, and the Louisiana National Guard. The agency ordered about 34 million pounds -- or 17,000 tons -- of ice from New Orleans based-Pelican Ice.

Before Isaac, GOHSEP had only once before ordered and distributed bagged ice. As a result of an underdeveloped tracking system and mismanaged contracts with the suppliers, only 6 million pounds of the 34 million pounds ordered from Pelican Ice made it to the public.

Costs ballooned and the state looked for a way to get rid of the excess ice. First, it tried returning the remaining 28 million pounds to Pelican Ice, only to be told sanitation concerns made this impossible.

GOHSEP then tried to parcel out the remaining $15 million worth of ice to other state agencies as well as private companies, seafood businesses and restaurants. One unnamed ice company repackaged the ice and sold it as new, according to the inspector general's report.

When it could not rid itself of the rest of the unused ice, the state contracted with a third company through Pelican Ice, Baron Property Management and Leasing, LLC, to haul the remaining ice to an unrefrigerated warehouse in Lacombe, where it melted, the report said. The hauling and storage costs topped $7.5 million.

When staff from the inspector general's office visited the warehouse in October, they found Pelican Ice workers there, in charge of the ice: "Pelican Ice employees inside the warehouse were using forklifts to move the bags of ice to help them melt quicker," the report said.

The state also paid a $315,000 restocking charge to Pelican Ice. While GOHSEP's attorney Ben Plaia said the state agency didn't break the law by donating the ice to private companies because it had "no value," the costs to haul the ice to those firms ran more than $2.4 million.

In the report, the inspector general gave detailed recommendations for improvements to inventory tracking systems and contract management.

In a response to the report, sent July 24, GOHSEP and the National Guard agreed with the recommendations, noting they had already overhauled their "point of delivery inventory tracking" system to include the "full spectrum" of data.

Three contractors, unnamed in the report, have been chosen to provide supplies to the state during this year's hurricane season.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.s...on_in_ice.html