Tetra Tech EC to Pay $57 Million to Settle False Claims Act Allegations at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard
Tetra Tech EC, Inc., a subsidiary of Tetra Tech, Inc., has agreed to pay $57 million to resolve allegations under the False Claims Act. The allegations state that Tetra Tech fabricated work and falsified data that the U.S. Department of the Navy relied upon to determine if the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (HPNS) in San Francisco Bay was free from harmful radiation. A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleged that between 2003 and 2014, Tetra Tech instructed field technicians to discard soil samples from potentially contaminated areas, replace them with 'clean' soil, and submit these altered samples for laboratory analysis. The company also allegedly manipulated scan results in its database to falsely represent that scans were conducted by the same technician at the same time. The government claims Tetra Tech benefited from this misconduct by receiving unearned contract award fees and avoiding additional remediation work, thereby increasing profits. 
