Snag keeps Iowa's new prison empty

A glistening new $132 million state maximum-security prison at Fort Madison remains empty about three months after it was scheduled to begin housing Iowa's most dangerous inmates.

The sprawling high-tech campus of the new Iowa State Penitentiary was expected to be occupied in March. Prison leaders had planned the transfer of 550 inmates in a tightly orchestrated security operation involving scores of state, city and county law enforcement officers.

But the move from the old penitentiary to the new prison has been put on hold indefinitely because of problems with a geothermal heating-and-cooling system that was improperly designed, according to state officials.

One Democratic lawmaker says Iowa prison officials were warned of the design flaw and chose to proceed with construction anyway. A spokesman for Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, dismisses the criticism as election-year politicking.

The troubles with the heating-and-cooling system at the new prison have created such major headaches that nobody in state government is certain when the new prison will be occupied. However, they are hoping it will happen sometime in late summer or early fall.

"There is no predicted date at this time" to open the new prison, said Fred Scaletta, assistant director of the Iowa Department of Corrections.

State Sen. Tom Courtney, D-Burlington, who chairs a prison budget subcommittee, said he's frustrated by the delays in opening the new penitentiary. But he also believes the new facility shouldn't be occupied until all the construction problems are fixed. His constituents include many Fort Madison prison employees.

"This is unacceptable. It shouldn't have happened," Courtney said. "We hired the best engineering firm at the time in the state. We got a good contractor, a well-known contractor. But now that it did happen, it seems to me that they are fixing it as best they can."

Problems attributed to now-defunct firm

The general contractor for the project was Chicago-based Walsh Construction. But Iowa Department of Corrections Director John Baldwin said the design flaws are being blamed on the Durrant Group, a Dubuque architectural and engineering firm that ceased operations in 2012.

After a lengthy investigation, it was determined that 40-horsepower geothermal pumps had been installed, rather than 25-horsepower units, he said.

The new prison's geothermal system operates by transferring heat to and from the ground to provide heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. The system works fine in the facility's administration building, but it's not working properly in housing units and other areas of the prison.

State Sen. Rich Taylor, D-Mount Pleasant, who retired from the Iowa State Penitentiary in June 2010, is a master technician for heating, ventilation and cooling systems. He told The Des Moines Register last week that before his retirement he warned state prison officials that the geothermal system was too big and improperly designed, but no one at Department of Corrections headquarters in Des Moines would listen to him.

Taylor said he has subsequently learned that contractors who were installing the geothermal system also recognized it wouldn't work.

But Branstad administration appointees who assumed oversight of state construction projects after the governor's election in November 2010 ignored their warnings, he said.

"This was shortly after they fired the engineers in Des Moines, and we had a bunch of people running the show who didn't really have a clue," Taylor said, referring to layoffs at the Department of Administrative Services, which oversees state construction projects.

"They said this is how it is drawn up, and this is how you will do it," Taylor said. "The mechanics were still telling them it isn't going to work, but they put it in as they told them how to put it in, and it didn't work."

Governor's staff rejects criticisms

Jimmy Centers, Brantad's communications director, said Taylor's allegations are wrong. Centers noted that the prison project was launched during Democratic Gov. Chet Culver's administration and used a controversial project labor agreement with trade unions.

A project labor agreement is designed to coordinate labor relations between trade unions and contractors at a construction site.

Supporters say the agreements ensure large projects are done on time and on budget, and that they avoid strikes while standardizing decision-making, leadership and dispute management. Critics contend the agreements discourage competition from nonunion contractors and drive up taxpayers' costs.

"Sen. Taylor is doing his best to bring the election-year political circus to town," Centers said. "It's clear by Sen. Taylor's false allegations that he is more interested in protecting his buddies, the union bosses, who were working on-site through the Culver project labor agreement, because they mismanaged the geothermal project, causing delays and increasing the cost of the Fort Madison prison project."

Baldwin also disputed Taylor's allegations, saying none of the prison construction plans had been finalized at the time of Taylor's retirement. Furthermore, the Department of Corrections has no record of Taylor voicing any concerns about the geothermal system, he said.

The state agency had a team working on the project that included all levels of rank-and-file prison staff and the Fort Madison prison union president, he said.

"There was a ton of opportunity to have input into building that prison," Baldwin said.

Taxpayers are not expected to pay tab

Baldwin said layoffs at the Department of Administrative Services had no impact on the oversight of the Fort Madison prison project because the laid-off engineer who monitored the penitentiary construction was immediately hired as a consultant by the Department of Corrections.

"We had a contract with him to make sure everything that he knew was communicated to the new person, and we kept him on for 16 or 18 months longer," the director said.

State officials haven't determined the exact cost of the repairs to the geothermal system or who will pick up the additional bills, said Caleb Hunter, deputy director of the Department of Administrative Services. But for now, the state of Iowa is paying the repair costs.

However, Iowa taxpayers ultimately aren't expected to incur additional expenses because the extra costs should be covered either by insurance or state claims, Hunter said.

State officials are working with the Iowa attorney general's office to sort out the legal liability issues, Scaletta said.

Inmates still in original penitentiary

The original Iowa State Penitentiary, founded in 1839 along the banks of the Mississippi River in Fort Madison, is still holding inmates in its maximum-security unit, which is surrounded by 30-foot tall limestone walls with guard towers.

State officials have no plans to house inmates in the old maximum-security facility once it's been vacated.

Prison officials began working on plans for the new penitentiary after a pair of inmates escaped in November 2005, launching manhunts that resulted in their captures several days later in Missouri and Illinois. The two convicts fled after scaling a prison wall using a rope fashioned from upholstery materials taken from a prison furniture shop.