4 ms·

Um -- as someone who has bought Swheat Scoop for my cats for almost 20 years -- I can assure you it's not the low-cost option. Clay is much cheaper.

brudgers 9y ago
I'm not disagreeing. However, I would not be surprised if the price ratios at retail differ from those at bulk wholesale and at moments in the spot market. My suspicion is based on some experience with the spot market for fill dirt and the evidence here that kitty litter made from wheat byproducts was supplied by the low cost bidder and the premise that the low cost bidder was a rational economic actor.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  I could believe that Swheat Scoop was the low bidder once someone in the purchasing chain had ruled out the clay options, but I'd be very surprised if any of the organic materials could compete with clay.
  - brudgers 9y ago
    With fill dirt the way the market works is if some Owner has an unbalanced site where there's more cut than fill, then the fill dirt is a bargain because the Owner would otherwise have to pay to haul the dirt away. On the other hand, if tho Owner needing fill dirt heads down to his local dirt mine, the proprietor can stick to their asking price because the dirt in the dirt mine doesn't go bad. My suspicion is that someone was sitting on a big pile of wheat waste, which unlike fill dirt is organic and probably goes bad and probably needs to be moved off the wheat processing lot for next week/month/year's wheat harvest...and the wheat waste (unlike fill dirt) probably needs to be disposed of properly in a sanitary landfill and that's some more expense. I mean at some point, someone is probably paying to have the wheat waste hauled away, whereas zeolite and other clay minerals are typically mined deliberately.
- nkurz 9y ago
  My suspicion is based on some experience with the spot market for fill dirt and the evidence here that kitty litter made from wheat byproducts was supplied by the low cost bidder and the premise that the low cost bidder was a rational economic actor. Your suspicion sounds plausible, but looks to be directly contradicted by the Department of Energy's post-investigation report. To the contrary of this being a decision made by the low cost bidder, the problems with the process started with a mistake in the specification that was produced by Los Alamos National Security LLC, the private company specifies the proper operating procedures at the national lab: "When LANS began using this procedure to process nitrate salt wastes in September 2011, it did not perform a USQD [Undetermined Safety Questions Determination], as required, because the change from inorganic to organic absorbent was incorrectly determined to be an administrative (minor) change." "In one particular instance, a conduct-of-operations SME [subject matter expert], working outside of his/her area of responsibility, added new text to DOP-0233 that included using organic kitty litter as an absorbent, as opposed to the inorganic zeolite material discussed previously in technical team meetings." "In the previous example, the SME's addition of the text to DOP-0233, Section 10.6, which included the word 'organic', was submitted informally as a 'minor' comment, rather than an 'essential' comment that would have required explicit concurrence from the entire SME team." Unless the report is wrong, or unless the SME who made the change was actually working in deep cover for a kitty litter producer with a surplus of wheat, this looks to be an error of knowledge and process, not a cost-cutting measure by a low bidder. https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/02/f29/Posting%20copy%20LANS%20PNOV%202-18-16%20%28NEA-2016-01%29.pdf https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/02/f29/Posting%20co...
  - brudgers 9y ago
    It appears that organic was added alongside inorganic. Which means that the low bid was for organic litter. Having written specs, alternatives to established specifications are often proposed by vendors. Normally for government specifications, opportunities to enjoy pitches by vendors to have their products added to the specification are not allowed due to the potential appearance of a conflict of interest. On the other hand, an LLC might not have quite as rigid a protocol...and establishing an LLC might even be done to avoid having rigid protocols around bidding and vendors. Now I could be completely off base and a low level employee went cowboy all on their own due to some previous knowledge of organic kitty liter and the economics of its bulk availability. The center of the distribution when specs get changed to allow an alternative technology is more commonly customer eduction by vendors.

brudgers 9y ago

I'm not disagreeing. However, I would not be surprised if the price ratios at retail differ from those at bulk wholesale and at moments in the spot market. My suspicion is based on some experience with the spot market for fill dirt and the evidence here that kitty litter made from wheat byproducts was supplied by the low cost bidder and the premise that the low cost bidder was a rational economic actor.

ScottBurson 9y ago
I could believe that Swheat Scoop was the low bidder once someone in the purchasing chain had ruled out the clay options, but I'd be very surprised if any of the organic materials could compete with clay.
- brudgers 9y ago
  With fill dirt the way the market works is if some Owner has an unbalanced site where there's more cut than fill, then the fill dirt is a bargain because the Owner would otherwise have to pay to haul the dirt away. On the other hand, if tho Owner needing fill dirt heads down to his local dirt mine, the proprietor can stick to their asking price because the dirt in the dirt mine doesn't go bad. My suspicion is that someone was sitting on a big pile of wheat waste, which unlike fill dirt is organic and probably goes bad and probably needs to be moved off the wheat processing lot for next week/month/year's wheat harvest...and the wheat waste (unlike fill dirt) probably needs to be disposed of properly in a sanitary landfill and that's some more expense. I mean at some point, someone is probably paying to have the wheat waste hauled away, whereas zeolite and other clay minerals are typically mined deliberately.
nkurz 9y ago
My suspicion is based on some experience with the spot market for fill dirt and the evidence here that kitty litter made from wheat byproducts was supplied by the low cost bidder and the premise that the low cost bidder was a rational economic actor. Your suspicion sounds plausible, but looks to be directly contradicted by the Department of Energy's post-investigation report. To the contrary of this being a decision made by the low cost bidder, the problems with the process started with a mistake in the specification that was produced by Los Alamos National Security LLC, the private company specifies the proper operating procedures at the national lab: "When LANS began using this procedure to process nitrate salt wastes in September 2011, it did not perform a USQD [Undetermined Safety Questions Determination], as required, because the change from inorganic to organic absorbent was incorrectly determined to be an administrative (minor) change." "In one particular instance, a conduct-of-operations SME [subject matter expert], working outside of his/her area of responsibility, added new text to DOP-0233 that included using organic kitty litter as an absorbent, as opposed to the inorganic zeolite material discussed previously in technical team meetings." "In the previous example, the SME's addition of the text to DOP-0233, Section 10.6, which included the word 'organic', was submitted informally as a 'minor' comment, rather than an 'essential' comment that would have required explicit concurrence from the entire SME team." Unless the report is wrong, or unless the SME who made the change was actually working in deep cover for a kitty litter producer with a surplus of wheat, this looks to be an error of knowledge and process, not a cost-cutting measure by a low bidder. https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/02/f29/Posting%20copy%20LANS%20PNOV%202-18-16%20%28NEA-2016-01%29.pdf https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/02/f29/Posting%20co...
- brudgers 9y ago
  It appears that organic was added alongside inorganic. Which means that the low bid was for organic litter. Having written specs, alternatives to established specifications are often proposed by vendors. Normally for government specifications, opportunities to enjoy pitches by vendors to have their products added to the specification are not allowed due to the potential appearance of a conflict of interest. On the other hand, an LLC might not have quite as rigid a protocol...and establishing an LLC might even be done to avoid having rigid protocols around bidding and vendors. Now I could be completely off base and a low level employee went cowboy all on their own due to some previous knowledge of organic kitty liter and the economics of its bulk availability. The center of the distribution when specs get changed to allow an alternative technology is more commonly customer eduction by vendors.