The government’s total failure to monitor the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation’s $160 million building program over the past seven years exposed residents to safety risks and wasted taxpayer dollars by the millions, a damning new audit finds.

The parks department paid management firms millions of dollars for work that may never have been done and allowed major projects to go forward despite poor planning, the inspector general found after a yearlong review.

“As a result of these conditions, the risk to the health and safety of facility patrons is increased; the quality and utility of DPR’s programs are diminished; and the cost to fix deficiencies resulting from potential code violations, poor planning, poor material quality, and degradation resulting from inadequate maintenance is increased,” the inspector general concluded in a report released Wednesday.

Parks officials’ two outside project management firms, Jair Lynch/Alpha Consulting and The Temple Group, were illegally overpaid by millions of dollars because the Office of Contracting and Procurement could not account for task orders, the auditors found. The firms were overpaid by at least $2 million in fiscal 2004 alone, according to the audit. Another $16 million was paid for unauthorized invoices.

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The Examiner reported on Jair Lynch’s problems with parks contracts last year.

In the audit, Jair Lynch officials responded that its fees “were always consistent with the compensation guidelines” in its contract. The firm’s payments were based on each task order, “not on a comprehensive total or cap per year.”

As for matters of safety, at William H. Rumsey Aquatic Center on Capitol Hill, contractors installed the wrong valves for the chlorine distribution system, and DPR employees were forced to tape the existing valves to make them work. The lights at the new Takoma Community Center were installed 40 feet directly above the pool, forcing maintenance staff to partly drain the pool every time they wanted to replace a light bulb.

In his written response to the audit, parks Director Clarke Ray said that many of the inspector general’s observations related to projects launched before he was named to his post, and that many of the inspector general’s recommendations “have been under way for several months.”

“DPR must take greater responsibility for monitoring its capital contracts through all phases in order to preserve the District’s fiscal integrity and some of the District’s most valuable assets, DPR’s recreation facilities,” Ray wrote.

mneibauer@dcexaminer.com