I wish this was an isolated incident, but do a Google search on "government wastes" and you could probably find HUNDREDS of examples. What's sad is if any private business were to waste money like this, they'd be shut down rather quickly, but since the government regards taxpayer money as a well that'll never run dry, they have NO motivation to cut costs.
I think I read once that the Pentagon, for instance, has a TRILLION dollars they can not account for. That's TRILLION, as in 1,000,000,000,000 dollars.