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Point of view: More investigation

needed at filtration plant

By Karen Argenti

City Comptroller William Thompson provided many of us with a fresh drink of water with his audits of the Croton Water Filtration Plant, which is one of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s biggest boondoggles and now confirmed as one of the biggest frauds in the city’s history.

Many following this scandal closely were not the least bit surprised at Mr. Thompson’s finding that the timing and planning have been bungled, nor did we blink an eye at unjustifiable cost overruns into the billions. We’ve known this and have said it repeatedly all along.

But there’s a missing piece in the comptroller’s report and that is to answer the fundamental questions of why? Why were the Department of Environmental Protection’s calculations so far off? Though DEP incompetence is legendary, former Commissioner Chris Ward’s misguided insistence that the plant should be put in the Bronx because it was the cheapest place to build by hundreds of millions of dollars cannot be ignored.

There was a fascinating — and largely overlooked — revelation in the report. That is the creation of a new Cost Estimating Division of the Bureau of Engineering and Construction that has one function: conduct regular meetings between the DEP, other city agencies and the project engineers and contractors.

The comptroller needs to go the next step and fully investigate the relationship between Mr. Bloomberg’s DEP and those who gained most from the experimental underground design in Van Cortlandt Park — the diggers and dirt haulers and the contractors, consultants and engineers who would not have been needed had the plant been built on top of the ground in Westchester.

Those of us who have been in this fight for years will recall that former General Contractors Association (GCA) Executive Director Frank McArdle made it clear that he participated in regular meetings with DEP leadership to offer guidance on the bids for this project. Well, now it’s time for the public to get full details on the nature of those meetings. What was discussed, what was the DEP advised and who had influence in the decision-making that landed the hideous plant in a Bronx park?

Further, what did former DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd mean when she stated at a meeting in Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz’s office in the summer of 2007 that “there’s a natural affinity between the DEP and its contractors?”

Also, it was hard not to notice DEP’s Mark Lanaghan’s discomfort at being asked about the relationship between his agency, their contractors and the bid process during an Croton Filtration Plant Monitoring Committee meeting earlier this year. His face got red and he said in no uncertain terms can the public know more about the DEP’s deliberations and relationships with contractors and engineers and how they negotiated the bids on the Croton filtration project.

There are many eye-opening discrepancies to find. For example, how is it that Schiavone Construction Company won the bid on the first contract even before the site was approved by the City Council?

Mr. Thompson’s report says construction delays were caused in part by the first contractor who left the project. What he failed to mention is that this contractor, Perini Construction, was under federal investigation into suspected fraud in the granting of contracts for minority-owned businesses. How was Perini able to qualify and why were there only two bids? Was there open bidding as required by law, or was this simply handed off as, you know, kind of an agreement between friends?

It’s obvious that these secret relationships between a city agency and contractors do not promote the public good. They open the door for processes that are not transparent and, as we now know, are not economical. In this case, the cost to the public is $2 billion and counting, not to mention the environmental devastation this project has caused.

With what is now confirmed, that the DEP based their decision on where to site the plant on false numbers, that former DEP Commissioner Ward bolted the DEP for a plum job with the GCA, that there have been extensive backroom relationships between the DEP and contractors, there is no doubt that Thompson needs to find the missing piece in his otherwise stellar reports.

Karen Argenti is a longtime activist on environmental issues.

Riverdale Press, September 17, 2009 – http://bit.ly/12LGKg