New Yorkers will pay price for Croton Water Treatment Plant cost overruns

The price tag of a new Bronx water treatment plant has skyrocketed to $3.4 billion – nearly three times what the Bloomberg administration announced when construction began in 2004, the city’s Independent Budget Office says.

The astounding cost overruns for the Croton Water Treatment Plant mean that every New York City household will end up paying, on average, $44 more in its annual water bill for the next few decades just to pay for the plant.

And although city officials keep coming up with cash for the contractors in charge of this money pit, they have yet to produce all the parks improvements they promised Bronx residents in exchange for erecting the new plant in Van Cortlandt Park.

Mayor Bloomberg promised in a 2004 memorandum of understanding with city and state leaders that the Department of Environmental Protection would earmark $200 million over a five year-period from the Croton project’s budget to pay for boroughwide park improvements.

Only $150 million of that money has been committed, Parks Department spokeswoman Vickie Karp said yesterday.

The Independent Budget Office said the city doesn’t plan to spend the rest of the $50 million until 2019.

Somehow, a five-year promise mysteriously morphed into 15 years.

“I’m so outraged at everything DEP and the city have done here,” said North Bronx neighborhood leader Jane Sokolow. “They keep trampling over a community that didn’t want this project to begin with.”

“All of the Parks [Department] Croton projects have either been built, are in construction, or are in the process of being designed or bid,” Karp insisted.

“The undertaking is a huge success and a huge win for the people of the Bronx.”

Bronx neighborhood leaders see things differently.

They always said the plant, which the city was required to build by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, could be built more cheaply in Westchester County instead of beneath Van Cortlandt Park. But the DEP’s experts insisted the Bronx site would only cost $1.2 billion.

So what went wrong?

“Initially, bidding out the work during a hyper-inflated construction market was the primary reason behind cost increases,” DEP spokesman Farrell Sklerov said yesterday in an email statement.

In 2009, then-city Controller William Thompson audited the project and found it had jumped to $2.1 billion. The original “conceptual cost estimate [by the city] was unreliable,” Thompson concluded.

In other words, the neighborhood people had been right.

Since Thompson’s audit, the plant has swallowed another billion dollars or so.

“More recently, design and construction change orders due to the complexity of the facility, and enhancements to the design and architecture of the above ground facilities all played a role in cost increases,” Sklerov added.

That’s all doublespeak, says Bronx Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz, a longtime critic of the plant.

“If this was Bloomberg’s own company, he would have fired the people who screwed this up,” Dinowitz said. “But the mayor has not said a word. … Someone needs to take responsibility for such huge waste.”

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

DEC Report to the DEP in 2009 on the Earthen Berm
DECDamSafety_to_DEPAug2009

Site of the 66 trees that have to be removed
Fort Independence Park Trees kadraft 070511

NYS DEC page concerning the rules on Earthen Berms Dam Safety near Reservoirs: http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/4991.html

Finally the report was provided in April, and discussion will follow in May at the FMC meeting on the 20th.  Report is on the CB 8 web page under the Croton Water Treatment Plant, Van Cortlandt Park, Pedestrian Bridge Feasibility Study
Van Cortlandt Park Pedestrian Bridge Feasibility Study Part 1
Van Cortlandt Park Pedestrian Bridge Feasibility Study Part 2

Letters of support are being sent to the Community Board 8.  Here are a few:

FIPNA Support Pedestrian Bridge 05182010

BCEQpedestrian_bridge_support05182010

Pedestrian Bridge Support Letter FVCP 051710

In 1999, the New York City Council passed the ULURP resolution approving the site selection to build a filter plant in Van Cortlandt Park.  The resolution promising certain things, including the Facility Monitoring Committee.

The pedestrian bridge is mentioned in the resolution and on the list of projects.    If the project is feasible, and for some reason, too expensive, then we should be given the opportunity to raise the money elsewhere.  Parks should do the report, then it has to go to the CITY COUNCIL.

HERE ARE THE DOCUMENTS:

• RESOLUTION: Reso 933 of 1999
  
• LIST OF MITIGATION PROJECTS:Mosholu Mitigation Res 993 of 1999

Among the many other items included is this one:

9.) DPR shall undertake a study and impact analysis (the study) to determine whether or not a pedestrian footbridge, crossing the Major Deegan Expressway linking the heretofore and connected east and west portions of Van Cortlandt Park is technically, legally and financially feasible. Said study shall be completed by September 2002 and the results of such study shall be filed with the Speaker of the City Council and the Director of the Land Use Division of the City Council within the ten (10) days of completion. In the event that said study determines that the construction of such a pedestrian footbridge is technically, legally and financially feasible, a Budget Modification, transferring from DEP to DPR funds sufficient to design and build it shall be introduced in the Council by the Mayor within sixty (60) days of the completion of the study;

The public is invited to attend this presentation. A representative of the New York City Comptroller’s office will present the September 1, 2009 Audit Reports listed below:

The audits can be found at the following links:
• DEP’s Oversight of Costs to Construct the CWTP, FR09-110A, 9/1/2009 – http://bit.ly/AI5Pr
• DEP’s Progress in Constructing the CWTP, FR08-121A, 9/1/2009 – http://bit.ly/1a4a3E

VLADECK HALL, Amalgamated Housing Co-op, 74 Van Cortlandt Park South, enter off of Hillman Avenue, Bronx, NY 10463.

Parking is limited, please use public transportation.

Bring a friend
Refreshments

—————-

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

]]> http://www.waterblogged.org/riverdale-press-91719-keep-investigating-filter-plant-project/feed/ 0 http://www.waterblogged.org/comptroller-william-thompson-audit-september-1-2009/ http://www.waterblogged.org/comptroller-william-thompson-audit-september-1-2009/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:02:50 +0000 karen http://www.waterblogged.org/?p=231 The City of New York Office of the Comptroller, Bureau of Financial Audit, Audit on the Department of Environmental Protection’s

Progress in Constructing the Croton Water Treatment Plant, FR08-121A
September 1, 2009 - Download the Complete Audit Report (pdf 356kb)

OVERSIGHT OF COSTS TO CONSTRUCT THE CROTON WATER TREATMENT PLANT, FR09-110A, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009  Download the Complete Audit Report (pdf 317kb)

Thank you Comptroller Thompson.  Keep up the good work.

JPR Numbers on the Fence – July 2009

Thank you.

Today we have the work we have all been awaiting for at least 25-30 years — clean the inside fence around the Jerome Park Reservoir of all the vines and weeds.  Whether the reason is that they finally woke up (doubtful), or if it has something to do with the permission to blast around the reservoir (possible), or if it is because of someone’s campaigning, one thing is certain.

It is a beautiful thing.

Thank you to my friend who took the photo’s to memorialize this time and effort.

So now, anyone have any ideas of what’s up?