Contractor on Bronx Water Filtration Plant Admits to Fraud

One of the primary contractors that worked on the enormous Croton Water Filtration Plant being built in Van Cortlandt Park admitted last week to committing fraud in reporting its sub-contracting of minority and women-owned businesses.

Schiavone Construction, which performed much of the tunneling and trucking during the early phases of the filtration plant project, agreed to pay the federal government $20 million in penalties. The company now doing the bulk of the construction work on the filtration plant, Skanska, is also under investigation for similar misdeeds.

Members of Community Board 7 who worked with Skanska in putting together a class to help minority and women-owned businesses get competitive for big city contracts wondered how this could have happened on such a large, heavily-scrutinized project. They're also wondering: what else might be going on?

There is a meeting of the Croton Facilities Monitoring Committee next Wednesday and this is sure to be a hot topic for discussion. 

Bronx News Roundup, Oct. 13

Bronx Borough President, Ruben Diaz, Jr., continues to oppose the proposed Kingsbridge Armory agreement.

Some Bronx bridges may finally get much needed repair.

Renovations at Jerome Park Reservoir are on hiatus while the Parks Department and Department of Environmental Protection duke it out over control of the area.

In more Parks Department news, the agency announced that Heritage Field, the park replacing the old Yankee Stadium, is behind schedule and will not be completed until Fall 2011.

Instead of going for the Department of Environmental Protection's original plan to build huge egg-shaped sewage digesters in Hunts Point, the city is going to refurbish existing digesters, to the relief of community leaders.

NPR highlights the plight of tenants in an old, badly maintained apartment building on University Avenue that they attribute to the real estate crash.

The Daily News reports that the daughter of the Bronx woman who crashed her car on Sunday while driving drunk pleaded with her mother to "slow down." In addition to the daugher, there were five other young girls in the car at the time of the crash, one was killed.

The Daily News lists a slew of bargains to be found at stores in Pelham Bay.

State Sen. Jeffrey Klein proposed legislation to expand the police DNA databank.

Klein is also busy drafting legislation that would ban the fad of "fish pedicures," deeming the practice unsanitary.

The South Bronx High School football team is hoping for a better end of the season than last year.

Filter Plant Cost Overruns: Either Incompetence or Lies, Comptroller says

Yesterday, at a lunchtime press conference downtown, Comptroller Bill Thompson re-confirmed long-held suspicions by local watchdogs and activists that, from the beginning, the Croton Water Filtration Plant project has been, and continues to be, a huge, money-eating distaster.

Thompson's office completed two separate audits on the project, one concerning the pace of the project and another concerning the cost of the project.

"What we found was an embarassment," Thompson said, calling out the succession of commissioners at the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Mayor Mike Bloomberg for their roles in mismanaging the project.

Thompson, a Democrat who is running for mayor, said the cost of the plant's construction will exceed $2 billion, more than double the original estimate included in the DEP's final Environmental Impact Staement (FEIS). If you include all the other costs associated with the project, the total pricetage is nearly $3 billion.

This isn't exactly news. We've been reporting this fact for two years. But what is interesting is how wildly innaccurate and vague the FEIS was in the first place. When asked about some of the numbers included in the cost estimates, DEP officials simply could not explain how they came up with them, said Deputy Comptroller John Brown.

Brown said the estimates in the FEIS were "deeply flawed."

The agency also changed its story as it attempted to defend some of the audits findings. For example, Brown said that when the Comptroller's office first asked DEP officials about how they came up with the cost of the plant and why its so much higher than the estimate, they said the estimate was based on just 30 percent of the completed design, which is a low percentage. Then, when the auditors went back to them to say that explanation still didn't make up for all the extra costs, the DEP responded by saying, actually, the estimate was based on just 10 percent of the design.

Even given this explanation, Brown said there are still hundreds of millions of dollars in rising costs that the DEP couldn't expalin.

Bronx Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz, a long-time and vocal critic of the filtration plant, went a step further, saying at the press conference that the DEP deliberately "low-balled the estimate at Van Cortlandt Park" and inflated the cost of building it elsewhere in order to sell the project to the public.

Thompson let Dinowitz do the accusing, but said it was the result of "either incompetence or lies," adding that he believed that, in either case, the DEP "misled the public." Dinowitz said it was probably "incompetence plus lies."

"This is the biggest boondoggle in the history of New York City, and we've had plenty of boondoogles in New York City," Dinowitz said.

The DEP has blamed the cost overruns on inflation and escalating construction costs, which were not figured into the agency's calculations. They've also said the original design estimates for the plant were conceptual so they could compare the costs of building at different sites.

But the DEP should have included inflation in its estimates, as well as a range of cost estimates based on design changes that may occur. Brown said all city projects normally include inflation and re-design cost estimates and that the filtration plant should not have been any different.

Thompson said the city might face up to $10 million in addition fines because the project won't be completed by the federally-mandated deadline of October 2011. The audit said the project wouldn't be completed until April 2012.

His office offered 16 recommendations as to how the DEP could remedy the situation, including seeking a waiver for any potential penalties due to delays, immediately completing any outstanding designs and awarding contracts for reamainign off-site work, incorporating a construction schedule to meet certain deadlines and overseeing the work of consultants who do any future cost estimates.

New York City Announces Plans to Drain the Mott Haven Swamp

After multiple complaints about the unsightly and unsanitary swamp in Mott Haven, the New York City Department of Sanitation and the Department of Environmental Protection have agreed to drain and clean up the flooded, trash-ridden mess of abandoned railway. The swamp is about one mile long and contains swarms of mosquitoes, packs of rats, piles of trash and an overwhelming stench.

Many newspapers have covered the swamp's numerous health code violations, wretched smell and negative effects on local businesses. Click here and here for articles.

This morning, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler, the Department of Sanitation commissioner, the Department of Environmental Protection Acting Commissioner and the Community Affairs Unit Commissioner traveled down into the swamp to inaugurate the beginning of the draining process. According a press release from City Hall, in the next two to three days 150,000 gallons of water will be drained from the swamp and into the sewage system where the water will be treated.

After the draining process is finished, the Department of Sanitation will clean up the trash in the area and analyze it for the causes of the flood. The cleanup should take approximately one week. The Department of Sanitation also plans on closely monitoring the swamp to prevent further flooding incidents.

The only controversy remaining after the cleanup will be who will be footing the bill. Since the swamp is located on private property, the City of New York is not legally obligated to pay for the swamp cleanup. In City Hall's press release, the Department of Environmental Protection's Acting Commissioner, Steven W. Lawitts, said, "This is a case where a private property owner has abandoned his responsibility to maintain his property and in so doing has imposed a tremendous burden on his neighbors."

According to Jason Post, a spokesman for the Mayor, the city does not know who owns the swamp, but they are investigating Amtrak, the MTA, Midtown Trackage Ventures, Metropolitan 47th LLC and other railroad companies. The cleanup could cost "hundreds of thousands of dollars," says Post.

Since no private property owners have responded the government's demands to pay for the cleanup of the site, the New York City Department of Finance plans to foreclose the property and eventually receive compensation for the cleanup.

More on the Proposal to Blast at Jerome Park Reservoir

Last week we covered the Croton Facility Monitoring Committee Meeting and reported that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is again proposing the use of blasting at the Jerome Park Reservoir.

We reported that DEP official Angela Licata saying that the DEP did not do a good job of describing hoe-ramming in the original environmental impact statement (EIS).

On her blog, local activist Karen Argenti, who also attended the meeting, pointed out that in the course of answering questions Licata actually admitted that the DEP did not do a good job of explaining the entire construction project at the reservoir. You can check out Argenti's blog and the actual quote here.

This is big news for activists who years ago questioned the construction plans at the reservoir and the accuracy of the information in the original EIS.

As for the allusive "tech memo," which supposedly explains the blasting plan and its effects on the environment, we couldn't find it on the DEP Web site, so we called 311. No luck there, as we got transferred to a DEP staff member who will be on vacation until May 25. Finally, we called the press office and they helped us find the links online. (It's the two "minor modification" links.) However, the links don't work.

If you are interested in reading the tech memo, Argenti has it posted here. The DEP hopes this document will satisfy the public, as they say they are not willing to conduct a supplemental EIS.