From the beginning, the city Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) federally-mandated Croton Water Filtration Plant has been unpopular and poorly executed.
But in 2008, three years into what could turn out to be a seven-year construction slog, things took another turn for the worse. The ever-swelling cost of the project broke the $3 billion mark, nearly tripling the DEP’s original cost estimate. Agency officials continue to say it’s due to skyrocketing construction costs.
But an analysis this fall by the city’s Independent Budget Office found that nearly half of the cost overruns couldn’t be accounted for by a rise in construction costs. Watchdogs believe (and the IBO suggested indirectly) much of the overruns are due to significant design changes and logistical challenges with doing the project in an eight-story hole in the ground. The DEP maintains its stance that the overruns couldn’t be avoided by building the plant somewhere else,
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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.
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