Bernard Daly, the project manager for the city's massive water filtration plant project under way in Van Cortlandt Park, is relentlessly upbeat. Despite the cost overruns, delays, federal fines and accusations of impropriety in the siting of the plant on public parkland, Daly looks out over the sheer vastness of the $3 billion undertaking and beams.

Four months ago, the walls of DeWitt Clinton High School in Bedford Park were a dull shade of blue. With the help of local dentist Jay Fensterstock, the organization Publicolor, and 87 determined Clinton students, the walls of the school's second floor and cafeteria now sport vibrant shades of 13 different colors.

I seem to recall that the elected officials who promised jobs actually did nothing to secure a Project Labor Agreement. If they had used standard PLA language, they could have invoked zip code radius hiring in order to ensure that some Bronx folks got interviewed for the jobs. While several local elected officials - including members of both the Rivera and Diaz clan - said that job creation was a goal, I suspect that they knew as well as everyone else that the trades wouldn't have too many members who would meet the zip code requirement.

"My wife says I have a fault of believing in government," Assemblyman Michael Benjamin told us the other day when we asked what his thoughts on the filtration plant were these days. He was referring to the promises, most now broken, made to him and his colleagues by city officials when seeking the Assembly's support for building the plant in Van Cortlandt Park. Kennedy Benjamin might have missed her calling. Her critical eye would have helped save city taxpayers from footing the bill for what is increasingly being considered a public disaster.