The much-maligned Croton Water Filtration Plant project is facing renewed criticism now that it has become increasingly clear that Bronxites have not received the construction jobs initially promised when the project was approved by the City Council back in 2004.

“They lied to us from the beginning,” said Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz, a longtime critic of the Bloomberg administration’s handling of the entire filtration plant project since its inception. “Promises were made, promises were broken.”

According to early estimates, the borough was to receive 660 construction jobs. However, according to the job data the Department of Environmental Protection released for March of this year (the most recent numbers available online), only 131 workers on the project are from the Bronx, or just 18 percent of the 732 total employees. This figure actually represents an increase in the percentage of Bronx workers from previous reports, though the total number of workers on the project has been reduced since the beginning of the year.

This is not a cause of celebration among community leaders, however.

“Did most of the jobs go to people in the Bronx? No,” said Paul Foster, chair of the Croton Facility Monitoring Committee (CFMC).

Despite the promises made by supporters of the Croton plant project before the City Council vote, the DEP made no legal commitment concerning local hiring practices. Instead, according to a DEP spokesperson, the department set a goal of averaging 20 percent of Bronx workers for the project.

The number of workers employed has fluctuated over the years, with the highest percentage of Bronx workers in March of 2009, when 225 workers made up 30 percent of the workforce of 738. At the peak of construction, in September 2009, only 232 out of the 1,056 construction workers on the project were Bronxites – just 22 percent. Even with months when the percent of Bronx workers dipped to 15, however, the DEP says, on average, it has met their overall job hiring goal.

Nonetheless, the job data has been met with disappointment.

“They’re not hiring [Bronxites] to the extent we’d like them to hire,” said Foster, adding that the CFMC has asked the DEP to continue to push contractors to hire local Bronx workers at the plant.

This is not the first time the plant, which is being built inside and underneath Van Cortlandt Park, has had discrepancies in terms of hiring promises and subsequent practices.

In late 2010, Schiavone Construction, a contractor on the project, admitted to fraud after falsely reporting the company contracted out to certified minority and women-owned business enterprises (MWBE), despite receiving federal funding requiring they do so. Skanska, the largest current contractor on the project, has also been investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for fraud.

The budget for the Croton plant has also ballooned since an original estimate of $992 million in the DEP’s final Environmental Impact Statement to today’s $3.2 billion, a figure provided by the DEP. According to the DEP website, plant startup and testing is expected to start later this year, though a department spokesperson said operation of the plant would begin no later than summer 2013.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared in the May 31-June 13 print edition of the Norwood News.